Popular today messenger WhatsApp is a mobile application designed to exchange short messages via the Internet. To date, it is not just a successful project, it is the realization of the American dream. After all, the service was created by a poor man who ended up getting rich. Today, every owner of a portable device can download WhatsApp and install it.
Jan Koum is a native of the former Soviet Union. When he was 16 years old, together with his mother, they moved from Ukraine to California, where he subsequently ended up in Silicon Valley by chance. For some time the family was poor and the young lad was forced to make a living on his own, so he became a janitor. After a while, he learned the basics of programming.
When a former Yahoo! employee Jan Koum bought an iPhone in 2009, he immediately understood that very soon all kinds of mobile apps will become extremely popular. He teamed up with his former colleague from Yahoo!, Brian Acton, to create an app that would give users a chance to communicate more easily. Although the company’s early years were rather hard, by the beginning of 2013, it already had over 190 million users.
The application officially became available for use on February 24, 2009. The beta testing stage ended and the application exclusively launched on the iPhone App Store in November 2009. WhatsApp became the perfect alternative to SMS both within the US and outside the country, and for free.
Immediately after the release, the founders were flooded with emails. Users asked what was in store for the application and whether there would be versions for Nokia and BlackBerry, which were the key market players at the time.
Mobile operators lost hundreds of millions of dollars as users stopped texting. That is, they traded this opportunity for sending free messages. This product has achieved colossal success also because it denies advertising and is cross-platform, as the system supports portable devices of old and new models. This approach helped to reach a multi-million audience of old smartphone users in developing and poor countries.
A war between the biggest players in the Internet market has started. Google Corporation for the ownership of this messenger was offered to the developer a large sum of one billion dollars. But in the end, the winner was Facebook. The contract reflected a sum of 19 billion dollars.
The company continued to change in line with Facebook’s ambitions, and in September 2017, Brian Acton decided to leave the company to work for his own non-profit Signal Foundation. Later, Jan Koum also left amid disputes with Facebook over data privacy and WhatsApp’s business model.
Thus, the WhatsApp service has an impressive history and is an example of how a simple guy of Ukrainian origin changed the lives of all the people of the world in a relatively short period of time
What is Whatsapp?
WhatsApp is the name of one of the most famous mobile messengers, which is used by millions of people across the globe: the application allows instant message sharing, voice, and video calls, as well as sharing files, music and photos.
Who owns Whatsapp?
Since 2014 WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. Originally the application was created in 2009 by Jan Koum and Brian Acton, and until 2018 both developers stayed as members of the board of directors of WhatsApp.
The creation of the WhatsApp messenger logo is shrouded in mystery. It is not known who drew it, nor for what reason this particular sign is used.
Clear and meaningful, the WhatsApp logo doesn’t leave any doubts as to what function the app serves. Although it may be accused of a lack of individuality, yet this is the case when the designers have a good reason not to go off the beaten track.
The icon of the world-famous WhatsApp application is a prominent and recognizable logo: a raised handset inside a white message cloud on a green background. The lifted handset symbolizes readiness to talk, and the pleasant green background makes it clear that the line is free for communication.
It is known that there are currently eight patented WhatsApp logos. Each of these icons is used for a specific occasion: for WhatsApp Web, WhatsApp for Android, for iPhone, etc. Also, the messenger logo is proprietary. This means that using the icon for commercial purposes by people who are not WhatsApp developers is prohibited by copyright law.
The primary logo features a phone receiver inside a text bubble – the combination clearly shows the function of the app. The text bubble symbolizes instant messaging. It has been probably the most often used emblem to display the text messages you receive in a variety of apps and networks. The “tail” is pointing to the right, which symbolizes an incoming message.
The second symbol, the telephone receiver, is as transparent as the first one. It shows that the app is also used to make voice and video calls.
The logo may seem a tad generic. And yet, being so well-known, WhatsApp can afford to be generic. Despite being so simple, the logo is recognized all over the globe due to the app’s popularity.
The regular emblem features the white phone receiver inside a green bubble with a white frame and a light grey outline. The icon can be also used without the grey outline when given against the green background. In some cases, the name of the app can be placed below the emblem or to the right.
WhatsApp Business API allows large companies to integrate the platform’s API with their own offering and provide a seamless experience for customers by automatically sending them important information on WhatsApp. The API has allowed banks to send notifications, ticket booking apps to send confirmations, and even one-time passwords to secure apps. Moreover, this paid feature turned WhatsApp into the marketing channel with the highest engagement rate.
As for the WhatsApp Business logo, it. Filled in the same style and color scheme as to my main app, only instead of a white phone handset inside the dialogue bubble there is a white capital “B”, which stands for “Business”.
While the primary logo consists of the emblem alone, there also exist versions that include the name of the brand. It is given in a simple sans serif font with flattened vertexes on the “W” and “A.” Interestingly enough, the logo authors decided to steer clear of the typical “friendly” and “tech” typefaces with rounded corners. Another distinctive feature is that the wordmark follows proper capitalization. This is a very important point, as it makes the word easier to read and mentally divide into two meaningful parts.
The font, used for the official version of the WhatsApp logo is set in the super popular Neue Helvetica family font, which might be Georgian 75 Bold or Grotesk Nr 2 SH Bold, which are quite similar.
The two colors of the WhatsApp logo are white and light green (#25D366). The shade of green looks bright and vivid, while the combination with white makes the emblem crisp and fresh. On the whole, this is a pleasant change from the blue color, which is used for social apps and networks so often.