39 Fun Facts About WhatsApp

WhatsApp's two founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, had both previously worked at which internet company?

Yahoo: Koum dropped out of San Jose State to work there as an infrastructure engineer, and he and Acton stayed nine years before leaving together in 2007.

What color do WhatsApp's two check marks turn once the recipient has read a message?

Blue: WhatsApp added read receipts in November 2014, turning the double grey ticks blue once a message is read; one grey tick means sent and two mean delivered.

Which 2009 iPhone feature helped turn WhatsApp, first built for posting statuses, into a messaging app?

Push notifications let WhatsApp ping friends whenever someone changed their status, and people began using the pings to chat, so Koum added real messaging in WhatsApp 2.0.

How much seed funding did Brian Acton raise for WhatsApp from five former colleagues in 2009?

$250,000: Acton persuaded five former colleagues to invest that sum in October 2009 and formally joined WhatsApp as a co-founder on November 1 that year.

Where in WhatsApp did Meta start showing ads in 2025?

The Updates tab: the move broke with the founders' old stance against ads, though Meta kept ads out of personal chats.

Which venture firm, through partner Jim Goetz, invested about $8 million in WhatsApp in 2011?

Sequoia Capital: Goetz spent months persuading the founders to take the money, and in 2013 Sequoia put in another $50 million.

In February 2014, a year after a funding round valued it at $1.5 billion, Facebook agreed to buy WhatsApp for how much?

$19 billion was the agreed price, mostly paid in Facebook shares, and the deal's value later rose to about $22 billion.

About how many staff did WhatsApp have in early 2013, when roughly 200 million people were using it?

50: its engineers ran the service on Erlang and FreeBSD servers, a lean setup that let a tiny team keep a giant messaging network running.

Which research app that Facebook used to monitor competitors' usage influenced its decision to buy WhatsApp?

Onavo, a VPN app Facebook bought in 2013, showed which apps people used, and the same data later steered Facebook toward planning a rival to Houseparty.

After dropping its $1-a-year fee in 2016, how did WhatsApp say it hoped to make money instead?

Business messaging: Koum said many users had no credit card to pay the fee, and banks or airlines could instead message customers, with no third-party ads.

When buying WhatsApp in 2014, what did Facebook tell EU regulators was technically impossible?

Automatically matching accounts: WhatsApp's 2016 terms let it link users' phone numbers to Facebook, and the EU fined Facebook €110 million for the misleading claim.

Brian Acton left WhatsApp in September 2017 to fund a nonprofit behind which rival messaging app?

Signal: Acton's initial $50 million in 2018 turned the small app into a nonprofit foundation that could finally grow its team.

Which Silicon Valley practice let Jan Koum keep collecting Facebook stock in 2018 after announcing his exit?

Rest and vest: Koum had reportedly clashed with Facebook over WhatsApp's direction, yet stayed on its payroll so his remaining stock could keep vesting.

As of 2025, about how many people used WhatsApp every month?

3 billion: Meta has used that reach to spread its AI, building the Meta AI assistant straight into WhatsApp chats in 2024.

WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption uses a protocol developed by which organisation?

Open Whisper Systems finished encrypting every WhatsApp message and call in April 2016, so not even WhatsApp itself can read them.

After false rumours spread on WhatsApp were linked to mob lynchings in 2018, what did WhatsApp start limiting?

Forwarding: WhatsApp capped how many chats a message could be sent on to, and in 2020 it said a tighter limit had cut highly forwarded messages by 70 percent.

What do users scan with their phone to log in to WhatsApp Web, which launched in January 2015?

A QR code linked the browser to the phone, which at first had to stay online, and iPhone owners couldn't pair it at launch because of Apple's platform limits.

By June 2016, how many calls a day did WhatsApp handle?

100 million: Koum had said WhatsApp was working on calling days after the 2014 Facebook deal, and it took about a year to launch.

Meta rolled its new MLow audio codec out to WhatsApp calls in 2024 mainly to help which callers?

People on old phones: MLow keeps calls clear on older devices and weak connections, where Opus, the open codec Meta had used before, struggled at low bitrates.

What do WhatsApp recipients see when a sent message is edited?

