Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions from 21 to 26.
If you use instant messaging services, it's very likely that WhatsApp is one of them. But what do you know about it? Did you know that it was invented by Jan Koum, a Ukrainian-born entrepreneur? After he had bought his first iPhone, he got annoyed with missing calls when he went to the gym and WhatsApp grew out of the simple idea that it is good to let people know if you're available. He came up with the name WhatsApp because it sounded like 'What's up?'
There was nothing in Koum's upbringing to suggest that the young Ukrainian would one day change the world of social media. He was brought up in a small village near Kiev. When Koum was sixteen, he emigrated to California with his mother and grandmother, while his father stayed behind and never left Ukraine. It was a hard time for the family who lived in very run-down accommodation.
Koum studied Computer Science and Maths, but at school he came up against bullying from other boys and often got into trouble. In Ukraine, Koum had left behind his close friends and at that time, he looked down on the casual friendships that people had at high school in America and he eventually dropped out of college.
Things changed when he got a job at Yahoo in the early 2000s. First, he met Brian Acton, who would go on to co-found WhatsApp. When Koum and Acton lef Yahoo in 2007, they applied for jobs at Facebook. Both were turned down.
Following rejection from Facebook, the two friends decided to go travelling in South America, and it was when they returned to the USA that they co-founded WhatsApp. The app didn't take off straight away, which was a real letdown for Koum and Acton. However, in 2014 it had more than 400 million users globally. In the end, the huge success of WhatsApp came down to the excellent user experience. Facebook paid more than $19 billion to acquire WhatsApp, which more than made up for their carlier rojection, turning both Koum and Acton into billionaires.