A couple of months ago, Facebook announced it was acquiring WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock options. Today, WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum wrote a blog post saying that the service now has 500 million active users. These users are sharing 700 million photos and 100 million videos every single day. The app's fastest growing markets are Brazil, India, Mexico and Russia.
WhatsApp was founded in February 2009 by Jan Koum and Brian Acton. Koum named the company WhatsApp because it sounded like "what's up." At the early stages, Koum and Acton burned through a lot of savings and the app kept on crashing. Koum almost decided to quit working on WhatsApp, but Acton persuaded him to keep working on it for a few more months.
