How many employees does whatsapp have

WhatsApp's 55 Employees Are Rich. So Now What?

Tech News

<p>Uncork the Champagne. Facebook's $16 billion deal to buy WhatsApp has created a new round of young millionaires — and billionaires.</p>

Illustration photo shows "likes" on WhatsApp's Facebook page displayed on a laptop screen in Paris on Feb. 20, 2014. MAL Langsdon / Reuters

Feb. 20, 2014, 10:08 PM UTC / Updated Feb. 20, 2014, 10:34 PM UTC

When WhatsApp, the mobile messaging app, was sold to Facebook for $16 billion on Wednesday, most, if not all, of its 55 employees were suddenly on track to become newly minted millionaires.

One WhatsApp developer celebrated by posting an image of empty Cristal boxes on Instagram — the photo-sharing site that had only 13 employees when it was bought by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion.

It’s not clear how much each WhatsApp employee will bring home, considering that an engineer who joined the company when it was brand new in 2009 — and thus took a bigger risk— probably has a bigger stake in it than someone who joined after multiple rounds of funding.

(Jan Koum and Brian Acton, the WhatsApp co-founders, are now worth an estimated $6.8 billion and $3 billion, respectively).

Still, even a 0.1 percent stake, a figure that wouldn't be unusual for an engineer in a smaller company, comes out to $16 million. Not that they can spend it right away.

Instagram

"They can't go too crazy," Seattle tech entrepreneur Tony Wright wrote in an email to NBC News. "Implicit in deals like this, usually, are clauses that keep all of the newly minted millionaires (and billionaires) from quitting the day after the ink dries."

That doesn't mean that outsiders will understand that workers gain control of their stock only after a period of several years.

"What is hard for people is that they're inundated by friends and strangers who pressure them to make big decisions quickly," Adam Nash, CEO of software-based financial adviser Wealthfront, told NBC News.

It’s a problem shared by athletes and celebrities who suddenly find themselves with millions in their bank accounts. In Silicon Valley, however, start-up employees are surrounded by a built-in support group: their fellow, newly wealthy employees.

"When something like this happens, there is a sense of relief that they’re finally getting their payday.”

They can also get advice from veteran techies, Nash said, who might have gone through a few IPOs and acquisitions — and possibly a tech bubble or two — themselves.

And while workers at start-ups tend to be on the younger side, in general, dropping cash like "Justin Bieber" on bottle service and flashy clothes is "rare among engineers," said Nash.

Of course, you probably won't find WhatsApp employees complaining about their new tax brackets.

“There are hundreds of firms that go belly up in Silicon Valley and a lot of people are left holding a bunch of worthless stock,” Aaron Rubin, a senior wealth manager at San Jose-based Werba Rubin, told NBC News. “When something like this happens, there is a sense of relief that they’re finally getting their payday. ”

Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

Earlier this month, in a post to his Facebook page, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum announced that his company's instant messaging service is now used by more than 900 million people. And then Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promptly responded with two posts of his own. One said "congrats," and the other included a cheeky photo Zuckerberg had taken of Koum as the WhatsApp CEO keyed his 900-million-user post into a smartphone. "Here's an action shot of you writing this update," Zuckerberg wrote.

WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, after Zuckerberg and company paid $19 billion for the startup a little more than a year ago. That means Facebook now runs three of the most popular apps on the internet. Its primary social networking service is used by more than 1.5 billion people worldwide, and Facebook Messenger, an instant messaging service spun off from Facebook proper, spans 700 million. But the 900 million-user milestone announced by Koun is very much a WhatsApp achievement, not a product of the formidable Facebook machine.

One of the (many) intriguing parts of the WhatsApp story is that it has achieved such enormous scale with such a tiny team. When the company was acquired by Facebook, it had 35 engineers and reached more than 450 million users. Today, it employs only about 50 engineers, though the number of WhatsApp users has doubled, and this tiny engineering staff continues to run things almost entirely on its own. In a world where so many internet services are rapidly expanding to millions upon millions of users, WhatsApp shows the way forward---at least in part.

