Acton, who now funds the encrypted messaging app Signal, famously tweeted “#deletefacebook” during the height of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
While the blog post doesn’t name Facebook specifically, it’s no secret that WhatsApp’s two cofounders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, left Facebook over disagreements about plans to monetize WhatsApp with ads. Imagine not being treated like a product.” Imagine scrolling through meaningful moments and seeing what you wanted you to see-not what the algorithm wanted you to see. “Imagine your feed wasn’t filled with people and posts you didn’t care about. “Imagine your friends online were your real friends,” he wrote. There are no algorithms sorting posts or group chats.Īrora laid out the philosophy behind HalloApp in a company blog post on Monday, in which positions it as the antidote to traditional, engagement-driven social media, or “the 21st century cigarette.” HalloApp is broken up into four main tabs-a home feed of posts from your friends, group chats, individual chats, and settings-and its overall aesthetic is very minimal. “Imagine not being treated like a product.” But they did recently sit down for an interview on Christopher Lochhead’s “Follow Your Different” podcast, in which Arora said, “I think the best way to grow is to create an amazing product that people love to tell their friends and family about.” And Donohue was WhatsApp’s engineering director for nearly nine years before he left Facebook in 2019.īoth Arora and Donohue declined to be interviewed for this story, citing a desire to avoid press attention so early in the app’s lifespan.
Arora was WhatsApp’s chief business officer until 2018 and a key figure in negotiating the Facebook deal. They both worked at WhatsApp before and after Facebook bought it for $22 billion.
While other startups have over the years tried and failed to build successful social networks for close friends ( RIP Path), the pedigree of HalloApp’s two cofounders, Neeraj Arora and Michael Donohue, makes this particular effort notable. There are many parallels between HalloApp and WhatsApp: the app is designed for group or individual chats with close friends and family, the only way you can find people is by knowing their phone number, the messages are encrypted, and there are no ads. Starting Monday, anyone can download and sign up for HalloApp in Apple’s App Store and Google Play on Android devices. Two of the earliest employees behind WhatsApp have emerged with a new private social network called HalloApp.
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