American Fortune Life

At noon on July 28th, Andy braved the scorching summer sun, finished his "entertainment" in Washington, and came to Silicon Valley. After the team came out of the airport, they went straight to the WhatsApp headquarters. And when it comes to WhatsApp headquarters, I believe everyone will shake their heads and laugh strangely, because it is definitely the "extreme" among all Silicon Valley companies.

Because, so far, the vast majority of people outside the world still cannot clearly locate the mysterious WhatsApp, only knowing that it is in this Mountain View neighborhood in Silicon Valley. . .

The news circulating outside is also based on the bits and pieces revealed by some reporters who have visited the headquarters of WhatsApp. WhatsApp is set up in a very ordinary office building. There is no signboard outside, and there is no sign at the entrance of the company. It is open to the public, and if you want to interview, you have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

For this reason, Andy held a special meeting since the establishment of the WhatsApp company, and told everyone not to disclose the address to the media. The outside world can only know that the office is located in a certain block in downtown Mountain View.

What is even more jaw-dropping is that on all the external materials of WhatsApp, there is only a faint sentence "We are hiding in a corner of Silicon Valley", but the zip code is attached at the back, which looks like a pre-adolescent boy A cunning connotation of teasing someone.

Of course, apart from pretending to be mysterious and having some mischievous meanings, in the final analysis, Andy's purpose of keeping it mysterious is not intentional to mediate with the outside world. In fact, this is the same as people's anonymity on the Internet. Andy is protecting his employees and office space from being disturbed, so that his employees can concentrate on technology and provide more perfect products and services.

In fact, the reason why Andy used the company name WhatsApp at the beginning was also because of a bit of bad taste. If you read WhatsApp a little faster, does it sound like the greeting "What'sup" in English with a slightly teasing tone?

This witty homonym has long been interpreted by the media, saying that it means Andy Smith greeted Facebook, and as some functions of the two companies overlap, the meaning of greeting is even more interesting.

When Andy walked into the office building with a group of bodyguards, the receptionist rushed forward to greet him, and Andy just smiled and nodded, then stepped briskly on the steps to the third floor, in the office hall on the third floor, On the front wall was Andy's handwritten words "No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!", which was made into a big slogan, and there was no one there. At this time, it was lunch break. The desks of programmers and engineers are littered with headphones, well-crafted headphone stands, Lego cars and dart boards. On each table is a metallic Apple desktop.

The office that Andy used was hidden in the far corner. The white door was closed tightly, and a vigorous green plant stood on each side of the door, almost covering the door.

Pushing the door open, the office is fairly spacious and well-lit, very clean and cool. This is not the office that Andy often uses, so the decoration is very simple, a cobblestone-shaped sofa, and a few blue cloth chairs. And a two-meter-four-meter-long desk. Apart from the computer, there are still computers on the desk. A few movie posters that belonged to his goddesses in the past are the most typical decorations, and there is nothing else.

Although, everyone in the company knew that he was coming to the company today, but Andy didn't mobilize the executives and subordinates to welcome him. He didn't want to bring those silly things into the company.

On the boss chair, Andy came to open the drawer, took out two walkie-talkies, turned on one of them, adjusted it, and then said to the walkie-talkie: "I'm Andy Smith, I'm Andy Smith, Jianku Tom and Brian, answer when you hear..."

"Sha-beep-"

"Boss, good afternoon,

I'm Jane, Brian is here, we'll see you right there. "

Hearing the voice from the walkie-talkie, Andy nodded in satisfaction, and then turned off the walkie-talkie after saying a few words, sitting in the boss chair, Andy was full of emotion, WhatsApp is moving towards connecting 500 million people , Services that can reach this level are of inestimable value, how can Andy not be excited, this can be regarded as his personal achievement in promoting the world to be more open and connected.

Jane Combe and Brian Acton are the talents that Andy poached from Yahoo. Jane Combe is in charge of technology, Brian Acton is the CEO and is in charge of the operation of WhatsApp. The two talents and cooperation, Andy is very satisfying.

Since WhatsApp went public, its development can be described as rapid. WhatsApp had 200 million monthly active users in November last year, and 300 million in February this year. Today, WhatsApp’s monthly active users have soared to 500 million, with 70% of them logging in every day. Now, WhatsApp adds 1 million new users every day, and the scale of messages sent every day reaches the number of text messages of global telecommunications, with 1 billion photos and 200 million audio messages every day.

