Hundreds of million of people use Whatsapp every day. But many of them don’t even know some very basic (but important) fact about this little piece of software. Who created it? When was it released? How does it work? Where does it makes money from? Here below you will find a quick collection of FACTSthe 7 most common and basic facts about Whatsapp:
1) How Whatsapp was created?
Whatsapp was co-founded by Jan Koum and Brian Acton. Jan Koum was born February 24, 1976 in Ukraine. He is now 37, but he was 16 when he moved from Ukraine to California before creating Whatsapp with his partner Brian Acton. Brian Acton is an American entrepreneur and computer programmer who was born in 1972. After just few years of creating their new “little app”, they are now billionaires, signing a deal with Facebook for $19 billions. However Mark Zuckerberg said that he has known Koum for a long time. After 5 years from its first release Whatsapp is now estimated to be worth about $6.8 billion. But the funny thing is that, in 2009, Acton was rejected by both Twitter and Facebook.
2) When whatsapp started?
Whatsapp was co-founded in 2009. The first official initial release date was in May 2009, which actually went nowhere. But just one month later Apple introduced in iOS 3.0 the “push notifications” function that allowed the founders to re-build WhatsApp as a cross-platform messenger app using the telephone number and the phone’s contacts folder as the foundation of its “social network”.
3) How whatsapp make money?
Today all apps earn money by selling advertisements, purchases of extra services or functionalities or the so called “freemium” model which charge for specific extra features. Whatsapp is making money basically selling a subscription fee of $.99 per download on iOS store or $.99 on other platforms (Android, Windows, etc.) after the first year. Having a large user base the company is earning hundreds of millions of dollars every year. But if you compare those earning with the $19 billion paid by Facebook to acquire the company, you see there is a big gap. So even if today there many options to monetize your software creation, don’t understimate the value that other company can place on your App 🙂
4) What whatsapp can do and How to download it?
WhatsApp is a cross-platform chat messaging app that allows individuals users or groups to exchange messages through text (or media like pictures, video and voice messages) without having to pay for SMS. WhatsApp Messenger is available for Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Nokia and Windows Phone, allowing all those different smartphones brands and Os to easily exchange messages each other. WhatsApp like BBM, iMessage or Facebook messenger relies on data to send messages, saving a lot of money into your monthly bill. The service has an average of more than 800 million monthly active users. To download WhatsApp, visit this page on your mobile phone. After installing it you must check that all your friends who you want to chat or exchange messages with, have already WhatsApp installed on their phones. Indeed they’ll automatically show up under the Contact / Favorites screen of your mobile phone, otherwise manually add their numbers to your contact list as explained here.
5) What is Whatsapp web?
WhatsApp Web is an extension of your WhatsApp account on your phone created for the Computer (Pc or Mac). To use this extension you need a stable internet connection, an active WhatsApp account on your phone and a (recent) version of a web browser like Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera.
Every message sent or received will be automatically synced between your computer and your phone, so that you can see all messages on both devices. To start using it visit https://www.web.whatsapp.com on your Pc, then open WhatsApp on your mobile phone, go to Menu > WhatsApp Web and scan the QR Code which appeared in your computer’s browser. Please remember that at this moment WhatsApp Web is available only for Windows Phone 8.0 and 8.1, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia S60, Nokia S40 and and BB10 smartphones.
6) Why whatsapp is not working?
Well there could be plenty of reasons for that. But usually, the most simple and common reason why you cannot use WhatsApp, is just because your mobile phone is not connected to the internet. To check if your internet connection is working first verify that you have a Wi-Fi connection or data plan with your carrier’s plan. Then open a webpage (i.e. whatsapp.com) in your browser to see if it’s loading. If it does load then your phone is connected to the internet and you can use Whatsapp as well. Otherwise reboot your telephone and follow the specific steps for your Os and smartphone model ( iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Nokia) as explained here: http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/general/21092998
7) What Whatsapp Tick means?
Blue, grey, single or double tick? What does it mean? WhatsApp recently introduced a new “blue tick” feature to indicate that your (sent) message has been read by the recipient. To be more precise, a single grey tick means that the message has been successfully sent, 2 grey ticks means that the message has been delivered to the other phone (but not read yet), while the double blue tick indicate that the message has been read by the recipient !