WhatsApp Messenger

WhatsApp Messenger is a proprietary, cross- platform instant messaging subscription service for smart-phones and selected feature phones that uses internet for communication. In addition to text messaging, users can send images, videos and audio media messages as well as their locations using integrated mapping features. This app was founded in 2009 by Jan Koum and Brian Acton.

Approximately 4.5 billion people in the world use mobile phone and of them currently over 1.5 billion are using smart-phone. So basically one-third of the world's mobile phone user has a smart-phone. For the smart-phone users quite a number of apps are common. WhatsApp is one of the most common apps used by the smart-phone users (also some other phones that has internet access). By August 2014, number of WhatsApp user has reached to 600 million. 

The most interesting thing about WhatsApp is that they have only 55 employees and they do not sell any ads. Yet this app with nominal fee has reached over half a billion user. They have got so many competitors like Skype, Viber, Line, WeChat, etc. Now the question is why WhatsApp is so famous. It's because they are easy and cheap to use and mostly because it gives the users privacy. Unlike most other apps, WhatsApp doesn't collect user's information or search for their GPS location.

WhatsApp + Facebook

One of the recent top news around the globe is "Facebook bought WhatsApp". On 19th August, 2014 Facebook had announced that they will be acquiring WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock. This is the biggest acquisition so far in the history. Obviously such a big deal was supposed to cover the news. Various reactions were found from different people and country as a result of this deal. 

WhatsApp announced not to change any of their basic settings after the acquisition and users will be facing no changes. All their employees joined Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg personally said he is happy about this deal and thinks WhatsApp is worth more than $19 billion. 

As soon as the news of the deal was out, Amul India published an advertisement based on this. This clearly shows how big and important the deal was. Amul choosing to make this ad proved the deal to be the top trending news of that week. 

Another big international reaction for the deal was from Iran. According to news, secretary of Iran's Committee has banned WhatsApp in the country as it is now owned by Mark Zuckerberg who is an "American Zionist". This ban (along with many other) bought so much debate in the country for their Internet freedom. 

One news that many internet users had been sharing was- "Revenge by Jan and Brian". In 2009, both the founders were rejected by Facebook to join the company and afterwards started WhatsApp. Many newspaper, blogs, posts, memes shared the news that Jan and Brian took their revenge on Facebook by making them pay $19 billion.

However reactions might be, fact is these deal has brought WhatsApp and Facebook both in the limelight. A large number of facebook statuses, tweets, pictures, news, memes, etc, were out and shared by people. And as it is said- "there is no such thing as bad publicity", Watsapp has got 100 million more active users in the last four months, and it says to have 1 million new registered users per day, Facebook's decision of buying WhatsApp for $ 19 billion is obviously bold, but yet I believe in the long run they won. In the age of smart-phone, getting all these WhatsApp user in their list is indeed a big thing.

References:

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/facebook-to-buy-whatsapp-full-text-of-mark-zuckerbergs-message/453119-11.html

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/iran-bans-whatsapp-because-mark-zuckerberg-is-a-jew/470133-11.html

http://www.hindustantimes.com/brunch/brunch-stories/whatsapp-with-mark-zuckerberg/article1-1189436.aspx

http://www.amul.com/m/search?search=whatsapp&module=hits

http://blog.whatsapp.com/