WhatsApp doesn't talk much about its engineering work---or any other part of its operation, for that matter---but yesterday, at an event in San Jose, California, WhatsApp software engineer Jamshid Mahdavi took the stage to briefly discuss the company's rather unusual methods. Part of the trick is that the company builds its service using a programming language called Erlang. Though not all that popular across the wider coding community, Erlang is particularly well suited to juggling communications from a huge number of users, and it lets engineers deploy new code on the fly. But Mahdavi says that the trick is as much about attitude as technology.

Mahdavi joined WhatsApp about two years ago, after the startup was up and running, and its approach to engineering was unlike any he had seen---in part because it used Erlang and a computer operating system called FreeBSD, but also because it strove to keep its operation so simple. "It was a completely different way of building a high-scale infrastructure," he said on Monday. "It was an eye-opener to see the minimalistic approach to solving ... just the problems that needed to be solved."

Code in Parallel

In using Erlang, WhatsApp is part of a larger push towards programming languages that are designed for concurrency, where many processes run at the same time. As internet services reach more people---and juggle more tasks from all those people---such languages become more attractive. Naturally.

With its new anti-spam system---a system for identifying malicious and otherwise unwanted messages on its social network---Facebook uses a language called Haskell. Haskell began as a kind of academic experiment in the late '80s, and it's still not used all that often. But it's ideal for Facebook's spam fighting because it's so good at juggling parallel tasks---and because it lets coders tackle urgent tasks so quickly. Meanwhile, Google and Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser, are striving for a similar sweet spot with new languages called Go and Rust.

Like Haskell, Erlang is a product of the '80s. Engineers at Ericsson, the Swedish multinational that builds hardware and software for telecom companies, developed the language for use with high-speed phone networks. "Instead of inventing a language and then figuring out what to do with it, they set out to invent a language which solved a very specific problem," says Francesco Cesarini, an Erlang guru based in the UK. "The problem was that of massive scalability and reliability. Phone networks were the only systems at the time who had to display those properties."

Erlang remains on the fringes of the modern coding world, but at WhatsApp and other internet companies, including WeChat and Whisper, it has found a home with new applications that operate not unlike a massive phone network. In essence, WhatsApp is a replacement for cellphone texting services. It too requires that "scalability and reliability."

What's more, Erlang lets coders work at high speed---another essential part of modern software development. It offers a way of deploying new code to an application even as the application continues to run. In an age of constant change, this is more useful than ever.

Keep It Simple, Smarty

The language does have its drawbacks. Relatively few coders know Erlang, and it doesn't necessarily dovetail with a lot of the code already built by today's internet companies. Facebook built its original Facebook Chat app in Erlang but eventually rebuilt so that it would better fit with the rest of its infrastructure. "You had this little island that was Erlang, and it was hard to build enough boats back to the island to make everything hook in," says Facebook vice president of engineering Jay Parikh.

Of course, WhatsApp didn't have to integrate with an existing infrastructure in this way. And Mahdavi believes the relative scarcity of Erlang coders isn't a problem. "Our strategy around recruiting is to find the best and brightest engineers. We don't bring them in specifically because the engineer knows Erlang," Mahdavi said on Monday. "We expect the engineer to come in and spend their first week getting familiar with the language and learning to use the environment. If you hire smart people, they'll be able to do that."

The company has succeeded by hiring engineers who are adaptable---in more ways than one. Asked to explain the company's secret, Mahdavi's response seems far too simple. But that's the point. "The number-one lesson is just be very focused on what you need to do," he said. "Don't spend time getting distracted by other activities, other technologies, even things in the office, like meetings."

At WhatsApp, employees almost never attend a meeting. Yes, there are only a few dozen of them. But that too is the point.

The founder of WhatsApp told how the messenger gained 1.

3 billion users

WhatsApp engineers work best when they are not distracted. “We have an atypical team,” commented Kum. “We are older and grouchier than the typical college graduates, so we prefer to work in silence.”

A quiet environment helps you concentrate on your tasks, which is what WhatsApp valued above all else. Even the picture of the San Francisco Bay that hangs in the office has a theme of focus, employees say.

