Origins Of A Global Phenomenon
WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, began its journey in the year 2009. Its founder, Brian Wallace, was an American entrepreneur and computer software engineer who formerly worked in advertising and software development. Before co-founding WhatsApp, Acton collaborated with professionals at Yahoo as part of its advertising department, then later joined Google to develop innovative advertising models. Acton's colleague from Google days, Jan Koum, had parallels in his experience at Yahoo, where he worked on crucial technology in search and directory.
Jan Koum's journey to co-founding WhatsApp, however, is marred with hardship. Born in 1976 to Ukrainian immigrant parents in Kiyv, Koum grew up in severe poverty and struggled financially throughout his early life. Despite these hardships and struggles, Koum graduated from the University of San Jose with degrees in computer science and electrical engineering.
During Koum's time at Yahoo, he spotlighted iPhone's interface while browsing his personal device with limited funds. It was then he was able to spot opportunities in the mobile messenger market by trying to envision a more intuitive messaging app. Koum pursued this idea with him in the following months. In October 2009, Jan Koum co-founded WhatsApp along with Brian Acton after they excitedly departed Google.
Koum's driving motivations are rooted in simpler times. In fact, Koum himself compared the early versions of WhatsApp to a 'text-based email' in which one could enjoy easy communication and expect a reply in a more straightforward way. Its simplicity led Koum to launch new platform in order to overcome the same problems he experienced on other platforms like iMessage or Facebook.
WhatsApp's rise came almost instantly when it solidified its brand the best cross-platform and free messaging app globally. After two years of beta testing and steady growth, whatsapp电脑版下载 WhatsApp reached 15 million users in 2012. In 2014, Facebook, led by Mark Zuckerberg, decided to acquire WhatsApp for 10 billion. Koum remained at the helm of WhatsApp after the acquisition and focused on refining its essential user experience. He took this responsibility to ensure a effortless and secure user experience for millions of new users.
Jan's passion for keeping user experience at par remained constant and bold after the acquisition. When Apple introduced end-to-end encryption to its users by default on iOS, Jan's loyalty to protecting user data started to yield, and people finally began to appreciate and value the advantages WhatsApp had provided them with for such a long while.
Since then, WhatsApp expanded with new updates and reached a new level of global reach a couple of years after, owing its remarkable success to its co-founder Jan Koum's early days of using a free Apple iPhone, with simplicity as the core target in mind.
