About 30 newsletters arrive in your inbox every day. Some focus on new papers venture capitalists are developing for India and the crypto market. Most watch news gathering. The rise of Substack has allowed many journalists to quit their newsroom jobs and start something of their own. As such, the subscription list continues to grow. But even his quarter of these newsletters have become painful to keep up with in a sea of hundreds of other emails.
That’s why WhatsApp, the app I use every few minutes, Plan your play with the newsletterAccording to WaBetaInfo, a blog looking for new developments in WhatsApp, the instant messaging app is working on a “private newsletter tool.”
The tool is currently in development and will ship in a future update of the app, the website says, and I combed through the code to find hints.
The Meta-owned service did not immediately comment.
WhatsApp already offers individuals the ability to “broadcast” messages to many people at once. The current thinking on the newsletter feature seems to extend this use case. WaBetaInfo, which has an illustrious record of spotting upcoming changes, says the newsletter feature “will be a one-to-many tool for broadcasting information.”
Details are scarce at the moment, and it’s also possible that WhatsApp will change its mind about this new feature at some point and discontinue the project.
But let’s assume that’s not the case. What does the arrival of WhatsApp mean for the fast-growing but small newsletter industry? And what does WhatsApp have?
WhatsApp has 2 billion daily active users. Even if a small fraction of this user base shows interest in newsletters (a category the majority of them still don’t know exist), WhatsApp will make him the biggest newsletter player in a month. There is a possibility. (There are already a lot of people using WhatsApp’s distribution channel to promote his newsletters.) As more people start reading newsletters, the market for newsletters can grow, too. So it’s not necessarily the worst for incumbents like Substack, but it’s probably bad.
WhatsApp can provide a great newsletter experience by giving users the ability to read all newsletters within the instant messaging app. Open rates will be higher, and WhatsApp will be able to offer more sophisticated analytics to newsletter writers.
In the newsletter, WhatsApp can also find ways for users to spend more time on the app. As WhatsApp strengthens its business offerings, it can also find ways to better serve brands with newsletters.
As one industry executive told me: Also, many brands mark her messages as spam even if the user consented to receive them when signing up for the service. WhatsApp has a much larger audience base and a much higher engagement rate than any other platform. ”
Don’t kill the project, Team WhatsApp.
