| WhatsApp Timeline |
| Feb 24, 2009 |
Jan Koum incorporates WhatsApp in California.[21] |
| Aug 2009 |
WhatsApp 2.0 is released on the App Store for the iPhone.[22] |
| Oct 2009 |
Brian Acton persuades five ex-Yahoo! friends to invest $250,000 in seed funding, and is granted co-founder status.[21] |
| Aug 2010 |
WhatsApp support for Android OS is added.[23] |
| Jan 21, 2011 |
WeChat, a messenger app, is founded.[24] It eventually starts to compete with WhatsApp and becomes very popular in China. |
| Apr 2011 |
In Series A round, WhatsApp founders agree to take $7 million from Sequoia Capital on top of their $250,000 seed funding, after months of negotiation with Sequoia partner Jim Goetz.[21] |
| May 2011 |
SnapChat, a competing photo messaging app, is founded.[25] |
| Jan 6, 2012 |
An unknown hacker publishes a website that makes it possible to change the status of an arbitrary WhatsApp user, as long as the phone number was known.[26][27] |
| Aug 2012 |
The WhatsApp support staff announce that messages were encrypted in the “latest version” of the WhatsApp software for iOS and Android (but not BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Symbian), without specifying the cryptographic method.[28] |
| Feb 2013 |
WhatsApp’s user base grows to about 200 million active users and its staff to 50.[21] |
| Jul 2013 |
Sequoia invests another $50 million in Series B round, valuing WhatsApp at $1.5 billion.[29] |
| Jul 16, 2013 |
WhatsApp changes its profit model with an annual subscription fee of $1 after a free first year.[30][31] |
| Aug 2013 |
Telegram, a cloud-based instant messaging service, launches.[32] |
| Aug 2013 |
WhatsApp introduces voice messaging.[33] |
| Feb 19, 2014 |
Facebook, Inc. announces its acquisition of WhatsApp for US$19 billion, its largest acquisition to date.[34] Facebook pays $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook shares, and an additional $3 billion in restricted stock units granted to WhatsApp’s founders.[35] |
| Mar 2014 |
Someone discovers a vulnerability in WhatsApp encryption on the Android application that allows another app to access and read all of a user’s chat conversations within it.[36] |
| Nov 2014 |
WhatsApp introduces Read Receipts, which show when a message is read by a recipient. Within a week, WhatsApp introduces an update allowing users to disable this feature.[37] |
| Jan 21, 2015 |
WhatsApp launches WhatsApp Web, a web client which can be used through a web browser by syncing with the mobile device’s connection.[38] |
| Jan 21, 2015 |
WhatsApp announces its policy on cracking down on 3rd-party clients, including WhatsApp+.[39] Users would not be able to use WhatsApp’s services at all until the third-party apps are uninstalled.[40] |
| Dec 2015 |
WhatsApp is briefly shut down in Brazil after it refuses to place wiretaps on certain WhatsApp accounts.[41] It is shut down in Brazil again on May 2016 and in July 2016.[42] |
| Jan 18, 2016 |
Jan Koum announces that WhatsApp will no longer charge its users a $1 annual subscription fee.[43][44] There is still no clear plan for monetizing WhatsApp.[45] |
| Mar 2016 |
Diego Dzodan, a Facebook executive, is arrested by Brazilian federal police after Facebook fails to turn over information from his WhatsApp messaging account into a judge’s request for a drug trafficking investigation.[46][47] |
| Mar 2, 2016 |
WhatsApp introduces its document-sharing feature, initially allowing users to share PDF files with their contacts.[48] |
| Apr 5, 2016 |
WhatsApp and Open Whisper Systems announce that they have added end-to-end encryption to “every form of communication” on WhatsApp, and that users could now verify each other’s keys.[49][50][51] |
| May 10, 2016 |
WhatsApp is introduced for both Windows and Mac operating systems.[52] |
| January 2018 |
WhatsApp launches WhatsApp Business, a platform for small enterprises where they can connect with customers.[53] |
| April 2018 |
WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum announces he’s leaving the company after clashes with Facebook, saying “I sold my users’ privacy”.[54] |
| September 2018 |
WhatsApp launches group audio and video calls.[55] |
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