With so many messenger apps available at the moment – Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Skype, Viber, Line, BBM, KakaoTalk, WeChat, etc. – how does one know which one to choose? Well at the moment it looks like WhatsApp could be the way to go because 700 million monthly active users can’t be wrong, right?
This was revealed by WhatsApp’s CEO Jan Koum on Facebook where he revealed the latest figures of the messenger platform. “Today, we’re thrilled to share that WhatsApp has more than 700 million monthly active users. Additionally, every day our users now send over 30 billion messages.” 700 million is indeed an impressive figure as last we heard, which was almost a year ago, WhatsApp boasted half a billion users.
For the platform to grow by 200 million in less than a year is mighty impressive indeed. We reckon Facebook has to be pretty chuffed about it as well, given that back in 2014 they acquired the company for a whopping $16 billion. However interestingly enough Facebook has no plans to monetize WhatsApp in the near future beyond its $1 a year subscription fee.
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg also expressed his confidence that WhatsApp could very well hit the 2-3 billion mark in the coming years and given the rate the messenger platform is growing, we can’t say we’re too surprised. However WhatsApp will have to keep an eye on the competition such as WeChat who announced early last year that they had managed to nab 355 million active users to date.