These icons hang in the WhatsApp office. Photo: WhatsApp

The focus on the main thing is felt in the messenger itself. “The company culture is tied to what we do,” Koum explained. "We've always wanted to make a simple, efficient product that can work without a broadband network connection and use little battery power."

Even before Facebook bought the messenger, more than 450 million people used it every month. Two years later, the number of monthly users reached one billion, now it is 1. 3 billion, with one billion using WhatsApp daily. Every day, users send 55 billion messages, 4.5 billion photos and 1 billion videos. The application is available in 60 languages. It is especially popular in India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Russia.

“The main thing is that this growth is organic,” Koum said. We didn't use any growth hacks. We just constantly thought about what strengthens our network.” According to him, the company's goal is to make sure that every person who has a smartphone uses WhatsApp.

Small teams with big goals

In February of this year, WhatsApp launched its first feature that looked like a departure from the company's original course. An analogue of "Stories" from Facebook and Instagram called "Status" allows you to make a selection of photos and videos that you can share with other users.

Photo: WhatsApp

Kum admits that the original idea came from Snapchat, but believes WhatsApp didn't just copy it. Initially, WhatsApp itself was an updated text status, and only then became a messenger. “Images tell a story better than text,” Koum said. — And video in this regard is an even more powerful tool. In essence, we have added an updated version of the status to the application, which was invented in 2009.

The new feature caused dissatisfaction among users who are used to the text status, so the company quickly added the old version. However, most still like the updated status. In July, WhatsApp reported that 250 million people use the feature every day — that is, a quarter of the messenger's entire user base and more than Snapchat's entire audience.

We can say that the WhatsApp messenger indirectly participated in the competition between Facebook and Snap. However, WhatsApp is still trying to maintain independence, like Instagram: when support for mobile games appeared in the Facebook messenger, Kum said that games were not needed in his application. “People go to WhatsApp to chat, not to play,” he commented.

Jan Kum. Photo: Getty

WhatsApp actively uses the resources that Facebook has - for example, to recruit new employees. And instead of developing its own voice and video calling system, the company took advantage of Facebook's existing infrastructure.

Thanks to the help of the parent organization, WhatsApp is able to maintain its application with less than 250 employees. Before it was acquired by Facebook, there were 55 of them. The number of Instagram employees also grew from 13 to over 500 after the purchase. Total in Facebook Inc. more than 20 thousand employees work. WhatsApp's staff is still expanding, with over 50 positions currently open. However, Koum believes that "engineers prefer to work in small teams that don't often show up at meetings unless they're about coding or product development."

Privacy for all

Back in 2013, WhatsApp began work on the introduction of end-to-end encryption that protects any calls and correspondence. In early 2016, the company was able to add it to its messenger. “Some governments are watching or want to watch their citizens,” Koum said. “We believe that strict censorship is contrary to the principles of democracy and therefore against it.”

Painting on the wall of the WhatsApp office. Photo: WhatsApp

Due to end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp was temporarily blocked in Brazil, and then partially in China. The fact that WhatsApp allows people to freely encrypt their correspondence has opened the eyes of governments to modern realities, Kuma said.

“Governments and law enforcement have understood and accepted the fact that end-to-end encryption is here to stay,” he said. - Nobody asked us to turn it off (by the way, this is simply impossible). You cannot add any loophole to end-to-end encryption - otherwise it will simply lose its essence.

Business and monetization

Facebook has given WhatsApp free rein to focus on developing a simple and user-friendly application without any attempt to capitalize on its 1. 3 billion audience. Even before the merger with Facebook, the company was strongly against advertising. It is still not in the messenger, which is why the application is very different from Instagram, which now has more than a million advertisers.

For now, WhatsApp is going to use an alternative business model - the application will act as an intermediary between customers and organizations, for example, for customer support. Kum is slow to share the details of how this model will work, but still gave a simple example. Imagine that you are going to a plane, but your flight is delayed. The airline will be able to inform you via WhatsApp and offer to book another flight via messenger.

