# WhatsApp

Standing (still-up). Founded 2009-02-24.
Site: [whatsapp.com](https://whatsapp.com)

Jan Koum and Brian Acton, 2009. Still the way a lot of the world says they arrived.

## Why it lasted
- It is the SMS of half the planet. Network effects at that scale do not care about your new app.
- Facebook bought it and was not allowed to fully melt it into Facebook. The brand stayed the brand.
- Status, calls, and business accounts extended it without making it a feed.

## Near deaths
- The 2016 'from Facebook' ads revolt. Encryption and the green brand survived the parent.
- Telegram and Signal take the privacy slice. They do not take the family group chat in another country.

## What would finish it
- A phone OS that replaces it with RCS + iMessage globally. Apple and Google have tried to agree on that for a decade.

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