Why does everyone use WhatsApp?
Why does everyone use WhatsApp? More than three billion people use WhatsApp every month. Founded in 2009, the platform has more users than YouTube and is on par with Facebook. Co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton designed it to work as well on BlackBerry , Nokia , and Windows Phone as they do on iPhones. It quickly became a way for people to communicate across devices and countries. Koum and Acton sold the app to Meta (then Facebook) in 2014, and WhatsApp has continued to grow. The New Yorker magazine spoke to Knight about why the app has surpassed other messaging and social media platforms and where it’s going next. Here’s an edited and translated excerpt from that conversation. Why write about WhatsApp now? In the middle of last year, I thought, “I’m doing so much communication from this one place on my phone.” I talk to my mother like this. I do all my children’s schoolwork from this. I do my work from this. British politics, which I write about for the magazine, is largel...