What phrase is the name WhatsApp meant to sound like?
Answer
what's up
What phrase is the name WhatsApp meant to sound like? WhatsApp was named to sound like the phrase “what’s up.”
Jan Koum chose the name in 2009 while developing a mobile application that initially displayed users’ statuses in their phone contacts. The wordplay connected a casual greeting with the app’s social purpose: letting people indicate what they were doing and communicate with friends.
WhatsApp Inc. was incorporated in California on February 24, 2009, and the service appeared on the Apple App Store in May of that year. Early versions focused on status updates, but Apple’s introduction of push notifications in June 2009 helped turn the application into a practical messaging service.
The name is a pun rather than a technical description. It is not derived from “chat up,” “who’s there,” or “what now,” and the spelling “WhatsApp” combines the conversational sound of “what’s up” with the familiar word “app.” Brian Acton later joined Koum as co-founder, and Facebook acquired the company in 2014.