To the surprise of hopefully no one, WhatsApp has announced it will begin both sharing data with corporate parent Facebook and offering official tools for businesses to have an official presence on the app. WhatsApp is famous for saying it would never have ads and it’s careful to say that’s not what’s happening here. Instead it’s positioning this as a way for the average user to connect with and hear from those brands, as if that isn’t the basic premise of every other social network and most messaging apps out there. It will be interesting to see if this leads to a backlash either now or in the future as this rolls out. My guess is this will not go over well.