WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta.[14] It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages,[15] make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content.[16][17] WhatsApp's client application runs on mobile devices, and can be accessed from computers.[18] The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to sign up.[19] In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app called WhatsApp Business which can communicate with the standard WhatsApp client.[20][21]
The service was created by WhatsApp Inc. of Mountain View, California, which was acquired by Facebook in February 2014 for approximately US$19.3 billion.[22][23] It became the world's most popular messaging application by 2015,[24][25] and had more than 2 billion users worldwide by February 2020,[26] confirmed four years later by new 200M registrations per month.[27] By 2016, it had become the primary means of Internet communication in regions including Latin America, the Indian subcontinent, and large parts of Europe and Africa.[24]
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WhatsApp was founded in February 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, former employees of Yahoo! A month earlier, after Koum purchased an iPhone, he and Acton decided to create an app for the App Store. The idea started off as an app that would display statuses in a phone's Contacts menu, showing if a person was at work or on a call.[63]
Their discussions often took place at the home of Koum's Russian friend Alex Fishman in West San Jose. They realized that to take the idea further, they would need an iPhone developer. Fishman visited RentACoder.com, found Russian developer Igor Solomennikov, and introduced him to Koum.[63]
Koum named the app WhatsApp to sound like "what's up". On February 24, 2009, he incorporated[64] WhatsApp Inc. in California. However, when early versions of WhatsApp kept crashing, Koum considered giving up and looking for a new job. Acton encouraged him to wait for a "few more months".[63]
Koum updated WhatsApp so that everyone in the user's network would be notified when a user's status changed. This new facility, to Koum's surprise, was used by users to ping "each other with jokey custom statuses like, 'I woke up late' or 'I'm on my way.'"[63]
Although Acton was working on another startup idea, he decided to join the company.[28] In October 2009, Acton persuaded five former friends at Yahoo! to invest $250,000 in seed funding, and Acton became a co-founder and was given a stake. He officially joined WhatsApp on November 1.[28] Koum then hired a friend in Los Angeles, Chris Peiffer, to develop a BlackBerry version, which arrived two months later.[28] Subsequently, WhatsApp for Symbian OS was added in May 2010, and for Android OS in August 2010.[65] In 2010 Google made multiple acquisition offers for WhatsApp, which were all declined.[66]
To cover the cost of sending verification texts to users, WhatsApp was changed from a free service to a paid one. In December 2009, the ability to send photos was added to the iOS version. By early 2011, WhatsApp was one of the top 20 apps in the U.S. Apple App Store.[28]
By February 2013, WhatsApp had about 200 million active users and 50 staff members. Sequoia invested another $50 million, and WhatsApp was valued at $1.5 billion.[28] Some time in 2013[70] WhatsApp acquired Santa Clara-based startup SkyMobius, the developers of Vtok,[71] a video and voice calling app.[72]
On February 19, 2014, one year after a venture capital financing round at a $1.5 billion valuation,[75] Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms) announced it was acquiring WhatsApp for US$19 billion, its largest acquisition to date.[23] At the time, it was the largest acquisition of a venture-capital-backed company in history.[22] Sequoia Capital received an approximate 5,000% return on its initial investment.[76] Facebook, which was advised by Allen & Co, paid $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook shares, and, advised by Morgan Stanley, an additional $3 billion in restricted stock units granted to WhatsApp's founders Koum and Acton.[77] Employee stock was scheduled to vest over four years subsequent to closing.[23] Days after the announcement, WhatsApp users experienced a loss of service, leading to anger across social media.[78]
The acquisition was influenced by the data provided by Onavo, Facebook's research app for monitoring competitors and trending usage of social activities on mobile phones, as well as startups that were performing "unusually well".[79][80][81]
At a keynote presentation at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2014, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp was closely related to the Internet.org vision.[84][85] A TechCrunch article said about Zuckerberg's vision:
Three days after announcing the Facebook purchase, Koum said they were working to introduce voice calls. He also said that new mobile phones would be sold in Germany with the WhatsApp brand, and that their ultimate goal was to be on all smartphones.[86]
In August 2014, WhatsApp was the most popular messaging app in the world, with more than 600 million users.[87] By early January 2015, WhatsApp had 700 million monthly users and over 30 billion messages every day.[88] In April 2015, Forbes predicted that between 2012 and 2018, the telecommunications industry would lose $386 billion because of "over-the-top" services like WhatsApp and Skype.[89] That month, WhatsApp had over 800 million users.[90][91] By September 2015, it had grown to 900 million;[92] and by February 2016, one billion.[93]
On November 30, 2015, the Android WhatsApp client made links to messaging service Telegram unclickable and uncopyable.[94][95][96] Multiple sources confirmed that it was intentional, not a bug,[96] and that it had been implemented when the Android source code that recognized Telegram URLs had been identified.[96] (The word "telegram" appeared in WhatsApp's code.[96]) Some considered it an anti-competitive measure;[94][95][96] WhatsApp offered no explanation.