Brian Acton and Jan Koum. Photo: Getty

It's possible that the airline will have to pay WhatsApp for the opportunity to chat with the customer, but so far Koum has not focused on the financial side of the issue. First of all, he thinks about what the experience of the client himself will be.

"Many companies are already using WhatsApp to communicate with customers," he said. “But so far, our proposal is not very well designed for this. We should finalize it for greater convenience of working with organizations, then our network will become more efficient for doing business.”

Improving the functionality of the messenger for business needs will be a new frontier for the development of WhatsApp. Nevertheless, such an innovation would be quite in line with the spirit of the company, which offered the world a better type of correspondence than SMS. “Now I have to arrange an appointment with a dentist by SMS,” Kum complained. - The doctor sends me a message, and I have to confirm whether I will come or not. I don't think this is the best way to interact with a client."

Photo: WhatsApp

How did Kuma and his colleague Brian Acton manage to create an app that so many people liked? Kum recalls the early years of his project with a smile.

“In Hollywood films, they usually show that a brilliant idea comes to your head, and now you are already running to file a patent to the music. In fact, things are different,” he said.

According to Koum, he and Acton managed to find the secret to success after a long series of experiments, revisions and experiments with available technologies. They also watched how people use their app. This approach can be used all the time, especially now that smartphones have become more accessible and have evolved as a platform. “It's much easier to hit a billion users these days than it was when we first started,” Koum said.

Source.

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Today, WhatsApp is the ideal marketing tool. Whether you run an online store, an educational institution, a financial institution, a car dealership, a logistics company, a travel agency, or any other industry, you are missing out if you don't use WhatsApp for your business.

Why? You will find the answer in the article, we have collected a bunch of interesting statistics that will show the benefits of WhatsApp marketing in 2022. We will not delve into general statistics, but will focus on those that are most interesting for businesses.

WHAT IS WHATSAPP MARKETING

Marketing on WhatsApp is no different from marketing on other similar channels such as Facebook Messenger, Vkontakte, Instagram and so on. The only difference is that WhatsApp has the largest audience among other messengers, it is preferred by more than 500 million companies and 2.2 billion users worldwide .

Here are the main benefits of WhatsApp marketing:

Improving user experience and customer loyalty. WhatsApp allows businesses to personalize their conversations with customers, and gives customers the opportunity to communicate in one of the most convenient communication channels.
Increase your conversion rate up to 7x through timely, personalized and relevant emails.
Reduced marketing costs. WhatsApp is very accessible compared to more classic marketing channels, with higher conversion rates.
A new level of customer support. WhatsApp empowers businesses to improve customer service with the WhatsApp Business API and messenger marketing platforms such as IntellectDialog.

WHY WHATSAPP IS A GREAT PLATFORM FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19.3 billion in 2014, 19 times what it paid for Instagram.

Why? So that 4 years later, based on the messenger, launch a special solution for business - WhatsApp Business API. And thus make WhatsApp one of the best marketing channels that allows you to communicate directly with the client, bypassing overheated auctions in targeted and display advertising, huge budgets, and so on.

In general, for business, the messenger has two solutions: WhatsApp Business application and WhatsApp Business API:

WhatsApp Business application. This free application allows you to create a business account that can only be accessed via one smartphone and/or one PC. It's perfect for small businesses. In fact, this is a regular WhatsApp application, only with advanced functionality.

WhatsApp Business API. This is a solution designed for companies with a large number of customers and a commensurate number of messages sent. The solution is paid - companies pay for the messages they send to users on WhatsApp. Read more about the new tariffs from February 1, 2022 in this article.

In addition, WhatsApp Business API does not have its own interface, so you need to either develop your own environment for work (which is long and very expensive) or use one of the messenger marketing platforms on the market. Which in turn charge a monthly subscription fee.

If you connect through the platform, then, as a rule, the connection to the WhatsApp Business API will be free. Thus, the payment consists of two parts: payment for messages directly in WhatsApp and a monthly fee for the platform.

The WhatsApp Business API has many features, but they all boil down to two main features:

The ability to send automatic personalized messages to an unlimited number of users every day (depending on the size of your business, budget and quality of mailings).
Ability to provide live support to users in a 24/7 chat with multiple operators from a single phone number.

