9781422277331

Tech 2.0

fear of being monitored, and they wanted it to be an extremely low-cost experience. They used their experiences working in the tech industry, coupled with Koum’s personal knowledge of the methods some governments use to eavesdrop on conversations, and created a modern-day, easy-to-use communications plat- form, accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The results have been amazing. In addition to the incredible dollar amount of the company’s sale, global usage is off the chart. More than one billion people worldwide now use WhatsApp, in more than 180 countries. In India alone, a survey of “hypercon- nected users”—people who spend more than six hours per day online—found that 54 percent of their time was on WhatsApp and Facebook alone. What seems like a simple technology is im- portant to users who want to remain connected, as it offers se- cure and reliable messaging on phones all over the world. WhatsApp owes part of its tremendous growth to the world- wide spread of mobile phones.World population is nearly eight bil- lion people, and there are more than seven billion mobile phones in existence. In contrast to the United States, which went through a prolonged period of changing from landline phones to mobile networks, many developing countries skipped the landline phase altogether. Rather than building out an increasingly old-fashioned technology of landline phone networks, these countries skipped ahead to a mobile phone–based network, leapfrogging the era of landline phones. This has helpedWhatsApp spread very widely in

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