Chat Apps

I'll confess that I'm not the most avid user of chat apps, so it goes as no surprise that it was initially baffled to hear of Facebook's $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp, as well as the potential round SnapChat might raise at a $12 billion valuation.


I came across this article a few days ago and I thought I would share it for those that probably thought similarly to myself.  The article points out a case study on the football club Valencia, which tracked mobile shares on it's club site.  Interestingly, WhatsApp accounted for almost half of the shares.  You can probably discount the number a bit since WhatsApp is likely a bit more popular in Spain than in the US, but with 600 million active users, these numbers can't be discounted too heavily...at least not as a guidepost for content marketers going forward.  Like most good content marketing, these "dark social" platforms should not just be seen as content distribution channels like any other, but should direct content that speaks to the channel with which it's being distributed.  Chat apps, by nature, are less one-to-many, and more one-to-one (or one-to-small group) interactions, and content being created and pushed should reflect that.


The article also has a nice chart showing Buzzfeed's social traffic, which it also claims has seen a huge bump attributed to WhatsApp.