According to the company, messages could be edited within a 15-minute window after being sent. In 2022, WhatsApp added the ability for users to turn off their online status. In August 2022, WhatsApp launched an integration with JioMart, available only to users in India. The Cloud API enables businesses to integrate WhatsApp with other software, have a central WhatsApp account for multiple users and implement advanced automation. In May 2022, WhatsApp launched its Cloud API services (now known as WhatsApp Business Platform) for larger businesses requiring features beyond the WhatsApp Business App.
In October 2018, the «Swipe to Reply» option was added to the Android beta version, 16 months after it was introduced for iOS. In December 2021, WhatsApp changed the default setting from «everyone» to only people in the user’s contacts or who have been conversed with («nobody» is also an option). On February 24, 2017, WhatsApp launched a new Status feature similar to Snapchat and Facebook stories. However, the WhatsApp privacy policy does not apply in the EU, since it violates the principles of GDPR. In March 2020, WhatsApp partnered with the World Health Organization and UNICEF to provide messaging hotlines for people to get information on the COVID-19 pandemic.
In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app called WhatsApp Business which can communicate with the standard WhatsApp client. Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. The developer, WhatsApp Inc., indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. Tap Add member tag and type in your role to show people who you are or how you’re known in this group.These features will roll out over the coming weeks. Or record a voice message for those moments when just text isn’t good enough.Share daily moments through StatusShare your everyday life with those who matter. Easily view your contacts on WhatsApp and start messaging.
Return to Europe
In June 2023, a feature called WhatsApp Channels was launched which allows content creators, public figures and organizations to send newsletter-like broadcasts to large numbers of users. In October 2023, support for logging in to multiple (meaning two) accounts was added, allowing users to switch between different WhatsApp accounts in the same app. Now, the feature is also made available to iOS users, allowing them to link up to four iPhones. WhatsApp officially rolled out the Companion mode for Android users, allowing linking up to five Android phones to a single account.
- In October 2024, WhatsApp expanded their chat filter feature, adding the ability for users to create custom lists that contain specific chats of their choice.
- WhatsApp Web is accessed through web.whatsapp.com and access is granted after the user scans their personal QR code through their mobile WhatsApp client.
- Previously the WhatsApp user’s handset had to be connected to the Internet for the browser application to function but as of an update in October 2021 (and integrated by default in WhatsApp as of April 2022) that is no longer the case.
- In January 2022, an unsealed surveillance application revealed that WhatsApp started tracking seven users from China and Macau in November 2021, based on a request from US DEA investigators.
- His wife, Marie, continued ballooning and became Europe’s best-known female aeronaut.
In October 2019, WhatsApp officially launched a new fingerprint app-locking feature for Android users. In November 2024, the ability to transcribe voice messages was added, allowing users to read out what was said in a voice message, rather than listening to the audio. By June 2016, the company’s blog reported more than 100 million voice calls per day were being placed on WhatsApp. In May 2023, WhatsApp allowed users to edit messages, aligning itself with competitors such as Telegram and Signal which already offered this feature.
Jeff Bezos phone hack
In July 2025, WhatsApp stopped developing the Windows UWP-based app due to poor support and deprecation of the UWP framework by Microsoft. The Windows version is based on UWP while the Mac version is a port of the iOS version using Catalyst technology. Originally it was required for the primary phone to keep an online connection to WhatsApp for linked devices to work, but now WhatsApp can run on linked devices without such requirement. Linked devices automatically log out after 14 days of inactivity on the primary phone. They link to and sync with WhatsApp actively running on a supported primary phone. As of 2025, the software requires at least Android version 5.0 or iOS version 15.1 respectively.
Koum then hired a friend in Los Angeles, Chris Peiffer, to develop a BlackBerry version, which arrived two months later. Although Acton was working on another startup idea, he decided to join the company. Koum updated WhatsApp so that everyone in the user’s network would be notified when a user’s status changed. However, when early versions of WhatsApp kept crashing, Koum considered giving up and looking for a new job. Koum named the app WhatsApp to sound like «what’s up» and it was published on the Apple App Store and BlackBerry App World in May and June 2009 respectively. A month earlier, after Koum purchased an iPhone, he and Acton decided to create an app for the App Store.
