In today's world, everyone who hears the word WhatsApp has a common thought: communication.
Although WhatsApp operates under the umbrella of Facebook, its founders actually have an ironic ties to Facebook.
Brian Acton and Jan Koum, who left their jobs at Yahoo, where they had been working for 20 years with the idea of traveling the world, decided to give up these thoughts and apply for a job at Facebook when their savings started to decrease in a short time. However, the calculation set up by the young people whose applications were not accepted did not go as planned. This was the turning point that would open the doors of a new adventure to them.
Those who live must know, the concept of 'communication on the internet' was not common until 10-12 years ago. With some services, it was possible to make text messaging and even video calls, but people did not fully internalize this. The dominant method for communicating was still SMS/MMS technologies.
The applications that would inspire WhatsApp to be established in 2009 continued to exist in the market. For example, Facebook Messenger was among the most preferred with the meeting opportunities it offered according to its time. While Facebook was taking firm steps towards changing the communication habits of the world community, it was only a matter of time before an initiative emerged to take over this task.
Jan Koum, inspired by the new app store App Store of the iPhone, which he bought in January 2009, predicted the audience potential they could reach through this market. He wanted to try something different, which was already unique: it would allow people around the world to communicate with each other, but at some point it would differentiate itself from its competitors.
Jan Koum had the idea of "status", where users could write their current mood on their individual profile. Communicating this to his old friend Acton, Koum knocked on their comrade Alex Fishman's door together. Ultimately, it was impossible to run this business without an iOS developer. Alex introduced them to Russian developer Igor Solomennikov, whom he found on the website RentACoder.com.
A difficult process awaited them on this not easy road. They started spontaneously developing an iOS app where they could bring their ideas to life. Of course, this application should have a name. Since the word Whats'up, which means 'what's up, what's up', coincided with Koum's idea of "situation", they decided to name their project "WhatsApp", which they derived from him. As a matter of fact, on February 24, 2009, WhatsApp Inc. registered their company in the United States.
Brian Acton and Jan Koum told their friends about WhatsApp, but they did not get positive reactions as they expected. In addition, the constant crashing of the application and other problems that came along with it dragged Jan into pessimism.
Having lost all hope, Jan started looking for new jobs, whereupon his friend Brian wanted to instill confidence in him with these words: 'You'd be stupid if you quit now. Give it a few more months.'
Brian Acton and Jan Koum decided to ignore the negativities and fight them and continue to improve.
In June 2009, Apple launched a new feature called Push Notifications worldwide. The main purpose here was to inform people at any moment about the developments in the applications installed on their phones. Taking this update as an opportunity, Jan Koum immediately revised WhatsApp accordingly and added an innovation that would allow notifications to his friends in his contacts when the user changed their status.
Especially Alex Fishman's Russian friends found it very entertaining. They even started using push notifications just to send messages like "I woke up late" or "I'm at the gym" among themselves. This feature soon became the trend of WhatsApp. Now, people were changing their situations, even to ask each other how they were. For example, seeing the “What's up Jessica” notification, he immediately responded with his own situation.
While Jan Koum was living in his town house in Santa Clara, he was also following the developments closely. The entrepreneur who wanted to turn the crisis into an opportunity realized that the case application needed to further develop its working model. Now it's time to turn WhatsApp into an internet-based instant messaging network.
At that time, Apple tried to create its own unique ecosystem by connecting both the iPhone and the other products it contained, thus making a very important contribution to the adoption of WhatsApp.
The version, which does not support media files but only enables text messaging, was finally submitted to the App Store on August 27, 2009. Brian Acton officially joined the WhatsApp team on November 1.
As a result of the ongoing demand for the instant messaging application, WhatsApp 2.0 was released as beta. People have loved and embraced the idea of just logging in with their phone number and sending messages to each other online without dealing with any operator fees.
BBM, one of the most used messaging applications at that time, was only exclusive to Blackberry, so it could not be used on other phones. There were also competitors like G-Talk and Skype, but they were not easy to log into and use. Its simplicity quickly made WhatsApp a rising star. Within a month, it started to be used by 250 thousand people.
The beta phase of WhatsApp is finally over. The app was made available exclusively to the App Store for iPhone in November 2009. It stood out as an excellent alternative to sending free SMS within the country and even abroad. Of course, those who do not use iPhones, so to speak, raised the flag of revolt saying "what are we missing". The founders' mailbox was filled with questions from Nokia and BlackBerry users.
Jan Koum hired one of his friends, Chris Peiffer, to develop the BlackBerry version of the app. But Chris, like all the American people, had a doubt. He complained at every opportunity that people had such a thing as SMS.
The mobile operator market in the USA was full of companies trying to lure their users with affordable and free SMS/minute packages. People had almost no appeal to use WhatsApp. Jan Koum and Brian Acton wanted to try their luck in countries other than the USA, such as Europe-Asia. Jan stated that SMS was a dead technology from the 70s.
Although Chris Peiffer still had his doubts, he was impressed by the increase in the number of users of WhatsApp and agreed to join the team. Special applications for Symbian OS, Android and Windows operating systems started to be developed within two years.
In February 2013, the number of WhatsApp users increased to 200 million and the company began to employ 50 staff. Due to the cost, the WhatsApp application, which had a price of $ 0.99 until then, was changed. It would be free for the first year, but then users started to be charged a $1 per year subscription fee.
Back then, Facebook was prioritizing mobile devices and moving forward with its mission to make messaging its core service. WhatsApp was the biggest competitor of Facebook Messenger, and even when looking at the usage rates, it was understood that it surpassed Messenger.
Aware of the danger, Facebook predicted that WhatsApp would become one of the biggest competitors going forward. In February 2014, he shook hands with the founders of the app and acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion. The biggest change to the app after joining Facebook was the removal of the subscription fee. Now WhatsApp would continue on its way completely free of charge.
After Facebook acquired WhatsApp, it made some changes to the app's business model. It started sharing users' statuses, profile photos, and phone numbers with the parent company. This decision, which was supposed to provide a better experience, disturbed the founders of the application. Because "privacy" was the most basic rule in the founding principle of WhatsApp.
Brian Action left Facebook in September 2017 to devote time to his nonprofit, the Signal Foundation. Jan Koum, who disagreed with Facebook on data privacy, also resigned from his post.