WhatsApp is a widely popular app that provides its users a secured texting platform via the internet. It allows its users make audio and video calls, share media files and locations with an individual or groups. WhatsApp runs on smartphones and it is accessible from personal computers and laptops.
WhatsApp Mission Statement
“WhatsApp started as an alternative to SMS. Our product now supports sending and receiving a variety of media: text, photos, videos, documents, and location, as well as voice calls. Some of your most personal moments are shared with WhatsApp, which is why we built end-to-end encryption into our app. Behind every product, the decision is our desire to let people communicate anywhere in the world without barriers.”
Analysis of WhatsApp Mission Statement
WhatsApp’s mission statement delineates why WhatsApp was created and what drives it to proceed since its launch.
The first sentence tells us about the reason for WhatsApp’s emergence. WhatsApp was launched to serve the same purpose as SMS. But unlike SMS, WhatsApp used internet connection to exchange messages.
In the following sentence, Whatsapp lists the services they currently provide to their users, which includes exchanging texts and numerous media files such as videos, documents, locations, voice calls. Apart from informing us about the services, this sentence also reflects on how much WhatsApp has improved and diversified its services. From being an alternate to SMS, WhatsApp now helps its users share their stories more vividly by enabling them to exchange pictures, PDFs, locations, audio and video calls.
The third sentence of WhatsApp’s mission statement paints a heartwarming picture of users trusting WhatsApp and then WhatsApp respecting and working towards strengthening their trust. The first part of the sentence is a beautiful acknowledgment of the faith and loyalty that the users show by sharing their most personal and intimate moments with their loved ones via the application. The second part of the sentence proves WhatsApp’s commitment to retain its users’ faith by introducing end-to-end encryption.
End-to-end encryption is a secured communication system where only the senders and the receivers can access the exchanged messages. The texts or media files are encrypted throughout transit, as a result, third party services, internet providers or authorities cannot read or understand the sent messages without a decrypting. WhatsApp utilizing this end-to-end encryption makes it one of the most secured platforms.
The final statement is about WhatsApp’s vision of being able to facilitate an uninterrupted and boundary-less communication channel for people from every corner of the world. This vision drives every product decision that WhatsApp takes. Their commitment to this vision is reflected in the name itself as WhatsApp is a wordplay on “What’s Up?”, a conversation starter.
WhatsApp’s mission statement shares the initial need for WhatsApp’s creation, the services it now provides, the reasoning for the end-to-end encryption technology and the overall vision WhatsApp proceeds to achieve through each of its product decisions. The aforementioned points in the mission statement sums up the goals and desires of WhatsApp.
Whatsapp Vision Statement:
The vision of Whatsapp set by mark Zuckerberg is “WhatsApp on a path to connecting more than a billion people”
Company Overview: Whatsapp
Brian Acton and Jan Koum’s startup venture that ultimately led to the creation of WhatsApp is an interesting story. Brian and Jan were colleagues in Yahoo!. They had left their job to travel around the world. However, that came to an end as their savings started to run out. They had bought iPhones and realized the potential of the mobile application industry. After a few trials and adjustments, WhatsApp started to become take its present form.
- Company Name: WhatsApp Inc.
- Company Type: Subsidiary
- Founders: Jan Kaum, Brian Acton
- Founded on: February 24, 2009
- Parent company: Facebook Inc.
- Headquarters: Mountain View, California
WhatsApp’s “No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!” policy made the service extremely popular, this small application managed to beat iMesssage, WeChat, Messenger and every other similar service. By 2015, WhatsApp had become number one in user count. To this day, WhatsApp is the champion in the market, with a staggering 2 billion active users. Their insane level of success is put into perspective when people are informed about their employee number. Only 50 employees are in charge of operating and managing this giant.
Facebook’s data analytics application, ONAVO, had predicted that WhatsApp would take over their then messaging service in the future which would seriously hamper their goal of making messaging their core service. To tackle this issue, Facebook decided to acquire WhatsApp for a total of 19 Billion dollars. This surprisingly high valuation in the acquisition is ironic; since Brian Acton, the founder of WhatsApp had applied for a job on Facebook and Facebook rejected him. Not hiring him for the job and then spending a whopping $19 billion for his establishment makes the story of WhatsApp’s ascent so unique and ironic.
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READ MORE:
- Explanation of Instagram Mission & Vision Statement
- Analysis of Amazon Mission Statement & Vision Statement 2020
- Apple Inc: Mission & Vision Statement Analysis 2020
- Sprint’s Mission and Vision Statements Analysis
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References:
- https://www.whatsapp.com/about/
- https://www.feedough.com/history-of-whatsapp/#:~:text=WhatsApp%20was%20founded%20by%20Brian,out%20as%20planned%20as%20well.
