WhatsApp Messenger is a proprietary cross-platform, encrypted, instant messaging client for smartphones. It uses the Internet to send text messages, documents, images, video, user location and audio messagesto other users using standard cellular mobile numbers.

As of February 2016, WhatsApp had a user base of one billion,making it the most popular messaging application.

WhatsApp Inc., based in Mountain View, California, United States, was acquired by Facebook Inc. on February 19, 2014, for approximately US$19.3 billion.

Whatsapp History:

WhatsApp Inc., was founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, both former employees of Yahoo!. After Koum and Acton left Yahoo! in September 2007, the duo traveled to South America as a break from work. At one point they applied for jobs at Facebook but were rejected. For the rest of the following years Koum relied on his $400,000 savings from Yahoo!. In January 2009, after purchasing an iPhone and realizing that the seven-month-old App Store was about to spawn a whole new industry of apps, he started visiting his friend Alex Fishman in West San Jose where the three would discuss "...having statuses next to individual names of the people," but this was not possible without an iPhone developer, so Fishman introduced Koum to Igor Solomennikov, a developer in Russia that he had found on RentACoder.com. Koum almost immediately chose the name "WhatsApp" because it sounded like "what's up", and a week later on his birthday, on February 24, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California. However, early WhatsApp kept crashing or getting stuck and at a particular point, Koum felt like giving up and looking for a new job, upon which Acton encouraged him to wait for a "few more months".

In June 2009, Apple launched push notifications, letting developers ping users when they were not using an app. Koum updated WhatsApp so that each time the user changed their statuses, it would ping everyone in the user's network.WhatsApp 2.0 was released with a messaging component and the active users suddenly swelled to 250,000. Koum visited Acton, who was still unemployed while managing another startup and decided to join the company. In October Acton persuaded five ex-Yahoo! friends to invest $250,000 in seed funding, and as a result was granted co-founder status and a stake. He officially joined on November 1. After months at beta stage, the application eventually launched in November 2009 exclusively on the App Store for the iPhone. Koum then hired an old friend who lived in Los Angeles, Chris Peiffer, to make the BlackBerry version, which arrived two months later.

WhatsApp was switched from a free to paid service to avoid growing too fast, mainly because the primary cost was sending verification texts to users. In December 2009 WhatsApp for the iPhone was updated to send photos. By early 2011, WhatsApp was in the top 20 of all apps in Apple's U.S. App Store.

In April 2011, the founders agreed to take $7 million from Sequoia Capital on top of their $250,000 seed funding, after months of negotiation with Sequoia partner Jim Goetz. According to Goetz, the venture capital firm originally discovered WhatsApp through an App store tracking system they developed called 'early bird', at a time when the app was much more popular in other countries than in the US. However, it took months for the VC firm to track down Koum and Acton, given that the company didn't have a publicly available address nor signage at the time. All Goetz knew was that they were located in Mountain View, and Sequoia partners "literally walked the streets of Mountain View to see if [they] could intersect with [Koum and Acton]."

By February 2013, WhatsApp's user base had swollen to about 200 million active users and its staff to 50. Sequoia invested another $50 million, valuing WhatsApp at $1.5 billion.

In a December 2013 blog post, WhatsApp claimed that 400 million active users use the service each month. As of April 22, 2014, WhatsApp had over 500 million monthly active users, 700 million photos and 100 million videos were being shared daily, and the messaging system was handling more than 10 billion messages each day. On August 24, 2014, Koum announced on his Twitter account that WhatsApp had over 600 million active users worldwide. At that point WhatsApp was adding about 25 million new users every month, or 833,000 active users per day. With 65 million active users, about 10% of the total worldwide users, India was the largest single country in terms of number of users.

Acquisition by Facebook:

On February 19, 2014, months after a venture capital financing round at a $1.5 billion valuation, Facebook announced it was acquiring WhatsApp for US$19 billion, its largest acquisition to date. Facebook, which was advised by Allen & Co, paid $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook shares, and an additional $3 billion in restricted stock units granted to WhatsApp's founders (advised by Morgan Stanley), Koum and Acton. Employee stock was scheduled to vest over four years subsequent to closing. The transaction was the largest purchase of a company backed by venture capitalists to date. Days after the announcement, WhatsApp users experienced a loss of service, leading to anger across social media.

Platform support:

WhatsApp is Now Available For All Platforms including, Windows Phone To Android And iPhone. WhatsApp is also for symbion mobile phones. recently whatsapp has announce that now whatsapp can be now for desktop and laptop PCs.

WhatsApp Web

Download Whatsapp Desktop App – List of Missing Features

Later but still before expected, Whatsapp has launched it’s desktop application. Windows users are lucky as whatsapp has launched desktop app not only Mac but also for Windows desktop/laptop users. However, I personally feel it’s just a replica of browser application or web edition of whatsapp but still you will have now executable file which will open a new app on your desktop with Whatsapp icon.

How to Download Whatsapp Desktop Client

It’s quite easy to download and install Whatsapp desktop app for your desktop computer or laptop powered with windows and Mac system.

Step 1: Navigate to https://www.whatsapp.com/download/ and download the application file for your windows or Mac system.

Step 2: Once desktop exe file is downloaded, it may take some time to complete installation of required supporting files and may ask to restart your windows computer/laptop too.

Step 3: Now, you may able to open WhatsApp desktop app and first time it will ask you to scan QR code.

Step 4: Open WhatsApp on your mobile device and from setting navigate to Whatsapp web

Step 5: Scan the QR code.

That’s it to download whatsapp desktop app and start using it. But this was not the original topic friends, we still have to see what we are going to miss while using whatsapp through desktop app.

Missing Features on Whatsapp Desktop App

Create New Broadcast List is not possible to achieve through whatsapp desktop app, however existing broadcast list can be used to send broadcast messages.
I still cannot find how to view “starred messages” using whatsapp desktop app.
You won’t get backup options on your desktop app, since it has only mirror of your mobile and all messages are being stored in your mobile app only.
Whatsapp calling is also an key features many users are using, but obviously desktop app won’t be having this feature.
As we know, it’s just a mirror of your mobile app of whatsapp and hence you won’t be able to get photos and other media downloaded locally automatically, however there will be option to download them to your desktop hard drives.

So, these were few of the features I found you might be missing if you rely solely on whatsapp desktop app. Nevertheless, there is nothing to lose to have desktop app for your whatsapp and become more faster in typing, replying and forwarding whatsapp.