WhatsApp co-founder Jan Korum tried to explain that completely private communication was a matter of principle for him, and was something he personally felt strongly about. Having grown up in the USSR during the 1980s, wherein they “couldn’t speak freely without the fear that (their) communications would be monitored by KGB,” that had inspired their decision to move to the United States when he was a teenager. The blog further reads, “Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA, and we built WhatsApp around the goal of knowing as little about you as possible. None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we really have no plans to change that. If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn’t have done it.”
They had announced in January last year itself of their plans to experiment with collaborating and charging businesses and organisations that users want to hear from, to let them message users through WhatsApp. Having said that, the company has reportedly already been surveying users to understand to what extent and in what arenas would they like to send and receive communication to business, in order to rip out the scope for spam as far as possible.
The co founder said that the long term goals of the company were to include a revenue stream by perhaps trying to use digital payment services, like PayTM is operated in India.