Other options depend on the selected platform or solution provider. For example, with our service, you can use the WhatsApp Business API to:

Send newsletters and promotional messages to 100,000 unique users per day.
Automate abandoned cart, shipping, payments and other notifications on WhatsApp. Today, this does not require email.
Integrate a chatbot into WhatsApp for 24/7 customer support.
Provide support for an unlimited number of chat operators on an unlimited number of devices.

GLOBAL WHATSAPP

USER STATISTICS

Now let's see how customers and businesses use WhatsApp. We assure you that after this information you will have no doubts whether it is worth starting to use WhatsApp to promote your business😉.

1. Available in 180 countries and 20 different languages

There are 195 independent countries-states in the world and WhatsApp is available in 180 of them in more than 20 different languages. 69% of the audience using the Internet, excluding China, use WhatsApp!

WhatsApp is also one of the few apps that has been downloaded 5 billion times on iOS and Android. It is the favorite app in over 100 countries.

WhatsApp statistics by country with the most active users in 2021.

As you can see in the graph, India tops the list with 390 million monthly active users, followed by Brazil with 108 million active users, and so on.

By the way, Russia had the highest increase in WhatsApp users last year with 17%, followed by India with 16.6%.

2. 100 billion messages are sent via WhatsApp every day

Today, 7.5 billion people live on Earth, which means that the number of messages, that passes through WhatsApp every day is 13 times that number.

We are proud that WhatsApp is able to deliver roughly 100Bn messages daily & we're excited about the road ahead.

Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp

Yes, in the past, most WhatsApp messages were from family members, friends, and so on. But since the launch of WhatsApp Business in 2018, a significant portion of these conversations have also been between companies and customers.

Why did this happen? Because people are accustomed to WhatsApp as a comfortable and easy means of communication with loved ones, moreover, without ads. And when a potential customer interacts with a brand in a private and cozy WhatsApp chat, they are much more likely to convert.

WhatsApp statistics on the number of messages sent daily. Source: TechCrunch.

Please note: in 2011 the numbers were not even close to the current result, only 1 billion messages per day were sent daily. In our opinion, this trend will continue if WhatsApp can maintain its privacy and strict ad restrictions.

3. Each user spends 19 hours a month on WhatsApp

WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world, so there is no doubt that people spend a decent amount of their time on this messenger.

The average WhatsApp user spends 19.4 hours per month or approximately 38 minutes per day using WhatsApp! But, for example, in India, these figures are higher: 21.4 hours per month are spent using WhatsApp. But there, the consumption of WhatsApp is generally different.

WhatsApp statistics for the average number of hours users spend on WhatsApp. Source: App Annie, Hootsuite.

If you are not marketing on WhatsApp in 2022, you are not marketing at all.

Viktor Komarov, Founder of IntellectDialog

4. Millennials are the largest audience on WhatsApp

WhatsApp is one of the few applications that is actively used by people of all ages.

Like many other applications and services on the Web, the main audience is millennials, that is, users aged 26-35. They are followed by users aged 36-45 and 15-25.

WhatsApp statistics - WhatsApp users in different age groups.

But, look, even the oldest age group makes up a decent part of the total audience of the messenger.

5. Companies using WhatsApp Business 9 solutions0003

Launched in 2018, WhatsApp Business helps individuals and small businesses promote their business through WhatsApp. According to a WhatsApp report, a total of 50 million companies use this free app, of which 15 million are Indian.

WhatsApp statistics: Indian companies compared to global companies in general using WhatsApp for business.

As we mentioned above, this is a separate application with slightly extended functionality: you can answer frequently asked questions from customers using pre-prepared quick answers, provide information about products, make an informative profile (with address, website, mail, and so on) and a few more useful features.

But this application has limitations: mailing limits (no more than 256 contacts), it cannot be integrated with a chatbot, you can only reply from one smartphone/computer, and so on.

And WhatsApp Business API, just removes all these restrictions: you can send at least 100,000 messages per day with one click, provide 24/7 customer support using a chatbot, make full integration with CRM and much more.

