We have no plans to change anything about how we execute. I think Facebook understands that, and Mark understands that quite well. The company plans to stick with that approach as it looks to “continuing to get to a billion users, and then two billion users. “What makes our product work is the way we’re tightly focused on messaging and being an SMS replacement,” he says. The company makes money from customers–who pay 99 cents a year for service after the first year–and has been staunchly anti-advertising.īoth companies said at the time that WhatsApp would continue to be run independently and according to its existing principles, a point Koum stressed when I asked him about it. When news of the Facebook acquisition broke, it inspired many people to worry about what it meant for the future of WhatsApp, whose business model has had a decidedly un-Facebookian slant in the past. “If anyone reading this article speaks multiple languages, they should apply,” he jokes. In particular, it’s beefing up its ability to provide customer support in more languages, including Portuguese, German, Ukranian, Polish and Romanian. ![]() But “we do need more people–we’re actively hiring,” he says. Koum says that the company doesn’t need to grow huge to serve even more folks. He told me how moved he’d been by a National Geographic photo showing people in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa standing on a beach with their phones in outstretched arms, trying to catch a stray wireless signal from neighboring Somalia, and says that he’s passionate about efforts such as, a partnership between Facebook and mobile technology companies to bring Internet access to everybody, everywhere.įor all of its growth, WhatsApp remains a famously lean operation: It got those 500 million active users with a team that only recently reached 60 staffers, for a ratio of over eight million users per employee. “We take for granted in Silicon Valley, where you turn on your phone and see twenty different Wi-Fi networks,” he says. In most cases, that’s because of cost, but the availability of Internet access isn’t a given everywhere. If you are not a journalist but have questions about Aramco, please use the company email address below. For media inquiries, please email us at. There may be roughly two billion smartphones in the world, Koum notes, but between 500 million and one billion of them may be used without a data plan. Media & Executive Communications Department - Aramco. The growth in smartphones isn’t enough to keep WhatsApp growing, however. ![]() That dynamic is helped by the app’s ridiculously easy setup–you don’t even have to create a user name or password–and features such as the ability to adjust the font size for easy readability. “We hear lots of stories where grandparents go to a store and buy a smartphone so they can keep in touch with kids and grandkids,” he says. ![]() Learn about WhatsApps business solutions and how to get started. Learn how to back up and restore your chat history. Learn how to add extra security to your account. Learn how to create and participate in communities. Though WhatsApp’s customer base may skew towards young people who like to share lots of quick messages and lots of photos, Koum says that it’s a mistake to assume that it’s just kids who are keeping the app growing. Learn how to get started with using WhatsApp.
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