Global brand WhatsApp has been chosen as the best brand for 2024 in the annual Globes Brand Index, beating out major brands like Google, Netflix, Coca Cola and Bamba. The brand has long been much more than a messaging app, owned by Meta. It is a social network used by 98% of Israelis according to figures from the Israel Internet Association for 2024, with 95% of users saying they use the app daily. For comparison, YouTube, which is used by 98% of Israeli internet users, is used by only 52% of them on a daily basis.
The Brands Index was compiled from a survey of 3,500 people. This is the 21st year that Globes has published the index.
Strives to be a social network
The brand was founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, who decided to create an app for the Apple App Store. The idea was initially to create an app that would display statuses in a phone’s Contacts menu, indicating whether a person was at work or on a call. Very quickly, the founders realized that they had imagined a great platform for sending instant messages. In 2014, Facebook (now Meta) acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion.
WhatsApp began to run into problems under its new owners. Users discovered that through the app, Facebook was receiving data to learn how to better target advertising. The company quickly denied that the app was “listening” to or reading messages in personal conversations, although it was fined $122 million by the European Commission. Immediately after this, WhatsApp introduced end-to-end encryption, meaning that only the parties participating in the conversation are exposed to it. In 2018, both founders left the company.
WhatsApp has become much more than just a messaging app with audio and video calls. It allows business owners to sell their products and run an entire business model on the app. WhatsApp has become a social network, in the sense that users can add dozens of emojis on messages, reply to other users, share their words and much more. In recent years, the app has focused on making the experience as community-based as possible.
Over the past two years, Meta has introduced features like Statuses, Communities, and Updates. Statuses are the familiar Instagram story, which helps keep contacts informed about what’s happening on a daily basis. The Updates feature is similar to what happens in Telegram: content creators or entities can create a channel, and thus readers can follow them. But alongside all this, the « Communities » feature describes what WhatsApp really wants to be.
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Instead of creating countless groups dedicated to work, school, and kids’ extracurricular activities, WhatsApp allows community managers to include all groups in the content to produce an ordered and shared conversation. This approach allows consumers to feel like they belong to different groups.
WhatsApp is investing heavily in introducing features for more precise content management. WhatsApp has been particularly successful in Israel. The app works well and offers a quality user experience, which convinces Israelis to stay on the app. And that’s without taking into account the fact that it is a free app. According to Bezeq’s Internet Index, 74% of Israelis would not be ready to abandon the WhatsApp app.
Keeping Israelis Informed
Over the years, various apps in Israel have tried to compete with WhatsApp, such as Telegram and Signal, which are important apps internationally, but less so in Israel. The reason for this failure is not the failure of the other apps, but their consumer adoption.
Last year, WhatsApp ranked fourth in the Globes Brand Index, but this year, with the war raging, it has jumped to first place. In times of uncertainty, Israelis are eager to get information quickly and directly in order to manage and alleviate their anxieties. The community offered by WhatsApp is more strongly expressed, as Israelis need to stay connected to their loved ones and to remain close and informed at all times.
In second place in the Globes ranking is the car navigation app Waze, followed by Google in third place and Bamba, last year’s number one brand, in fourth place. Google Maps, Samsung, Nike, YouTube, Microsoft and SuperPharm complete the top 10.
Published by Globes, Israeli business news – fr.globes.co.il – July 11, 2024.
© Copyright Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.
