WhatsApp became a messenger by accident
An Apple update let a failing status app ping friends with every joke, and users started chatting.
lennysnewsletter.com · How to kickstart and scale a consumer business—Step 4: Find your early adopters by doing things that don’t scaleJan Koum, the co-founder of WhatsApp, sat in his townhouse in Santa Clara watching status updates change on a Mac Mini.
At the time, WhatsApp was not for messaging. It was for posting a short status next to your name, such as “Can’t talk, I’m at the gym.” Friends could open the app to see what you were doing, and that was all.
That idea had gone nowhere. Koum had shown early versions to friends and none of them liked it. The app drained batteries and crashed, and Koum was so discouraged that he started looking for a new job.
Then Apple introduced a feature with wide effects. In June 2009, it started letting apps send push notifications, short alerts that could reach people even when they were not using the app. Koum changed WhatsApp to send an alert to everyone in a person's network whenever that person posted a new status. The change turned statuses into a stream of messages.
Alex Fishman, one of the early users, watched as his Russian friends began answering with jokey custom statuses like “I woke up late” or “I’m on my way.” Each new status pinged the group, and the group started answering back.
“At some point it sort of became instant messaging,” Fishman said. “We started using it as ‘Hey how are you?’ And then someone would reply.”
Koum saw the shift on that Mac Mini. People were no longer just posting where they were. They were holding conversations, one status answering another. He saw that his status app was now being used to chat.
“Being able to reach somebody halfway across the world instantly, on a device that is always with you, was powerful,” Koum said.
Questions people ask
What exactly is a push notification?
Push notifications are the short alerts that appear on your phone's lock screen or home screen, even when you are not using the app. Apple introduced them for iPhones in June 2009, which let developers nudge users back into an app.
What happened to WhatsApp after Koum spotted people messaging?
WhatsApp began as a simple status app where you posted a short line about what you were doing, and others could check it. After users turned statuses into conversations, Koum rebuilt it around instant messaging, and it later grew to billions of users before Meta bought it in 2014.