In February 2014, Facebook announced it was acquiring WhatsApp for $19 billion, its biggest buyout to date. Their mission was to “let people communicate anywhere in the world without barriers.” Who owns WhatsApp now? Who founded WhatsApp? WhatsAppĮx-Yahoo employees Jan Koum and Brian Acton founded WhatsApp in 2009 after seeing the huge potential in a free SMS alternative for the iPhone. You can also make voice and video calls.Īlong with one-on-one messaging, WhatsApp lets you create group messages with up to 256 members. It’s a great way to contact groups of friends, family, housemates, teammates, or colleagues all at once. On WhatsApp, users can send and receive a variety of content including SMS-style text messages, photos and images, videos, voice messages, documents, and location info. In the simplest of terms, WhatsApp is a text-messaging service.

But what is WhatsApp, exactly, and what should you know before using it? Here’s a beginner’s guide to help you get started.

It’s used by more than 1 billion people in over 180 countries around the globe. WhatsApp is a popular messaging solution available as an iOS app, an Android app, an app for Windows Phone, as a desktop app, and on the web.

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