WhatsApp is an American cross-platform software designed for text and voice messaging over IP. It was founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Kom, former Yahoo employees. WhatsApp is one of the most successful apps that have come to the fore with the development of smartphone technology. WhatsApp has nearly two billion users worldwide by 2020, and Facebook Inc currently owns this.
An introduction of Features and App history
Since 2009, several significant improvements implemented to the app, and the most notable function is providing the ease of backing up and recovering past data.
Although the first version (2.0 version) of the app hit the market in November 2019, it was only for the iPhone App Store. Also, this was not a free service in the early days, as it had to cover the cost of sending verification messages to users. About a month after the original launch, the photo-sharing ability is in the new version. Furthermore, in 2010, WhatsApp introduced the Android OS-supported version.
By 2011, The app became one of the top 20 most downloaded apps in Apple’s US App Store, and by 2013 it has surpassed 200 million active users. With this rapid progress, in 2014, Facebook Inc acquired WhatsApp for $ 19.6 billion.
The voice Call feature between two accounts, Finally, in the app in early 2015.
Abolish of the annual subscription fee (in 2016)
By 2016, WhatsApp had nearly 900 million users, and it is during this time that WhatsApp decided to no longer charge a $1 annual subscription fee to providing more benefits to users. A beta version of two-step email verification for android users and video calls between two accounts was in the same year.
2017 to recent
Group Audio and Video Call is the most exciting feature that WhatsApp has introduced by the end of 2018. WhatsApp stickers were also released simultaneously. At the end of 2019, the company has announced that WhatsApp would no longer be supported for Windows Phone operating systems after 31 December 2019.
The worst thing about 2019 is a team of hackers attacked WhatsApp. According to reports, they were a group of Israeli hackers who injected malware into the phones of WhatsApp users via a remote exploit bug in the app. Accusing this, WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit in a San Francisco court against Israeli surveillance technology firm NSO Group.
However, fixing the bugs, WhatsApp launched its new user interface (dark mode) for iPhone and Android in 2020.
Web-version
“WhatsApp Web” is the Web or the internet version of the WhatsApp mobile app where you can access via the internet and run on your Mac and Windows operating systems.
App user interface and web version user interface are almost similar, but the web version does not offer all features of the mobile app. You are only allowed to share videos, pictures, PDF files, and chat. Voice and video calls are not supporting.
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