whatsApp history
 |
| WhatsApp |
In June 2009,
Apple launched
push notifications,
letting developers ping users when they were not using an app. Koum
updated WhatsApp so that each time you changed your status it would ping
everyone in the user's network. WhatsApp 2.0 was released with a
messaging component and the active users suddenly swelled to 250,000.
Koum visited
Brian Acton,
who was still unemployed while managing the unsuccessful start up, and
decided to join the company. In October Acton persuaded five ex-Yahoo
friends to invest $250,000 in seed funding, and as a result was granted
co-founder status and a stake. He officially joined on November 1
Koum then hired an old friend who lived in Los Angeles, Chris Peiffer, to make the
BlackBerry version of WhatsApp.
WhatsApp was switched from a free to paid service to avoid growing
too fast, mainly because the primary cost was sending verification texts
to users. In December 2009 WhatsApp for the iPhone was updated to send
photos. By early 2011, WhatsApp was in the top 20 of all apps in the
U.S. App Store.
The founders agreed to take $7 million from
Sequoia Capital on top of their $250,000 seed funding, after months of negotiation with Sequoia partner
Jim Goetz
By February 2013, WhatsApp's user base had swelled to about 200
million active users and its staff to 50. Sequoia invested another $50
million, valuing WhatsApp at $1.5 billion.
On February 19, 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion
(see Acquisition below).
In April 2014 WhatsApp crossed half-a-billion user mark
