WHATSAPP has launched another business-focused feature.

As part of Mark Zuckerberg’s push to turn the app into a commerce tool, the ability to find businesses in five countries was released.

South Africa isn’t one of them yet, but depending on which country has the feature, it couldn’t be far off.

It’s not the usual precursor collection that gets Shiny New Thing™.

Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico and the UK were all shortlisted for the new search feature.

The goal is to connect users with the companies they interact with, while ensuring that no one has to talk to a human.

Texting is fine, bro.

WHATSAPP WITH ALL THESE CHALLENGES?

This feature is called “Directories” and allows users to get to a new option called “Business” in the new “Discovery” subsection.

From there, users can search for businesses by type or search for specific people.

Anyone on the WhatsApp business platform in the five countries where this feature is active will appear. In Brazil especially, small businesses will also be seen.

Regional differences make sense, as these limited implementations are a test of functionality.

Therefore, Brazilian users can only access the feature on Android devices. Other countries have access to the ‘Directory’ on Android and iOS currently.

“We want to empower people to do more on WhatsApp,” said Mark Zuckerberg.

“Part of that is creating a better way to interact with companies. And while millions of businesses in Brazil use it to chat, we don’t make it easy to find businesses or buy from them, so people end up having to use a workaround.

“The main goal here is to make sure you can find, message, and buy from businesses in the same WhatsApp chat.”

The fact that this is an area of ​​Meta that hasn’t seen any slowdown should give you an idea of ​​where the company is headed.

Earlier this month, Zuckerberg announced major layoffs and reprioritized projects on Meta.

The hardware is dead in the water, but enabling ecommerce across all platforms? Of course, that sounds fancy. – cosas.co.za