WhatsApp Gains 900 Million Active Users
According to stats shared by Jan Koum on Friday, WhatsApp now has more than 900 million active users. It took the instant messaging service no more than five months to gain the last 100 million users. After making the announcement of having secured 800 million monthly active users in April, it was not a long a stretch before the company covered another 100 million.
Earlier this year in January, WhatsApp had made the announcement that the instant messaging service was being used by people all over the world to send over 30 billion messages per day. This was way more than the estimated 20 billion SMS texts that are exchanged every day.
Facebook-owned-WhatsApp has continued to keep its users happy and hooked with the addition of a new feature every now and then like the addition of fancy, colourful emoticons and voice calling. Founded in 2009 by two former Yahoo employees, Brian Acton and Jan Koum, WhatsApp allows its services to be used for free for the first year, and charges a nominal $0.99 (roughly Rs. 55) for every year afterwards.
Even though other instant messaging names like Google’s HangOuts and WeChat shy away from revealing their figures, WhatsApp has gone ahead to do otherwise, drawing attention to the growing presence of social media in our lives.
