If you thought WhatsApp departed from its conventional approach to become a social network, its co-founder Brian Acton has a message for you. Acton has said that term ‘Social’ is not a part of their vocabulary. Acton added that the company considers itself as a “communication service”, with the focus on communication and utility on conversation, and not necessarily the social constructs. Detailing his vision, Acton said that WhatsApp is intended to connect people to people who are known to each other. That may include one’s family, batch mate, friends, or some sort of businesses like their grocer or tailor. The Co-founder, who had found the app exactly eight years ago, says that company has alway thought of building “a private, secure, safe communication service”. However, Acton asserts that company has made changes in its traditional approach, and has started “creating the foundations of how businesses will engage with consumers.” Acton said that company will surely create “in a way that is clean, straightforward, simple and spam-free communication”. The techie adds that people have responded to their new development and remarks that the company is in “exploratory stage”. Speaking on the monetisation of App, Acton said that company is actively ideating on a bussiness modal which will preserve the utility and simplicity of our product and also create revenue at the same time. India is WhatsApp’s largest market with over 200 million users. “India is critically important, it is our leading market. India guides us with respect to what we build and how we build it,” he told IndianExpress.com, minutes after a meeting with Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
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Acton asserted that high number of users in India is an opportunity for them in California to connect with people on the other side of the world and understand the diversity, languages and networks. “Just learning India, understanding India has been a pure enjoyment for us.”
Acton stresses that as a company they have grown to understand the needs for data and battery conservation because of learnings from India. “People are on very low-end phones, people are on slow and poor networks. What we try to achieve is a very simple, fast and reliable experience in the Indian environment,” says Acton who worked with Yahoo, Apple and Adobe setting up WhatsApp.