On January 18, 2016, WhatsApp's co-founder Jan Koum announced that it would no longer charge users a $1 annual subscription fee, in an effort to remove a barrier faced by users without payment cards.[97][98] He also said that the app would not display any third-party ads, and that it would have new features such as the ability to communicate with businesses.[93][99]
In September 2017, WhatsApp's co-founder Brian Acton left the company to start a nonprofit group,[101] later revealed as the Signal Foundation, which developed the WhatsApp competitor Signal.[102] He explained his reasons for leaving in an interview with Forbes a year later.[103] WhatsApp also announced a forthcoming business platform to enable companies to provide customer service at scale,[104] and airlines KLM and Aeromxico announced their participation in the testing.[105][106][107][108] Both airlines had previously launched customer services on the Facebook Messenger platform.
In April 2018, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum announced he would be leaving the company.[110] By leaving before November 2018, due to concerns about privacy, advertising, and monetization by Facebook,[111] Acton and Koum gave up $1.3 billion in unvested stock options.[112] Facebook later announced that Koum's replacement would be Chris Daniels.[113]
In January 2021, WhatsApp announced a controversial new Privacy Policy allowing WhatsApp to share data with its parent company, Facebook; users who did not accept by February 8, 2021, would lose access to the app. This led many users to ditch WhatsApp and move to other services such as Signal and Telegram.[122] However, Facebook said the WhatsApp policy would not apply in the EU, since it violates the principles of GDPR.[123][124] Facing criticism, WhatsApp postponed the update to May 15, 2021,[125][126] but said they had no plans to limit functionality of users, nor nag users who did not approve the new terms.[127]
In August 2022, WhatsApp launched an integration with JioMart, available only to users in India. Local users can text special numbers in the app to launch an in-app shopping process, where they can order groceries.[130]
In March 2024, Meta announced that WhatsApp would let third-party messaging services enable interoperability with WhatsApp, a requirement of the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA). This allows users to send messages between other messaging apps and WhatsApp while maintaining end-to-end encryption.[131][132]
In November 2010, a slate of improvements for the iOS version of WhatsApp were released: including the ability to search for messages in your chat history, trimming long videos to a sendable size, the ability to cancel media messages as they upload or download, and previewing photos before sending them.[133]
In January 2015, WhatsApp launched a web client that allowed users to scan a QR code with their mobile app, mirroring their chats to their browser. The web client was not standalone, and required the user's phone to stay on and connected to the internet. It was also not available for iOS users on launch, due to limitations from Apple.[136][137]
Voice calls between two accounts were added to the app in March and April 2015.[138] By June 2016, the company's blog reported more than 100 million voice calls per day were being placed on WhatsApp.[139]
On November 10, 2016, WhatsApp launched a beta version of two-factor authentication for Android users, which allowed them to use their email addresses for further protection.[140] Also in November 2016, Facebook ceased collecting WhatsApp data for advertising in Europe.[100] Later that month, video calls between two accounts were introduced.[141]
Later in September 2018, WhatsApp introduced group audio and video call features.[145][146] In October, the "Swipe to Reply" option was added to the Android beta version, 16 months after it was introduced for iOS.[147] 152ee80cbc
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