Learn more about the differences between the WhatsApp Business app and the WhatsApp Business API, as well as the capabilities of these two solutions, in this article.

6. Whatsapp's Most Popular Features

For what purposes do users use WhatsApp most often? According to Statista, which followed users for 3 months, the picture is as follows:

WhatsApp marketing statistics are the most popular features of WhatsApp.

WhatsApp chats and calls continue to be the most popular features of the messenger. And a huge part of users actively use WhatsApp to share media files.

This means that companies can use the same features to attract and retain audiences: they can use images, clickable buttons, quick replies and more using the WhatsApp Business API in their newsletters.

7. Reasons to contact companies on WhatsApp

Of course, all these statistics are interesting, but why do buyers want to interact with companies on WhatsApp?

We have already said above that WhatsApp is convenient for the client, as it is his daily and main channel for communicating with relatives and friends. Therefore, it is logical that it is more convenient for the client to communicate with the company in a single messenger, and not download a separate application for each store, food delivery service or fitness club.

Here are some statistics for why people use WhatsApp when they want to communicate with businesses:

54% of users prefer WhatsApp to track order updates and delivery. Then there are 50% of customers who find it convenient to sign up for services/meetings in WhatsApp and receive notifications and events. Well, still, it’s more convenient to have all this at hand, in one place, in a chat with a specific company, and not to search among a bunch of unnecessary letters in e-mail😉.

A 39% of users prefer WhatsApp as a service channel and 43% are ready to use it to receive promotional offers.

We think this is a great indication that WhatsApp is gradually becoming the preferred platform for users to receive updates, notifications, reminders, offers, delivery updates and more.

8. Whatsapp customer benefits

We have already seen why people want to use (and are actively using) WhatsApp to contact companies. But now let's see what buyers say about the benefits and their user experience when using messenger to communicate with businesses.

A survey conducted by YouGov reveals the following benefits that users mentioned when communicating with brands on WhatsApp:

According to buyers, 33% preferred WhatsApp because they did not have to wait long for an answer to their questions, as was the case when contacting through the form on the company's website.

WhatsApp is also preferred by many users, as it allows you to share various media files: pictures, PDF files, videos, and so on.

By the way, note: 20% of said they like WhatsApp because it's free and you don't have to pay for the service. Well, apparently somewhere abroad customer support can be paid🤔.

9. Highest open rate compared to other channels

New product launches, offers, promotional messages, order/delivery notifications - email and SMS remain the most popular channels for many companies. But not for their clients. Remember how long ago you clicked on promotional links in SMS or opened promotional mailings in the mail?

Many times (and not only us) we have shown and told about the high percentage of open messages in WhatsApp, in comparison with the same mail. Here it is again:

According to Mailchimp's report, email and SMS, despite their popularity, have an open rate of only 21.33%. And there are even fewer clicks: only 2-5% of people click on links in the mail.

Unlike these outdated and spammy channels, WhatsApp has a 98% open rate, which means that out of every 100 messages sent, 98 messages read!

And what can I say, even the WHO in 2020 used the WhatsApp chatbot to spread important information and solutions related to Covid-19 around the world. Since it is the largest messenger in the world in terms of coverage and openness.

And all because 2 billion people use WhatsApp, including because there is no spam. Let's not turn this cool marketing channel into another Viber affiliate or SMS ok:

10. Up to 60% click through rate and conversion rate

We have already looked at the huge gap in the open rate of WhatsApp messages and e-mail. But it's not enough just to read the message, we want the user to take some action.

How many users follow links from WhatsApp and become customers? Perhaps this is the most important statistic for business.

While email and SMS conversion rates are only 2-5%, WhatsApp has a "modest" conversion rate of 45 to 60% on average.

And in order not to be unfounded about the high open rate and conversion, here is a screenshot from our IntellectDialog system of one of our clients:

Pay attention to the number of delivered and read messages, the number of replies and subsequent subscriptions . How long have your mailing lists in the mail or SMS showed such results😉?

Total

These were 10 WhatsApp stats that we thought any marketer would be interested in.

Choosing the right platform to promote your business is crucial.