An 'edited' label: WhatsApp added editing in 2023 to catch up with rival apps that already had it, allowing changes for 15 minutes after sending.

The UK government lost a 2023 court battle over handing which former prime minister's WhatsApp messages to an official inquiry?

Boris Johnson: the Cabinet Office wanted to withhold messages it judged irrelevant, but judges ruled it was for the Covid inquiry's chair to decide.

Which Facebook cryptocurrency, announced in 2019, was meant to let people send money through WhatsApp and Messenger?

Libra: French and German officials objected almost at once, demanding scrutiny before a digital currency tied to WhatsApp and Messenger could launch.

On November 30, 2015, WhatsApp started making links to which rival messaging app unclickable?

Telegram: the block also hit links into Telegram chat rooms, making it much harder to send WhatsApp users into a Telegram group.

Which Israeli surveillance firm did WhatsApp sue in 2019 over spyware injected via voice calls?

NSO Group: WhatsApp said the firm's spyware targeted more than 1,400 users in 20 countries, among them human rights defenders and journalists.

When WhatsApp began switching on end-to-end encryption in November 2014, which phones got it first?

Android phones: the encryption arrived switched on by default, so ordinary users were protected without changing a single setting.

Before founding WhatsApp, Jan Koum and Brian Acton took a year off to travel South America and play which sport?

Ultimate frisbee: after one game in 2009, Koum talked about quitting the crash-prone app, and Acton told him to give it a few more months.

By 2018, which country was WhatsApp's largest market, with more than 200 million users?

India: after false rumours spread on the app were linked to a wave of lynchings there in 2018, WhatsApp promised to curb its abuse.

In September 2017, security researchers reported WhatsApp completely blocked in which country?

China: in April 2024 the government also had Apple pull WhatsApp from the Chinese App Store, cutting iPhone users off from downloading it.

In May 2016, a court order forced mobile providers in which country to block WhatsApp for 72 hours?

Brazil: a judge ordered the block after WhatsApp's owner failed to hand over information sought in a drug-trafficking investigation.

Which country's army banned WhatsApp in December 2021, telling personnel to use the home-grown Threema instead?

Switzerland: the Swiss army told personnel to switch to the Swiss-made Threema, citing concern that U.S. authorities could reach WhatsApp data under the CLOUD Act.

Which country restricted access to WhatsApp in December 2016 after the Russian ambassador was assassinated there?

Turkey: the restrictions came as authorities also imposed a national broadcast ban in the wake of the shooting.

Which two groups ran WhatsApp COVID-19 information hotlines launched in March 2020?

The World Health Organization and UNICEF: their hotlines let people get COVID-19 answers straight from health agencies, part of WhatsApp's fight against rumours.

After its 2021 privacy update drove users away, what did WhatsApp do?

Postponed the update: WhatsApp pushed its deadline from February 8 to May 15, 2021, and set out to clear up confusion about what the changes meant.

Which EU law forced Meta in March 2024 to let third-party apps interoperate with WhatsApp?

The Digital Markets Act: to comply, Meta rebuilt WhatsApp so rival apps could message its users in Europe, keeping chats end-to-end encrypted as far as possible.

How many messages a day was WhatsApp handling in August 2012?

10 billion: unlike BlackBerry's BBM, which linked only BlackBerries, WhatsApp worked across rival phone platforms, so friends could message on any handset.

Near which city did WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum grow up before emigrating to California at 16?

Kyiv: in California, Koum and his mother relied on government assistance, and he swept a grocery store's floors to help make ends meet.

Which file-sharing service did fellow members of Jan Koum's hacker group w00w00 help build?

Napster: co-founder Shawn Fanning used w00w00 members as early testers, and member Jordan Ritter led work on Napster's server software.

Where did Koum's friend find Igor Solomennikov, the developer who built the first iPhone version?

RentACoder.com: Koum's friend Alex Fishman found Russian developer Igor Solomennikov on the freelancing site; the earliest users were a handful of Fishman's friends in San Jose.

Whose phone did UN experts say was hacked via a WhatsApp file sent from the Saudi crown prince's account?

Jeff Bezos: the alleged hack came in 2018, five months before the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist at the Washington Post, which Bezos owns.