announces its acquisition of WhatsApp for US$19 billion, its largest acquisition to date. Telegram, a cloud-based instant messaging service, launches. WhatsApp changes its profit model with an annual subscription fee of $1 after a free first year. Sequoia invests another $50 million in Series B round, valuing WhatsApp at $1.5 billion. WhatsApp's user base grows to about 200 million active users and its staff to 50. The WhatsApp support staff announce that messages were encrypted in the 'latest version' of the WhatsApp software for iOS and Android (but not BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Symbian), without specifying the cryptographic method. Īn unknown hacker publishes a website that makes it possible to change the status of an arbitrary WhatsApp user, as long as the phone number was known. SnapChat, a competing photo messaging app, is founded. In Series A round, WhatsApp founders agree to take $7 million from Sequoia Capital on top of their $250,000 seed funding, after months of negotiation with Sequoia partner Jim Goetz. It eventually starts to compete with WhatsApp and becomes very popular in China. WhatsApp support for Android OS is added. īrian Acton persuades five ex-Yahoo! friends to invest $250,000 in seed funding, and is granted co-founder status. WhatsApp 2.0 is released on the App Store for the iPhone. Jan Koum incorporates WhatsApp in California. Historyįor a chronological guide, see Timeline of WhatsApp. 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. It became the world's most popular messaging application by 2015, and had more than 2 billion users worldwide by February 2020. of Mountain View, California, which was acquired by Facebook in February 2014 for approximately US$19.3 billion. In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app called WhatsApp Business which can communicate with the standard WhatsApp client.

The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to sign up. WhatsApp's client application runs on mobile devices, and can be accessed from computers.

It allows users to send text and voice messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content. WhatsApp (also called WhatsApp Messenger) is an internationally available freeware, cross-platform, centralized instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by US tech conglomerate Meta. APKMirror.Īndroid, iOS, KaiOS, macOS, Windows (The latter two require one-time verification from the mobile app client.)

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