The astonishing performance in terms of user growth has benefited from the fact that WhatsApp has devoted all its energy to how to make its products easier to use, and it does not even require users to create a username or password to use it. It is because of its simplicity and ease of use that WhatsApp has created a classic growth myth.

Although Andy borrowed the functions of several APPs to develop a new instant messaging software, Andy also went through some screening to implement the simplicity of the software and eliminate the harassment of advertisements.

At the same time, one of the biggest features has been improved, that is, it can display whether the message you sent has been read by the other party. For a successfully sent message, it will display a small green tick in the lower right corner of the box, and after the other party reads it, it will display two small ticks.

As a person standing on the shoulders of giants, Andy naturally knows that only by grasping young people can he grasp the truth of the market, so he can use Wattsup to display the time when the other party first appeared and the last online time, and can infer whether it is convenient and appropriate now. The contact with the other party is very suitable for the ambiguous meaning to sprout quietly, making Wattsup immediately become a popular dating app that is more conducive to open-minded young Americans to master social standards.

WhatsApp has retained cartoon emojis, and has been in Moments. It plans to use public accounts to make money, but it also directly deletes various magical experiences such as games, news, and shopping. Even the voice function has only recently been launched. But the most important thing is simplicity, no harassment of advertisements, and no dazzling functions. Perhaps because WhatsApp is a local product, Americans like this APP very much.

"...don't worry, we need to focus more on the sustainability of the business, rather than how much it can grow and how fast it can grow, and anxious to make a profit. Believe me, in the future, WhatsApp will become bigger and bigger, and even become a mobile communication platform. No. 1 in the app space."

In the office, Andy read the development plan for the next stage of Wattsup in his hand, smiled and said to the technical director and CEO sitting opposite, "Advertising makes us constantly pursue better cars and more expensive clothes. . We would be delayed by advertising, so we chose to stay away from it."

"I completely agree with this point!" Jane Combe glanced at the CEO Brian sitting next to her, then looked at her big boss, and continued: "No one wants to face the bombardment of advertisements as soon as they open their eyes in the morning. No one wants to go to bed with ads. We know users prefer to be able to chat with their friends without being interrupted.

We hope that WhatsApp is such a product. Advertising not only destroys the aesthetic design of the product, it also destroys the privacy of the user. For companies that sell ads in apps, one of the important tasks of their engineering teams every day is to collect user data in order to deliver more accurate ads to users.

In this case, the user becomes a product. And we Wattsup, our engineers spend all their time and energy on perfecting the product, we are constantly patching product bugs, adding new features, etc. We can make it clear to all users that we have no interest in their private data! "

"We can tell our users about this, and let them know about it. Sometimes, we have to sell our feelings and let our users know that Wattsup is not just a cold technological product, but For daily necessities, what they use is not only products, but also ideas, values, and lifestyles.” Andy’s eyes lit up slightly. For Americans, personal privacy is very important, and this is used as a publicity point. No doubt it will scratch their itch.

Although Andy is also using these big data to promote the development of artificial intelligence programs, he has never thought of selling the data of users, even though almost all Internet companies are doing this, but Andy knows that such Sooner or later, something will happen, and the blow will be much more serious than the little money he earns now, which is why he has taken a fancy to and agreed to acquire the data self-destruct technology.

"Boss, WhatsApp is the only software ever that is likely to be widely used, has more engagement, and now has more people using it every day than Facebook . . . based on our global service of building strong growth and widespread engagement Based on our experience, we believe that the number of WhatsApp users will exceed 1 billion in the next few years.

However, we also have to consider that the growth of WhatsApp will eventually slow down in the future. Both Facebook and INS will, and even have faced this problem. As the user base grows, new users will naturally become more difficult to find. However, our real problem is that Wattsup's natural growth ceiling is built on top of the ceiling of the massive mobile phone network. "

What CEO Brian cares about is not Wattsup's technology and functions, but how to expand the market and how to make profits. As a technology company that has taken off like Wattsup, he really regards Wattsup as a He is doing business, not just fulfilling his professional ethics as a professional manager. For this, he has also devoted a lot of effort.