Skip to main content

WhatsApp co-founder to depart after apparent clashes with Facebook

Tobias Hase/Getty Images

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum announced on Monday, April 30, that he’s leaving the company.

Koum launched the messaging app with Brian Acton in 2004 before selling it to Facebook for a colossal $19 billion in 2014. It currently has more than 1.5 billion users.

Related Videos

In a message posted online, Koum simply said that he was “taking some time off to do things I enjoy outside of technology,” but a report in the Washington Post claims his departure comes after a clash with Facebook over data privacy issues as well as the messaging service’s business strategy.

Keeping WhatsApp independent of outside interference — even from the company that bought it — and preserving the privacy of its user data were central to Koum and Acton’s vision for its messaging app. The Post suggested in its report, however, that attempts by Facebook “to use its personal data and weaken its encryption” had caused tensions between the two companies, with the recent data scandal involving Facebook and Cambridge Analytica contributing to “a climate of broader frustration with Facebook among WhatsApp employees,” sources with knowledge of the matter told the news outlet.

Acton departed WhatsApp in November 2017, and in March tweeted his support for the #DeleteFacebook movement that gained momentum in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Koum: ‘Time for me to move on.’

Announcing his departure in a Facebook post, Koum mentions none of the reported issues that apparently prompted him to walk away. Instead, he describes his time with WhatsApp as “an amazing journey with some of the best people,” adding that it was “time for me to move on.”

He continued: “I’m taking some time off to do things I enjoy outside of technology, such as collecting rare air-cooled Porsches, working on my cars and playing ultimate frisbee. And I’ll still be cheering WhatsApp on — just from the outside. Thanks to everyone who has made this journey possible.”

In a comment responding to Koum’s message, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg wrote: “Jan: I will miss working so closely with you. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done to help connect the world, and for everything you’ve taught me, including about encryption and its ability to take power from centralized systems and put it back in people’s hands. Those values will always be at the heart of WhatsApp.”

Growing tension

In WhatsApp’s early days, Koum and Acton made a big deal of their reluctance to collect user data or include ads in the app, a strategy in stark contract to Facebook’s approach. So when Zuckerberg made the pair a multi-billion-dollar offer they couldn’t refuse, Koum and Acton insisted on assurances that the core values behind WhatsApp would stay in place.

But with Facebook keen to score some returns on its investment, the social networking giant eventually got WhatsApp to alter its terms of service to give it access to users’ phone numbers, as well as other data that it could use to benefit its broader business.

Another issue centered on advertising. Following the acquisition, Facebook got WhatsApp to ditch its $1-a-year subscription fee, but with the app’s founders keen to keep ads off the platform, Facebook needed to find other ways to generate revenue. It came up with a tool that allowed businesses to chat more easily with customers, but when Facebook bosses wanted to make it easier for businesses to use the tool, Koum and Acton feared it would mean weakening WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption that it introduced in 2016.

Other gradual changes that pushed Facebook and WhatsApp closer together reportedly served to increase tensions between the two companies, culminating in Koum announcing his departure this week, with the Post describing the Ukrainian-born entrepreneur as “worn down by the differences in approach.”

Editors' Recommendations

Twitterrific shuts down after being blocked by Twitter
The Twitterrific bird.

The maker of Twitterrific, a third-party Twitter app for macOS and iOS that launched in 2007 and came to the iPhone before Twitter itself, has been left with no choice but to close it down.

In a message posted on its website on Thursday, The Iconfactory, Twitterrific's developer, said: "We are sorry to say that the app’s sudden and undignified demise is due to an unannounced and undocumented policy change by an increasingly capricious Twitter -- a Twitter that we no longer recognize as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.”

Read more
Guess how much Apple has paid App Store developers — you won’t even be close
Apple's App Store.

Since Apple launched the App Store in 2008, the tech giant has paid out an astonishing $320 billion to developers.

The data was revealed on Tuesday in Apple’s annual analysis of how the company's various services performed over the past year.

Read more
Thanks to Tapbots’ Ivory app, I’m finally ready to ditch Twitter for good
Profile displayed in Ivory app

Ever since Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter, it’s been one chaotic new thing after another. You literally cannot go a day (or a few days or even a week) without some stupid new change to the site — whether it’s about checkmarks for verified or Twitter Blue subscriber accounts, how links to other social networks are banned and then reversed, view counts on Tweets, or something else. I can’t keep up with every little thing that has happened since the beginning of November, and it feels like the spotlight is always on the toxicity of the site in general.

New Twitter alternatives have been popping up recently, but it seems that the most popular one continues to be Mastodon. I originally made a Mastodon account back in 2018 when it first launched, but it never clicked with me back then, and I eventually went back to Twitter. With the Musk mess, I tried going back to Mastodon, but again, it didn’t really click with me — until Tweetbot developer, Tapbots, revealed its next project: Ivory.
The significance of Tapbots and Tweetbot

Read more