- The encrypted messaging service Signal will not replace WhatsApp, the co-founder of both apps predicted.
- Signal downloads have skyrocketed since rival WhatsApp announced it would share users’ personal information with parent company Facebook.
- Brian Acton, executive chairman of the Signal Foundation, said there is room for both programs. “I do not want to do all the things that WhatsApp does,” he told TechCrunch.
- He expected people to rely on Signal to talk to family and good friends while still talking to other people via WhatsApp.
- Acton compiled WhatsApp and sold it to Facebook for $ 22 billion in 2014, before leaving the company in 2017.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
The download of the encrypted messaging app Signal has skyrocketed since WhatsApp’s rival announced it would let users share personal information with Facebook, but Signal is not going to replace WhatsApp, the founder of both predicted.
The two programs have different purposes, Brian Acton told TechCrunch on Wednesday. Acton is the executive chairman of the Signal Foundation, which he put together after leaving WhatsApp in 2017. Acton compiled WhatsApp and sold it to Facebook in 2014 for $ 22 billion.
“I do not want to do all the things that WhatsApp does,” Acton said, though he did not specify which WhatsApp features he did not plan to repeat.
He expected people to rely on Signal to talk to family and good friends while still talking to other people via WhatsApp.
“My desire is to give people a choice,” Acton told the publication. “This is not a win-win scenario.”
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Acton was an outspoken critic of Facebook: in 2018, he urged Facebook users to delete their account.
He left WhatsApp in 2017 “due to differences around the use of customer data and targeted advertising.”
He then co-founded Signal in 2018, with current CEO Moxie Marlinspike as a competitive chat show, using $ 50 million of his own money. Since its inception, Signal has focused on privacy and has promised never to sell users’ data or display in-app ads.
On January 6, WhatsApp announced that it was changing its terms of service to force users to share certain personal data, including phone numbers and locations, with Facebook. Users will lose access in February if they do not agree to the changes.
WhatsApp has since clarified that it only affects users outside the European Union and the UK, saying that the change “in no way affects the privacy of your messages with friends or family.”
The changes are moving people now to use Signal, Acton told TechCrunch.
“The smallest events contributed the largest outcomes,” he said.
Signal was installed approximately 7.5 million times in the App Store and Google Play between January 6 and January 10, the app analytics firm Sensor Tower told Insider – an increase of 4,200% over the previous week.
The peer-to-peer messaging app Telegram also dropped sharply after WhatsApp’s data-sharing announcement. It added more than 25 million new users between Saturday and Tuesday.
“We are also excited that we are having discussions about online privacy and digital security and that people are going to Signal as the answer to these questions,” Acton told TechCrunch.
And because Signal is funded by donations from users rather than ads or data sales, the small team of less than 50 people is motivated to keep improving the app, Acton said.
“The idea is that we want to earn the donation,” he told TechCrunch. “The only way to earn that donation is to build an innovative and beautiful product.”