Whatsapp hits 700 Million Active Month Users sending 30 Billion Messages Daily
Jan Koum, the CEO and cofounder of WhatsApp, has
rung in the new year with a Facebook post touting the messaging apps’ user
numbers. WhatsApp now has 700 million monthly active users, up from 600 million
at the end of August.
Those users combine to send more
than 30 billion daily messages. That’s more than four messages for every person
on earth.
Facebook acquired the messaging app
in February for a then shocking $16 billion (plus another $3 billion on stock
incentives). Since then, the app has steadily added users, leading some to
predict that it would top 1 billion faster than Facebook.
At 700 million, WhatsApp has a
little more than half as many users as Facebook.
WhatsApp is relatively unknown in
the U.S. compared to its international footprint, which is particularly large
in Asia. Messaging in Asia is particularly competitive, attracting investments
from other major tech companies. E-commerce giant Alibaba took a $215 million
stake in Tango, and Chinese conglomerate Tencent owns WeChat.
Messaging apps have come to
prominence as smartphone adoption has grown in the U.S. as well as in emerging
markets. India, China, Indonesia and South Africa will show the greatest growth
in smartphone sales, according to projections from consumer analyst Gfk.
Monthly active users is the most
popular metric used to analyze the size and often the success of tech companies.
Recently, some influential voices, such as Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, have
begun to question whether that is really the most important measurement.
The timing of WhatsApp’s
announcement, coming the same day as Williams posted his thoughts on users to
his blogging platform Medium, caused some to wonder if it was just coincidence.
(H/T: Mashable)
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