Once Upon An App Popular Books

Once Upon An App Biography & Facts

WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content. WhatsApp's client application runs on mobile devices, and can be accessed from computers. The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to sign up. In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app called WhatsApp Business which can communicate with the standard WhatsApp client.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. It became the world's most popular messaging application by 2015, and had more than 2 billion users worldwide by February 2020. By 2016, it had become the primary means of Internet communication in regions including Latin America, the Indian subcontinent, and large parts of Europe and Africa. History 2009–2014 WhatsApp was founded in February 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, former employees of Yahoo! A month earlier, after Koum purchased an iPhone, he and Acton decided to create an app for the App Store. 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.Their discussions often took place at the home of Koum's Russian friend Alex Fishman in West San Jose. They realized that to take the idea further, they would need an iPhone developer. Fishman visited RentACoder.com, found Russian developer Igor Solomennikov, and introduced him to Koum.Koum named the app WhatsApp to sound like "what's up". On February 24, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California. However, when early versions of WhatsApp kept crashing, Koum considered giving up and looking for a new job. Acton encouraged him to wait for a "few more months".In June 2009, when the app had been downloaded by only a handful of Fishman's Russian-speaking friends, Apple launched push notifications, allowing users to be pinged even when not using the app. Koum updated WhatsApp so that everyone in the user's network would be notified when a user's status changed. 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".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. Although Acton was working on another startup idea, he decided to join the company. In October 2009, Acton persuaded five former friends at Yahoo! to invest $250,000 in seed funding, and Acton became a co-founder and was given a stake. He officially joined WhatsApp on November 1. Koum then hired a friend in Los Angeles, Chris Peiffer, to develop a BlackBerry version, which arrived two months later. Subsequently, WhatsApp for Symbian OS was added in May 2010, and for Android OS in August 2010. In 2010 Google made multiple acquisition offers for WhatsApp, which were all declined.To cover the cost of sending verification texts to users, WhatsApp was changed from a free service to a paid one. In December 2009, the ability to send photos was added to the iOS version. By early 2011, WhatsApp was one of the top 20 apps in the U.S. Apple App Store.In April 2011, Sequoia Capital invested about $8 million for more than 15% of the company, after months of negotiation by Sequoia partner Jim Goetz.By February 2013, WhatsApp had about 200 million active users and 50 staff members. Sequoia invested another $50 million, and WhatsApp was valued at $1.5 billion. Some time in 2013 WhatsApp acquired Santa Clara-based startup SkyMobius, the developers of Vtok, a video and voice calling app.In a December 2013 blog post, WhatsApp claimed that 400 million active users used the service each month. The year 2013 ended with $148 million in expenses, of which $138 million in losses. 2014–2015 On February 19, 2014, one year after a venture capital financing round at a $1.5 billion valuation, Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms) announced it was acquiring WhatsApp for US$19 billion, its largest acquisition to date. At the time, it was the largest acquisition of a venture-capital-backed company in history. Sequoia Capital received an approximate 5,000% return on its initial investment. Facebook, which was advised by Allen & Co, paid $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook shares, and, advised by Morgan Stanley, an additional $3 billion in restricted stock units granted to WhatsApp's founders Koum and Acton. Employee stock was scheduled to vest over four years subsequent to closing. Days after the announcement, WhatsApp users experienced a loss of service, leading to anger across social media.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".The acquisition caused many users to try, or move to, other message services. Telegram claimed that it acquired 8 million new users; and Line, 2 million. At a keynote presentation at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2014, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp was closely related to the Internet.org vision. A TechCrunch article said about Zuckerberg's vision:The idea, he said, is to develop a group of basic internet services that would be free of charge to use – "a 911 for the internet". These could be a social networking service like Facebook, a messaging service, maybe search and other things like weather. 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. This would give them some context for why they are important, and that will lead them to pay for more services like this – or so the hope goes. Three days after announcing the Facebook purchase, Koum said they were working to introduce voice calls. He also said that new mobile phones would be sold in Germany with the WhatsApp brand, and that their ultimate goal was to be on all smartphones.In August 2014, WhatsApp was the most popular messaging app in the world, with more than 600 million users. By early January 2015, WhatsApp had 700 million monthly users and over 30 billion messages every day. In April 2015, Forbes predicted that between 2012 and 2018, the telecommunications industry would lose $386 billion because of "over-the-top" services like WhatsApp and Skype. That month, WhatsApp had over 800 million users. By September 2015, it had grown to 900 million; and by February 2016, one billion.O.... Discover the Once Upon An App popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Once Upon An App books.

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  • Once Upon a Rose synopsis, comments

    Once Upon a Rose

    Laura Florand

    She stole his roses. Fleeing the spotlight, burnt out rock star Layla“Belle”Dubois seeks refuge in the south of France. That old, halfforgotten heritage in a valley of roses seems ...

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    Once Upon a Wicked Night

    Jennifer Haymore

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    Once Upon A Crime

    Nolon King

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    Once upon a Dream

    Nora Roberts, Jill Gregory, Ruth Ryan Langan & Marianne Willman

    #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts presents four romantic stories of impossible dreams come true...  In Nora Roberts’s “In Dreams,” a beautiful young woman is d...

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    Once Upon a Page

    Jessie Clever

    The most dangerous thing a lady can possess is a profession. Ten years ago, Penelope Paiget promised she’d wait for Samuel Black. But ten years ago, she was only a genteel impover...

