What makes our product work is the way we're tightly focused on messaging and being an SMS replacement.
From Jan Koum
The message growth rate in Brazil - it's not like a hockey stick: it's like a vertical line.
I grew up watching Indian movies as a kid in Russia. I am quite familiar with Bollywood.
I grew up watching 'Disco Dancer'. I watched it some 20 times as a kid.
A lot of my time, effort, and focus is spent on 'WhatsApp'. And that, to me, is more valuable and rewarding than to work on anything else.
Nobody should have the right to eavesdrop, or you become a totalitarian state - the kind of state I escaped as a kid to come to this country where you have democracy and freedom of speech.
If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn't have done it.
Our focus remains on delivering the promise of WhatsApp far and wide so that people around the world have the freedom to speak their mind without fear.
Our team has always believed that neither cost and distance should ever prevent people from connecting with their friends and loved ones, and won't rest until everyone, everywhere is empowered with that opportunity.
Everybody I meet who uses 'WhatsApp', I ask them a question: 'How did you hear about it?' And they say, 'My friends, my sister or my brother, somebody I know hounded me to install WhatsApp.' We think there is more power to the network when it grows organically.
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