Signal co-founder Brian Acton on WhatsApp and the future of private messaging: Building for India means building for the whole world
Signal and Telegram have now emerged as an alternative to WhatsApp. Apart from this, these apps have also received good endorsements from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who have openly supported Signal and Telegram in place of WhatsApp.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp is clarifying about its policy update that it will not affect the data and privacy of regular users. But in the meantime, a large number of users are continuously increasing on apps like Signal and Telegram which have emerged as an alternative to WhatsApp.
Signal is run by a non-profit organization. Its co-founder is Brian Acton, who has also been the founder of WhatsApp. Acton and Jan Koum sold WhatsApp to Facebook in 2014. After this, Acton left the company in 2017, the reason behind which was said to be some dispute with Facebook regarding the monetization of WhatsApp.
NDTV has now taken an interview with Acton, in which he has given information about Signal’s Indian plans. Apart from this, apart from the donation only business model, he has also given information about how the Signal platform is different from WhatsApp.
NDTV: Signal is currently at the top of the global app store. With all the growth, what is the pace at which Signal is moving?
Brian Acton’s answer: We are expanding our servers so that we have enough capacity for our users. Right now, we have managed the growth in the number of people on our app. Obviously, I have this kind of experience because I have been in the industry for a long time. Apart from this, we are excited because a lot of Indians have signed up for Signal in the last few years. We are looking forward to the feedback on our platform from Indian users. I know that people are eager to try and explore Signal and this is an opportunity for us to grow further.
Signal is now being compared to WhatsApp. Both the products you created are now competing with each other? How do you feel about this? What are the features in Signal that make it ahead of WhatsApp?
I think where we can see Signal scoring ahead of WhatsApp is in the privacy category. You can see it like the privacy label on the App Store for iPhone apps. We have privacy features, things like disappearing messages. Everything is encrypted here, including metadata. WhatsApp has 400 million users in India. It’s a huge market. We are excited to tell Indian users about our product. We want to give them an option where they don’t have to compromise on their online privacy, digital privacy.
Signal has so far relied on phone numbers which are still linked to the users’ identity. Are you planning to introduce user IDs which will make users completely secure?
I think we can work on these ideas. This will give users another help for privacy protection. Our aim is to make users’ privacy secure, to which we are committed. This is the feature about which we get the most suggestions.
What are your plans for growth in India? Will you bring language support to grow in India? Apart from this, will you add some new features according to India?
India is a country with a diverse culture. We are already providing language support there. We are providing support in 12 different languages including Hindi. This includes Urdu as well. We have got some good suggestions from India. I have very good friends and colleagues in India who live in Erode, Tamil Nadu. I talk to them every day. They tell me what is happening in India. This helps me understand the market there. They give me product ideas. India is a country with such a strong representation of the world that if you build for India, you will build for the world.
Have you ever been to India? When can we see you in India?
Yes, I have been to India twice. I have visited Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and other places there. I want to see the Taj Mahal, which I have not seen yet. However, I also want to go back to Bangalore and Mumbai.
