When did WhatsApp appear, what year - briefly?
WhatsApp was launched on January 24, 2009.
When did WhatsApp appear, what year - in detail?
WhatsApp, the globally popular messaging application, first appeared in 2009. The story of its creation begins with Jan Koum and Brian Acton, two former employees of Yahoo!, who left the company in September 2007 to take a well-deserved break from work. After spending time traveling around South America, they returned to California and decided to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams in the technology sector.
In January 2009, Koum and Acton incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California. The name "WhatsApp" was a play on words, combining "what's up," a common casual greeting, with the term "application." The initial goal of the founders was to create an application that would display statuses next to users' names, similar to the way BlackBerry Messenger displayed status messages.
The first version of WhatsApp was released on the Apple App Store in November 2009 for the iPhone. However, it did not gain significant traction initially due to its limited features and the fact that it only supported the iOS platform. In July 2010, WhatsApp 2.0 was launched, which introduced the messaging feature and support for other platforms like BlackBerry, Symbian, and Android.
It was this update that marked the true beginning of WhatsApp's journey to becoming one of the most widely used communication tools worldwide. The introduction of end-to-end encryption in 2016 further solidified its position as a secure and reliable messaging platform. In February 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for approximately $19 billion, making it one of the largest acquisitions in technology history.
Today, WhatsApp boasts over 2 billion users worldwide, connecting people across different regions and time zones with ease. Its impact on global communication has been profound, transforming how we stay connected with friends, family, and colleagues.