WhatsApp, officially owned by Meta Platforms, is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and Voice over IP (VoIP) service accessible via desktop and mobile app. It allows users to send text messages, voice messages, and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content.
The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to register. It was launched in February 2009. In January 2018, a standalone business app was released, which can communicate with the standard client. As of May 2025, the service had 3 billion monthly active users, making it the most used messenger app. The name of the app is meant to sound like “what’s up”.
The service was created by Inc. of Mountain View, California, which was acquired by Facebook in February 2014 for approximately US$19.3 billion.It became the world’s most popular messaging application in 2015, with 900 million users,
and had more than 2 billion active users worldwide in February 2020.Business had approximately 200 million monthly users in 2023.By 2016, it had become the primary means of Internet communication in regions including the Americas, the Indian subcontinent, and large parts of Europe and Africa.
| WhatsApp Messenger | |
|---|---|
| Screenshot | |
| Original authors | Brian Acton, Jan Koum |
| Developers | Meta Platforms, Will Cathcart (Head of WhatsApp) |
| Initial release | February 2009; 16 years ago |
| Stable release(s) [±] | |
| iOS25.19.83 / July 8, 2025; 3 months agoAndroid2.25.19.80 / July 8, 2025; 3 months agoWindows2.2526.2.0 / July 4, 2025; 3 months agomacOS25.19.83 / July 8, 2025; 3 months ago | |
| Preview release(s) [±] | |
| Android (Beta)2.25.20.11 / July 8, 2025; 3 months ago | |
| Written in | Erlang |
| Operating system | Android, iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Windows, Wear OS, Meta Quest |
| Size | 183.7 MB (iOS) 48.02 MB (Android) |
| Available in | 40 (iOS) and 60 (Android) languages |
| Type | Social media, instant messaging, VoIP |
| License | Proprietary software with EULA “European Region” “others” |
| Website | whatsapp.com |
History
| WhatsApp Timeline | |
|---|---|
| Feb 24, 2009 | Jan Koum incorporates WhatsApp in California. |
| Aug 2009 | 2.0 is released on the App Store for the iPhone. |
| Oct 2009 | Brian Acton persuades five ex-Yahoo! friends to invest $250,000 in seed funding, and is granted co-founder status. |
| Aug 2010 | support for Android (operating system) is added. |
| Jan 21, 2011 | WeChat, a messenger app, is founded. It eventually starts to compete with WhatsApp and becomes very popular in China. |
| Apr 2011 | In Series A round, 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. |
| May 2011 | Snapchat, a competing photo messaging app, is founded. |
| Jan 6, 2012 | An unknown hacker publishes a website that makes it possible to change the status of an arbitrary user, as long as the phone number was known. |
| Aug 2012 | The 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. |
| Feb 2013 | user base grows to about 200 million active users and its staff to 50. |
| Jul 2013 | Sequoia invests another $50 million in Series B round, valuing WhatsApp at $1.5 billion. |
| Jul 16, 2013 | changes its profit model with an annual subscription fee of $1 after a free first year. |
| Aug 2013 | Telegram, a cloud-based instant messaging service, launches. |
| Aug 2013 | introduces voice messaging. |
| Feb 19, 2014 | Facebook, Inc. announces its acquisition of WhatsApp for US$19 billion, its largest acquisition to date.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. |
| 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. |
| Nov 2014 | 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. |
| Jan 21, 2015 | launches WhatsApp Web, a web client which can be used through a web browser by syncing with the mobile device’s connection. |
| Jan 21, 2015 | announces its policy on cracking down on 3rd-party clients, including WhatsApp+.Users would not be able to use WhatsApp’s services at all until the third-party apps are uninstalled. |
| Dec 2015 | wh is briefly shut down in Brazil after it refuses to place wiretaps on certain WhatsApp accounts.It is shut down in Brazil again in May 2016 and in July 2016. |
| Jan 18, 2016 | Jan Koum announces that will no longer charge its users a $1 annual subscription fee.There is still no clear plan for monetizing WhatsApp. |
| 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. |
| Mar 2, 2016 | introduces its document-sharing feature, initially allowing users to share PDF files with their contacts.[54] |
| Apr 5, 2016 | 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. |
| May 10, 2016 | is introduced for both Windows and Mac operating systems. |
| January 2018 | launches WhatsApp Business, a platform for small enterprises where they can connect with customers. |
| April 2018 | co-founder and CEO Jan Koum announces he’s leaving the company after clashes with Facebook, saying “I sold my users’ privacy”. |
| September 2018 | launches group audio and video calls. |
| vte | |
Android and iPhone
WhatsApp’s principal platforms, which are fully supported, are devices supporting mobile telephony running Android, and iPhones.
Windows and Mac
On May 10, 2016, the messaging service was introduced for both Microsoft Windows and macOS operating systems. Support for video and voice calls from desktop clients was later added. Similar to the WhatsApp Web format, the app, which synchronizes with a user’s mobile device, is available for download on the website. It supported operating systems Windows 8 and OS X 10.10 and higher.
In 2023, WhatsApp replaced the Electron-based apps with native versions for their respective platforms. The Windows version is based on UWP, while the Mac version is a port of the iOS version using Catalyst technology.
In July 2025, WhatsApp stopped developing the Windows UWP-based app due to poor support and deprecation of the UWP framework by Microsoft. WhatsApp for Windows transitioned over to the Microsoft Edge WebView2 framework. a return to utilising a web-based framework (just like Electron previously) instead of a native framework.
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