Jean-Pierre Franc¸ois Blanchard
Though several people asked to join him in the balloon, Blanchard insisted on ascending solo. He also hoped to charge people $5 to watch his takeoff, but since the balloon would be visible outside the prison as soon as it ascended, only about 100 people bought tickets, even after Blanchard lowered the price to $2. For weeks, Blanchard ran an ad in Dunlap’s American Daily Advertiser, announcing his intention to ascend over Philadelphia in his balloon on January 9, 1793. A basket attached to a parachute and containing a small animal, probably a dog, was dropped from a balloon and landed safely.
Europe
The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) has prohibited local banks from using instant messaging applications like WhatsApp for customer communication. The organization reported a massive drop-off in traffic for the blocked services, though the country’s government made no official statements about the block. In August 2021, the digital rights organization Access Now reported that WhatsApp along with several other social media apps was being blocked in Zambia for the duration of the general election. The ban was prompted by concerns of US authorities potentially accessing user data for such apps because of the CLOUD Act. In December 2021, the Swiss army banned the use of WhatsApp and several other non-Swiss encrypted messaging services by army personnel.
- One of the flight’s witnesses that day was President George Washington, and the future presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe were also present.
- This new facility, to Koum’s surprise, was used by users to ping «each other with jokey custom statuses like, ‘I woke up late’ or ‘I’m on my way.'» Fishman said, «At some point it sort of became instant messaging».
- On November 14, 2016, WhatsApp added video calling for users using Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone devices.
- In April 2017, the perpetrator of the Stockholm truck attack reportedly used WhatsApp to exchange messages with an ISIS supporter shortly before and after the incident.
While Blanchard’s first parachute demonstrations were conducted with a dog as the passenger, he later had the opportunity to try it himself when in 1793 his hydrogen balloon ruptured and he used a parachute to escape. Following the invention of the modern parachute in 1783 by Sébastien Lenormand in France, in 1785 Jean-Pierre Blanchard demonstrated it as a means of jumping safely from a balloon. Among the events that included demonstrations of his abilities as a balloonist was the coronation of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia in Prague in September 1791.citation needed The King ordered the balloon and boat be hung up in the church of Église Notre-Dame de Calais. A third flight, again with Jeffries, was the first flight over the English Channel, taking about 2½ hours to travel from England to France on 7 January 1785, flying from Dover Castle to Guînes. Blanchard took a second flight on 30 November 1784, taking off with an American, Dr John Jeffries, from the Rhedarium behind Green Street Mayfair, London to Ingress in Kent.
Data Linked to You
Also in 1793, he conducted the first balloon flight in the Americas, witnessed by President George Washington. Notable for his successful hydrogen balloon flight in Paris on 2 March 1784, Blanchard later moved to London and undertook flights with varying propulsion mechanisms. After staging a few more balloon flights with animal passengers, Blanchard returned to Europe in May of 1797. That fall, Blanchard arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, where he attempted to raise money and interest in another balloon flight, with little success. Blanchard’s American flight became his most celebrated and most thoroughly reported, surely because he staged it in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the capital of the United States at the time. After 44 flights in Europe, Blanchard took his balloon to the United States, intent on staging the first aerial voyage there.
Requires update but won’t download
This was implemented only on Samsung phones, with plans to expand to Android and iOS «soon». In August 2021, WhatsApp launched a feature that allows chat history to be transferred between mobile operating systems. In July 2021, WhatsApp announced forthcoming support for end-to-end encryption for backups stored in Facebook’s cloud. Previously between March 2016 and May 2017, only limited file types categorised as images (JPG, PNG, GIF), videos (MP4, AVI), and documents (CSV, DOC/DOCX, PDF, PPT/PPTX, RTF, TXT, XLS/XLSX), were allowed to be shared for file attachments. Voice messages sent this way are deleted after the recipient listens to them the first time. Edited messages were tagged as «edited» to inform recipients that the content had been modified.
