How many messages, voice notes, photos or gifs have you sent today on WhatsApp? How many people do you communicate with every day thanks to this application? What is evident is that many of us cannot imagine our lives without it.
In case someone still doesn’t know, WhatsApp is an instant messaging application that allows users who have a smartphone to exchange text messages, images, videos or audios for free. In order to do so, you only need to have an internet connection or a contracted data service on the device.
This application, since it currently has over 2 billion active users. Its conception brought with it the end of SMS and was a real revolution when it came to daily communication.
For all this, it is interesting to break down the history of WhatsApp from its conception to the present day. What’s behind the world’s most famous instant messaging app?
Jan Koum, the founder of WhatsApp
The mind behind this application is that of Jan Kuuma Ukrainian entrepreneur who immigrated to the United States at the age of 16.
During his youth he became interested in computers or programming and thanks to the efforts of his family he managed to enter the San José State University, but like many entrepreneurs of this type, he did not finish his studies. For example, he didn’t need it either.
In 1997 he was hired by and there he met brian acton, who will later be a key figure in this story, the co-founding partner of WhatsApp. Both became close friends and worked side by side within this company for almost 10 years. In In 2007 they decided to leave their jobs and take a sabbatical year in South America.
It was in 2009 when Koum bought an iPhone and then he realized that apps would change the future of mobiles.
And so WhatsApp was born
It is said that the idea came to Koum’s head because the gym he went to daily did not accept the use of mobile phones and he missed many calls during training. As a solution, he came up with the idea that in the contact list of our mobile it should appear next to the name a status label (at home, at the gym, busy, online, etc). In this way, it would allow other users to know if that person is operational to be able to make calls or messages.
In February 2009 they already founded the company and called it WhatsApp. This curious name is the result of a play on words between what’s up?, What does it mean “What’s up?” in English, and appsthe abbreviation of the word application (application) also in English. In May of that same year they already had the application in the Apple Store.
Koum insisted that the app not have games or advertising. WhatsApp was just to be able to communicate. The latter will be something very decisive in the history and philosophy of the company.
However, the beginnings were hard: the application crashed and nobody downloaded it, but it was Brian Acton who encouraged him not to give up. That’s when Apple updated the iPhone software and allowed notifications to come through. In this way, Koum made the corresponding changes so that the app would notify its users every time a contact changed its status. Thanks to this, Koum had unwittingly created an instant messaging system.
WhatsApp 2.0, the instant messaging revolution
After several modifications, this is how it was born WhatsApp 2.0, a primitive version of the application that we know now. In two months it reached 250,000 users, with this Acton realized the potential of the application that Koum had created, so invested $250,000 and became a co-founder of the company.
Initially, it was balanced between paid and free applications, since its growth was so great that it made it difficult to maintain the servers. That is why Koum and Acton put a price on it in order to slow down the number of new users.
In the early 2010s WhatsApp is already a fast and useful alternative to communicate with other people. Also, the fact that the app was ad-free and free helped a lot in cementing the image it has today.
Purchase by Facebook and entry into the business market
WhatsApp continued to grow exponentially and rapidly in the following years, it was in 2014 when the creator of Facebook, acquired the application for 19,000 million dollars, distributed as follows: 12,000 million in Facebook shares, 4,000 million in cash and another 3,000 million in the form of shares for the workers and founders of the popular messaging service.
As Jan Koum explained at the time: “The extremely high and rapid growth of WhatsApp is motivated by the simple, powerful and immediate messaging capabilities we offer. We are excited and honored to partner with Mark and Facebook as we continue to bring our product to more people around the world.” (Jan Koum, CEO of WhatsApp)
This transaction will be very significant in the history of modern technology, because with this purchase, Zuckenberg’s company becomes the owner of the most users in the world: WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal: the goodbye of the founders
One of the main purchase conditions established by Koum was that WhatsApp continue to maintain its initial essence: a secure app with respect for the freedom of expression and privacy of its users. In this way, WhatsApp continued to work independently of Facebook and only the company’s future plans were agreed upon, which were discussed directly between Koum and Zuckenberg.
Everything seemed to be going well in this story, until in 2018 the scandal of , a company that had been in charge of Donald Trump’s political advertising campaign in 2016, was handling information provided by Zuckerberg platforms: Facebook, Instagram and of course WhatsApp.
It is estimated that information was being used without authorization about 50 million people. All this information was used by Cambridge Analytica to carry out Electoral campaigns much more effective and influence citizens based on their interests, searches or hobbies.
With all this situation, Jan Koum decides to resign his position in the company that he himself created, alleging that it does not agree with the concept of “privacy” of Zuckerberg and leaves office without making too many statements about it.
For his part, Brian Acton also resigned from his position at Facebook and even promoted at the time a campaign against Zuckerberg’s social network through Twitter, known as , inviting its millions of users to delete their profiles so that the company would stop dealing with their data.
whatsapp gets older
In 2018, WhatsApp also decides to become the perfect intermediary between an individual and a company: born . This new extension of the original application offers a fast, simple and secure way of communication for the requests of the clients of the different companies and services. This new form of communication between entity and client made them go a step further, since countries such as India are already testing
With whatsapppay You can only complete transactions with a company or service, but you can also send money to any other contact you want. An advance that, if carried out, would offer WhatsApp Business the most complete commercial service in its history.
How WhatsApp has made history
Sent more than 100,000 million messages a day through WhatsApp and since free calls or video calls have been included, it has become an essential app for the millions of users who use it.
WhatsApp enjoys unstoppable growth despite the fact that many competitors have emerged: Line, Telegram or among others. However, everything points to WhatsApp is the instant messaging application that we could not live without.
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