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    Kate Carlisle

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    Once Upon a Highland Christmas

    Lecia Cornwall

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    You

    Caroline Kepnes

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    Once Upon a Duke

    Erica Ridley

    Beware romantic spirits from Christmas past... Due to the terms of an estranged relative's will, the Duke of Silkridge must revisit the cold, unforgiving mountains where he lost ev...

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    Once Upon a Romance

    Alex Bailey

    Christmas. Disney. Romance. No greater magic.When Sophie's eightyearold niece, Ariel, asks Santa Claus for a single wish to honor her mom's memory, Sophie knows she must grant it. ...

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    Once Upon a Maiden Lane

    Elizabeth Hoyt

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    Shanna Swendson

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    Once Upon a Time

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    J. Randy Taraborrelli

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    Kait Nolan

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    Lecia Cornwall

    A lush Scottish historical romance in the vein of Karen Ranney and Karen Hawkins.An ancient curse, a pair of meddlesome ghosts, a girl on the run, and a fateful misunderstanding ma...

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    Once Upon an Heirloom

    Kait Nolan

    A blind date on Valentine's Day. What could possibly go wrong? After being duped and robbed by a charming exboyfriend, Sylvie Noll is forced to go to a jewelry store to sell a belo...

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    Richard Harding Davis

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    Once Upon a Time, There Was You

    Elizabeth Berg

    BONUS: This edition contains a Once Upon a Time, There Was You discussion guide.Even on their wedding day, John and Irene sensed that they were about to make a mistake. Years later...

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    Once Upon a Tiger

    Kat Simons

    She’ll never run.Among the tiger shifters, Alexis Tarasova is regarded as fierce and dangerous, with a reputation that would make even the most daring tiger think twice about chall...

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    Once Upon a Broken Heart

    Stephanie Garber

    #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!ONCE UPON A BROKEN HEART marks the launch of a new series from Stephanie Garber about love, curses, and the lengths that people will go to for happily ...

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    Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

    Quentin Tarantino

    Quentin Tarantino’s longawaited first work of fictionat once hilarious, delicious and brutalis the always surprising, sometimes shocking, novelization of his Academy Award winning ...

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    Nora Roberts, Jill Gregory, Ruth Ryan Langan & Marianne Willman

    #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts presents four enchanting tales of castles, spells, and happilyeverafters...In Nora Roberts's "Spellbound," a bewitchingly beautifu...

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    Once Upon The Prairie

    Lenny Davis

    Once Upon The Prairie A Western Romance Novella (The Brides Of Courage, Kansas, Book 1)Married to the meanest rancher in Kansas, unhappy Mina Morlock lives in a golden cage, as he...

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    Once Upon a Time in Russia

    Ben Mezrich

    The New York Times bestselling author of Bringing Down the House and The Accidental Billionaires tells his most incredible story yet: A true drama of obscene wealth, crime, rivalry...

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    Mimi Alford

    #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  “With the benefit of hindsight and good oldfashioned maturity, [Mimi Alford] writes not just about the secret, but the corrosive effect of keepin...

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    The Fairy Tale Bride

    Kelly McClymer

    Miranda Fenster gave up on a happilyeverafter following a disastrous London season. Determined to convince the impeccably proper Duke of Kerstone he was wrong to thwart her brother...

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    Once Upon a Christmas

    Maggie Robinson, Tiffany Clare, J.K. Coi & Elyssa Patrick

    “Four sparkling, sensual, emotionpacked stories from four distinctive talentsit’s like diving into a box of Christmas candy.” Julie Anne Long, USA Today bestselling author The ho...

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    Once Upon a Tower

    Eloisa James

    Once upon a time…A duke fell in loveGowan Stoughton of Craigievar, Duke of Kinross, values order and selfcontrol above all else. So when he meets a lady as serene as she is beautif...

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    Once Upon a River

    Diane Setterfield

    From the instant #1 New York Times bestselling author of the “eerie and fascinating” (USA TODAY) The Thirteenth Tale comes a “swift and entrancing, profound and beautiful” (Madelin...

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    Once Upon A Diamond

    Payton Lane

    When a handsome man walks into Yvonne Smith's jewelry store, she only meant to lighten his somber mood by telling him a silly story. How could she have known Gregory Wood's smile c...

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    Once Upon a Christmas Eve

    Elizabeth Hoyt

    A heartwarming standalone novella from New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Hoyt!Adam Rutledge, Viscount d'Arque, really rather loathes Christmas. The banal cheerfulness. Th...

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    Demelza Carlton

    Fall deeply in love with four mermaids and the heroes who capture their hearts in this mervellous collection of tales.Let a sexy Scotsman pull you from the sea, break a family curs...

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    If the Shoe Fits

    Laurie LeClair

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    Once Upon a Wedding Night

    Sophie Jordan

    An Innocent Deception . . . Lady Meredith Brookshire has every right to Oak Run. Now that she's suddenly husbandless and penniless, where else would she, her addled father, and spi...

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    Patti Callahan

    College student Megs Devonshire sets out to fulfill her younger brother George’s last wish by uncovering the truth behind his favorite story. What transpires is a fascinating look ...

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    Rachel Hauck

    The story that inspired the Hallmark Original movie! He’s a royal prince. She’s an ordinary girl. But this holiday could change everything.Susanna Truitt never dreamed of a great r...

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    Robin Bielman

    Rowan Palotay hopes she never runs into the toohandsome Prince Theodore Chenery ever again after she leaves an embarrassing first impression. But fixing her mistake garners even mo...