In April 2023, the app rolled out a feature that would allow account access across multiple phones, in a shift that would make it more like competitors. In January 2015, WhatsApp launched a web client that allowed users to scan a QR code with their mobile app, mirroring their chats to their browser. On November 10, 2016, WhatsApp launched a beta version of two-factor authentication for Android users, which allowed them to use their email addresses for further protection. In June 2024, improvements were made to voice and video calls, allowing up to 32 participants in video calls, adding audio to screen sharing, and introducing a new codec to increase call reliability. In December 2023, WhatsApp’s «View Once» feature expanded to include voice messages. This lets users share videos of themselves more quickly, and without adding anything to their device’s gallery.
Blanchard remained in Philadelphia for some time after his flight, attempting to raise money to stage more ascensions, but bad fortune plagued his efforts. During the flight, he captured high-altitude air by pouring liquid out of six bottles and corking them. A visitor gave Blanchard a small black dog to take with him on the flight, which he accepted reluctantly. Almost the entire population of Philadelphia came out to watch Blanchard’s balloon ascend, as well as many people from the nearby countryside.
The acquisition was influenced by the data provided by Onavo, Facebook’s research app for monitoring competitors and trending usage of social activities on mobile phones, as well as startups that were performing «unusually well». By February 2013, WhatsApp had about 200 million active users and 50 staff members. The idea started off as an app that would display statuses in a phone’s Contacts menu, showing if a person was at work or on a call. The service was created by WhatsApp Inc. of Mountain View, California, which was acquired by Facebook in February 2014 for approximately US$19.3 billion. The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features.
By default, it is set to disappear in 24 hours, but it can be set for a longer amount of time and can be restricted for viewing by other contacts in the Settings menu. Unlike messages in groups or private chats, channels are not end-to-end encrypted. Users are able to use an avatar as their profile picture or use it for stickers during instant messaging, similar to those offered by Bitmoji or Memoji. Unlike other platforms, WhatsApp requires third-party apps to add Stickers to WhatsApp. In October 2023 they also introduced passkey support, where a user can verify their login with on-device biometrics, rather than SMS.
He toured around Europe, staging balloon ascensions, and came to dominate the first decade of ballooning. Blanchard built his own hydrogen balloon and flew it for the first time in Paris on March 2, 1784. When Jacques-Etienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier built a successful hot-air balloon and demonstrated it for King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette in 1783, however, Blanchard decided to turn to ballooning.
By early January 2015, WhatsApp had 700 million monthly users and over 30 billion messages every day. Days after the announcement, WhatsApp users experienced a loss of service, leading to anger across social media. Some time in 2013 WhatsApp acquired Santa Clara–based startup SkyMobius, the developers of Vtok, a video and vegas casino app voice calling app. To cover the cost of sending verification texts to users, WhatsApp was changed from a free service to a paid one.
In December 2019, WhatsApp announced that a new update would lock out any Apple users who had not updated to iOS 9 or higher and Samsung, Huawei, Sony and Google users who had not updated to version 4.0 by February 1, 2020. In August 2014, WhatsApp was the most popular messaging app in the world, with more than 600 million users. Providing a bundle of these free of charge to users will work like a gateway drug of sorts – users who may be able to afford data services and phones these days just don’t see the point of why they would pay for those data services. WhatsApp 2.0, released for iPhone in August 2009, featured a purpose-designed messaging component; the number of active users suddenly increased to 250,000.
Third-party clients
It became the world’s most popular messaging application in 2015, with 900 million users, and had more than 2 billion active users worldwide in February 2020. As of May 2025, the service had 3 billion monthly active users, making it the most used messenger app. WhatsApp has increasingly drawn its innovation from competing services, such as a Telegram-inspired web version and features for groups. In May 2025, Meta reported WhatsApp had over 3 billion monthly active users globally. On August 24, 2014, Koum announced on his Twitter account that WhatsApp had over 600 million active users worldwide. However, the company did not reveal the names of the end users, which according to research by Citizen Lab include, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates.
The early balloon flights triggered a phase of the public «balloonomania», with all manner of objects decorated with images of balloons or styled au ballon, from ceramics to fans and hats. The first manned hydrogen balloon flight took place on 1 December 1783, when Jacques Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert launched the first gas balloon from the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. The first successful manned balloon flight took place on 21 November 1783, when Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes took off at the Palace of Versailles in a free-flying hot air balloon constructed by the Montgolfier brothers. Blanchard made his first successful balloon flight in Paris on 2 March 1784, in a hydrogen gas balloon launched from the Champ de Mars.
