American Fortune Life

At noon on July 28, Andy, facing the scorching sun in midsummer, ended his "entertainment" in Washington and came to Silicon Valley. After the team came out of the airport, it went straight to whats headquarters. Speaking of whats headquarters, I believe that everyone will shake their heads and look grotesque, because it is definitely the "need" of all Silicon Valley companies.

Because, so far, the vast majority of people outside the world still can't clearly locate the mysterious whats, only know that it is in this Mountain View neighborhood of Silicon Valley ...

The news circulating outside is also based on a little bit of content revealed by some reporters who visited the headquarters of whats. The whats company is set up in an extremely ordinary office building. There are no signboards on the outside. There is no sign on the door of the company. Reporters are not allowed to put addresses. It is open to the public, and confidentiality agreements are also required for interviews.

To this end, Andy has held a special meeting since the establishment of whats company, and told everyone not to disclose the address to the media, and the outside world can only know that the office is located in a certain block of Mountain View City.

What's more embarrassing is that whats company only faintly wrote "We are hiding in the corner of Silicon Valley" on all the external materials, but the postcode is attached at the back, which is mostly a prepubertal boy The tricky meaning of teasing others.

Of course, in addition to pretending to be mysterious, with some mischief, but in the final analysis, Andy's purpose of keeping mystery so deliberate is not to intentionally mediate with the outside world. In fact, this is just the same as people's anonymity online. Andy is protecting its employees and office space from being disturbed, so that its employees can devote themselves to technology and provide more perfect products and services.

In fact, the reason why Andy used the company name of whats at the same time was because of a bit of bad taste, saying whats faster, doesn't it sound like a slightly ridiculous “what’sup” in English?

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

When Andy brought a group of bodyguards into the office building, the front desk hurried forward to greet him. Andy just nodded with a smile and stepped on the steps briskly, and went up to the third floor, in the third floor office lobby. On the front wall is Andy's handwritten "No ads! No games! No gimmicks!" Sentence, was made into a big slogan, empty, at this time, it was lunch break. On the desks of programmers and engineers, there are headphones, well-made headphone stands, Lego car models and dart boards. On each table was a metallic Apple desktop.

The office that Andy used was hidden in the farthest corner. The white room door was tightly closed, and a vigorous green plant stood on each side of the doorway, which almost covered the door.

It was spacious and well-lit in the office, which was very clean and cool. This is not an office that Andy often uses. All of it is very simple in decoration, a set of cobblestone sofas, and several blue cloth chairs. And a two-meter-long desk, in addition to the computer or computer on the desk, several movie posters belonging to his goddess in the past are the most typical decoration, no other.

Although everyone at the company knew that he was coming to the company today, Andy did not enthusiastically let the senior executives and his subordinates greet themselves. He didn't want to bring the company into the company for those imaginary things.

On the boss chair, Andy came to open the drawer, took out two walkie-talkies from it, opened one, adjusted it, and said to the walkie-talkie: "I'm Andy Smith, I'm Andy Smith, Jane Ku And Brian, please answer when you hear ... "

"Sand-du"

"Boss, good noon. I'm Jane. Brian is next to us. We'll see you right away."

After hearing the words from the walkie-talkie, Andy nodded with satisfaction, and then asked for a sentence, then turned off the walkie-talkie, sitting on the boss chair, Andy was full of emotion, whats is moving towards connecting 500 million people The services that can reach this level have immeasurable value. How can Andy not be excited? This is also his achievement to personally promote a more open and connected world.

Jankum and Brian Acton are talents that Andy has dug from Yahoo. Jankum is responsible for the technology, Brian Acton is the ceo and responsible for the operation of the whats company. The two are talented and cooperative. Andy is very satisfied.

Since the launch of whats, its development can be described as rapid. In November last year, the monthly active users of whats was 200 million, and in February this year was 300 million. Now, the monthly active users of whats has soared to 500 million, of which 70% of users log in daily. Now, whats will add 1 million users every day, and the number of messages sent daily will reach the number of global telecommunications text messages, with 1 billion photos and 200 million audio messages every day.

The amazing performance in user growth is due to whats has spent all his energy on how to make their products easier to use, without even requiring users to create usernames or passwords to use them. Because of its simplicity, whats has created a classic growth myth.

Although Andy borrowed a variety of functions and developed new instant messaging software, Andy also went through some screenings to implement the simplicity of the software and eliminate the harassment of advertisements.

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

As a person standing on the shoulders of giants, Andy naturally knows how to seize young people in order to seize the market. Therefore, using Watts Pu can show the time when the other party first appeared, and the last online time. The contact of the other party is very suitable for the ambiguous meaning to sprout quietly, allowing Watts to immediately become a more open American younger master of the Jiao standard hot dating.

Whats retains cartoon expressions, already has a circle of friends, and is ready to use public accounts to collect money, but also directly deletes all kinds of magical experiences such as games, news, shopping, and even voice functions have only recently been listed. But it's simple, no harassment of advertising, no dazzling features. Perhaps even more because whats is a local product, Americans like it very much.

"... Don't worry, we need to focus more on the sustainability of the business, rather than how fast it can develop, mostly fast, and eager to make a profit. Believe me, whats will become bigger and bigger in the future, and even become a mobile communication application. Leading program leader. "

In the office, Andy read the development plan of the next phase of Watts & Co., and smiled and said the technical director and ceo sitting opposite, "Advertising keeps us pursuing better cars and more expensive clothes. . We are delayed by the ads, so we choose to stay away from it. "

"I totally agree with this!" Jankum glanced at Ceo Brian sitting next to him, then looked at his big boss, and continued: "No one wants to face the blast of advertising as soon as he opens his eyes in the morning. Nobody wants to go to bed with ads. We know that users want to be able to chat with friends without being disturbed.

We hope whats 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, an important task of their engineering team every day is to collect user data in order to deliver more accurate ad delivery to users.

In this case, the user becomes a product. And we Wattz, our engineers spend all their time and energy on improving the product, we constantly patch the product's loopholes, add new features, and so on. We can make all users understand that we have no interest in their private data! "

"At this point, we can tell our users and let them know about them. Sometimes, we also want to sell our feelings. Let our users know that Watzip is not just a cold technology product, but For daily necessities, they use not only products, but also ideas, values, and lifestyles. "Andy's eyes lightened slightly. For Americans, personal privacy is very important, and this is used as a publicity point. No doubt they can scratch their itch.

Although Andy is also using these big data to promote the development of artificial intelligence programs, but never thought of using user data to sell, even though almost all Internet companies are doing this, but Andy knows, so If something happens sooner or later, the impact will be much more serious than the little money he makes now, which is why he is fancy and agrees to acquire data self-destruct technology.

"Boss, whats is the only software ever to be widely available, it has more engagement, and now more people use it every day than Facebook ... based on our ability to build strong growth and broad participation in global services With experience, we believe that whats users will exceed 1 billion in the next few years.

However, we also have to consider the future growth of whats will eventually slow down. Whether it is Facebook or ins, this problem has already been faced, and as the user base grows, new users will naturally become more difficult to find. However, our real problem is that the natural growth ceiling of Watzup is built on the ceiling of a large-scale mobile phone network. "

eo Brian doesn't care about Vatspo's technology and functions. He cares more about how to expand the market and how to make money. As a technology company that has taken off, Vatspo really considers Vatspo as a He is doing a career, not just fulfilling the professional ethics of his professional manager. To this end, he also put in a lot of effort.