On Feb. 19, 2014, big things were happening, both in the sky and on the ground.
Overheard, a minor geomagnetic storm was already in progress when a coronal mass ejection, or CME, struck Earth’s magnetic field.
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Meanwhile, back on Earth, Facebook said it was making its biggest acquisition of all time.
The social-media giant, which changed its name to Meta Platforms (META) seven years later, was buying WhatsApp, the cross-platform messaging and calling app, for $19 billion.
The deal was more than 20 times larger than Facebook’s 2012 purchase of Instagram, and at the time it was the largest acquisition of a venture-capital-backed company in history.
“WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO. “The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable.”
WhatsApp had been founded in February 2009 by two former Yahoo employees, Brian Acton and Jan Koum.
When early versions of WhatsApp kept crashing, Koum considered giving up and looking for a new job, Acton encouraged him to wait a “few more months.”
Meta makes big move with WhatsApp
Good idea because by 2015 WhatsApp would become the world’s most popular messaging application. By February 2020 it had more than 2 billion users worldwide and by 2023 WhatsApp Business had roughly 200 million monthly users.
Both Acton and Koum, whose motto had been “No ads, no games, no gimmicks,” left the company seven years ago.
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And what’s up with WhatsApp now?
Well, on June 16 Meta said businesses would now be able to run status ads on WhatsApp that prompt users to interact with the advertisers via the app’s messaging features.
The ads will be shown only to users within WhatsApp’s Updates tab, to separate the promotions from people’s personal conversations.
Businesses with channels will be able to choose to promote ads in the Updates section to attract new followers, and also charge a subscription to access extra content.
WhatsApp will eventually take a 10% commission of that fee, the BBC reported, and there may also be extra costs on top of that taken at the app store level depending on the size of the business.
“We’ve been talking for years about how to build a business on WhatsApp in a way that doesn’t interrupt personal chats, and we believe the Updates tab is the right place to introduce that,” Meta said in a statement.
Meta will begin monetizing WhatsApp’s Channels feature through search ads and subscriptions.
“Like everything else on WhatsApp, we’ve built these features in the most privacy-oriented way possible,” the company said. “Your personal messages, calls and statuses remain end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one can see or hear them. That includes Meta.”
Meta is currently locked in a legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission, which alleges that the company’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were part of a strategy to eliminate competition and maintain a monopoly in the social media market.
Veteran manager sees another growth move for Meta
TheStreet Pro’s Chris Versace sees a pattern in Meta’s latest move with WhatsApp.
“We know that when the company changed its name from Facebook to Meta, [we] were going to see the management team lean into other businesses, whether it was Instagram or some of the things that it’s doing in the wearables, whether it’s Oculus or the Ray-Ban glasses,” the lead manager for TheStreet Pro Portfolio said.
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“Now, we’re seeing that CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to integrate online ads into WhatsApp,” he noted.
Versace said this was a very strong move for the social media giant, pointing to the company’s effort to monetize Instagram.
“According to Statista, WhatsApp had over 3 billion monthly active users in March,” Versace said. “So if this is successful, and there’s reason to think that it will be, it will be another growth driver for the company and its bottom line, and a positive catalyst for the shares. As we see signs of this happening, we will look to revisit our Meta price target.”
Versace’s current price target on META is $725.
Oppenheimer lifts Meta target, affirms outperform
Opinions about the WhatsApp plan varied on social media.
Great to see them finally rolling out ads,” one poster said on X. “Whatsapp is one of the greatest products ever. It isn’t free to run it. Ads continue to be the greatest leveler to ever exist for billions of people High income people in rich countries will get on high horse about ads but who cares.”
“Sorry buddy, this is textbook enshitification,” one person responded.
Shares of Meta Platforms finished regular trading June 16 up 2.9% at $702. The stock has climbed about 40% from last year and is up almost 20% in 2025.
On June 16 Oppenheimer boosted its price target on Meta Platforms to $775 from $665 and affirmed an outperform rating on the shares.
With the macroeconomic and advertising environment better than feared vs. six weeks ago, the investment firm is increasing its earnings estimates and price target.
A “TikTok Q1 tailwind is potential near-term risk, assuming no ban, while longer-term risk is Meta falling behind on AI model development,” Oppenheimer added, quoted by TheFly.
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