Who can say that the app most used by Brazilians was made by two former Yahoo employees? That’s right, we’re talking about the North American Brian Acton and Ukrainian Jan Koum, the founders of WhatsApp.
Discover more curiosities about this revolutionary service in the complete guide Technology World. Discover the story behind the birth of WhatsApp and how it was acquired by Meta, the most popular messaging app in Brazil!
What is WhatsApp Story?
The history of WhatsApp, Jan Koum and Brian Acton’s WhatsApp Inc. It starts in 2009 when he founded his company. and released the first version of the app on the App Store. The purpose of the application was to view the status selected by the user by connecting to the list of contacts stored on the mobile phone.
Real WhatsApp’s potential discovered in its second versionafter fixing a few bugs and making the notification function available on iOS.
Popular version of WhatsApp
In mid-2009, Koum noticed that WhatsApp users had started using the notifications feature to initiate conversations with their contacts. Instead of the situation with messages like “I’m not there”, people started to make appointments and argue.
“It became an instant messenger at one point,” Alex Fishman told Forbes. From here, the app has grown into an instant messaging platform that differentiates itself from its competitors by only needing the user’s phone number.
Months later, WhatsApp 2.0 arrived in app stores with its text messaging functionality. The result was an explosion in the number of users, reaching 250 thousand people.
As investments flowed, the venture began to rise. With the help of Koum and Acton’s developer friend Chris Peiffer, WhatsApp started to grow internationallyespecially in countries where there is a fee for sending SMS (such as Brazil).
Selling WhatsApp to Facebook
The expansion of WhatsApp has caught the attention of major technologies. When the venture was valued at $1.5 billion, Google made a $10 billion takeover offer.
Negotiations failed! Koum and Acton sought benefits other than the money from the sale. In this scenario, Facebook’s proposal to be called Meta in 2021 emerged.
In early 2014, Mark Zuckerberg’s company acquired WhatsApp for US$19 billion and sponsored new ideas from the Acton and Koum team to implement features like voice and video calls.
Departure of WhatsApp founders
Since the early versions of WhatsApp, Jan Koum claimed that his aim was to keep the app free. WhatsApp used to charge $1 per year for use, but the fee was infrequent and ended in 2016.
In 2017, the monetization of the app became a topic of discussion between the platform’s founders and Facebook. It is worth remembering that that year, WhatsApp Business, a free version for small entrepreneurs, and WhatsApp Enterprise, a paid version of the application for large companies, were released.
The following year, Koum and Acton give up altogether. “I sold my users’ privacy in exchange for a greater benefit. I made a choice and made a commitment. And I live with that every day. I’m a seller. I understand that,” said Acton.
What does “WhatsApp” mean?
The term “WhatsApp” means “What’s going on?” means “What’s up?” It is a word game with the expression. or “What’s up?” App creators He chose this name to convey his idea. instant and informal communicationas if you are chatting with your friends.
Of course, Brazilians didn’t miss the chance to embrace the app with affectionate nicknames like “Zap” or “Zap Zap” in reference to the pronunciation of the term “WhatsApp”!
What is WhatsApp Business?
As we said, WhatsApp Business was created as a version of the instant communication application aimed at facilitating communication between companies and customers. It offers additional features such as landline registration, organization tags and even the ability to create product catalogs.
According to Meta, there are approximately 5 million small and medium-sized businesses with active WhatsApp Business accounts. The difference of the application is in the following aspects:
- Business accounts have a WhatsApp profile that specifies their location, business type, description, email address, and website;
- Businesses can set up automatic replies for off hours.
- When a user initiates a conversation with a business account on WhatsApp, the app displays a message indicating whether the account has been verified.
What year did WhatsApp become popular in Brazil?
It was around 2013 that the app started gaining ground on Brazilian smartphones due to its simplicity, ease of use and affordability.
Since that time, WhatsApp has become an essential part of daily life for Brazilians. used for personal and professional communication, media sharing and even business.
According to the platform’s official website, it has more than 2 billion monthly active users spread across more than 180 countries. Brazil is the second country with the highest number of users!
According to the Digital 2022 – Brazil report prepared by We Are Social and Hootsuite companies, 96.4% of internet users aged 16-64 in Brazil use WhatsApp, which corresponds to 169 million users.
The survey presented by the “Evolution of Social Media Apps” research confirms the fixity of WhatsApp in the daily lives of not just Brazilians. The social network is among the top 3 applications in the world that consumes the time of its users the most since 2013.
Despite all this success in Tupiniquin territory, WhatsApp is already having a few problems with Brazilian justice. So far, there have been four court-ordered service interruptions since 2015.
The blocks were caused by this WhatsApp’s refusal to contribute to the privacy breach in speeches targeted by criminal investigations.
The company claims it can only disclose metadata information, but never the content of messages: “As part of our educational work, we are releasing information to law enforcement about the limited information we collect and how they can make requests to WhatsApp.”
What are the main functions of WhatsApp?
WhatsApp offers a wide variety of features that go beyond simple text messages. You can do:
- Share your location;
- Post your status to your contacts;
- Share contacts;
- Set custom wallpapers;
- Notification alerts;
- Save chat history;
- Use the camera to take photos and videos from within the app;
- To pay;
- Broadcast messages to multiple contacts at once;
- Create streamlined group conversations;
- Chat with stickers, music, GIFs and more.
In addition WhatsApp also offers end-to-end encryption to ensure the privacy and security of your conversations.
Now that you know the history, meaning and features of WhatsApp, how about learning how to set a password on WhatsApp Web so that no one can spy on the app? Enjoy TecMundo content!
Source: Tec Mundo
I am a passionate and hardworking journalist with an eye for detail. I specialize in the field of news reporting, and have been writing for Gadget Onus, a renowned online news site, since 2019. As the author of their Hot News section, I’m proud to be at the forefront of today’s headlines and current affairs.
