AUD hosts Jan Koum Co-Founder and CEO of WhatsApp

The Mohammed bin Rashid School for Communication (MBRSC) of the American University in Dubai (AUD) welcomed Jan Koum, Co-Founder and CEO of WhatApp Messenger, as a guest speaker during the school's interactive Media Chat session, which focused on how ideas can be turned into multi-million dollar businesses. The talk was attended by Dr. Lance de Masi, President of AUD, Elias Bou Saab, Executive Vice-President of AUD, Ali Jaber, Dean of MBRSC, Osman Sultan, CEO of du Telecom and member of the MBRSC Advisory Board and Neeraj Arora, Head of Business Development for WhatsApp, in addition to a large number of students, AUD faculty and staff members. During the session, Mr. Koum talked about how he and his colleague Brian Acton came up with the concept of building a business based on the idea of connecting people from all over the world through mobile messaging. He proceeded to explain that innovation, sustainability and the consistency of his application were the keys of their business' success, and announced that WhatsApp had now over 350 million active users. When the students asked him if WhatsApp will be featuring advertising like many other applications in order to increase its profit, Koum assured them that the company would never add such features, keeping with his now renowned rejection of turning the application into a broader platform. The interactive chat and Koum's engaging discussion encouraged the AUD community to ask him various questions related to the applications' features, technical details and the company's challenges within the current competitive market and its future plans regarding spam, the importance of privacy, innovation, and business growth. The Media Chats, held on a regular basis over the past two years at AUD, host distinguished media specialists, renowned producers, journalists and broadcasters and is an initiative considered among one of the most important activities organised by the School for Communication, as they aim to benefit students with the knowledge and expertise of media professionals. WhatsApp is a cross-platform mobile messaging app, which allows people to exchange messages across the Internet for free. WhatsApp Messenger is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia and all of the phones can message each other. In addition to basic messaging, WhatsApp users can create groups, send each other images, video and audio media messages.