Social networking giant Facebook acquired the messaging giant WhatsApp in 2014. Ever since, both the giants are killing it together. The app’s founder Jan Koum announced on Facebook that it has now reached 900 million monthly active users (MAU) mark. It was just less than five months ago that the company had reached the 800 million mark. This clearly indicates growth of a 100 million in just 5 months. The number is getting closer to that of Facebook, which announced 1.49 billion MAUs in June this year.
The leading app in the instant messaging space has been downloaded a billion times over android, so this new growth figure is absolutely not surprising. If the app crosses a billion user mark, it would have just taken less than seven years for it to touch that milestone. Lesser in comparison with Facebook which took 8 years to land there.
Here is a graph that shows tremendous WhatsApp growth over past 2.5 years – They have added 700 million users Since April 2013.
In the announcements Facebook made this year in its second quarter, it announced that its monthly active user base had grown to 1.49 billion, the daily active user base being 968 million. But the interesting fact in here is that 655 million users accessed Facebook only on their mobile phones.
This, along with WhatsApp’s growth clearly shows us that this phenomenon is a result of the growing smartphone market on the face of the earth. Adding onto it, it is now even percolating in the web section.
The instant messaging app has kept adding more and more users, and has been rising in numbers especially in the Android market. It is now holding the pole position in the messaging space, which has new additions every now and then. It is in competition with its parent company’s own Messenger, WeChat, Line and dozens more. It gets difficult to compare their user base as most of them do not reveal their figures.
This virtual world that we live in now, has completely changed the way we communicate or socialize. There are even times when you’re lazy to communicate to someone in an adjacent room, and we ‘WhatsApp’ them instead. The free-calling service over the Internet has also probably helped the app increase its popularity, as one doesn’t have to pay the telecom company to make calls anymore. International calls have now become free just because of WhatsApp, which was a distant dream at a point in time.
On how lives have changed with people sleeping with phones in hand and waking up to desperately look out for the phones first thing in the morning, the figures which WhatsApp released in January this year will shed more light on; 30 billion messages are sent over WhatsApp each day.
The fortunes of the app, which was founded by two former Yahoo employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum have certainly changed for good after being taken over by the big daddy-Facebook. At this pace, how much more will people glue on to their phones to communicate, and how much more will the virtual world grow, none can ever tell!
Here is a look at WhatsApp’s time line over the years.
| June 2009 | WhatsApp founded by 2 Yahoo Employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum as messaging app which was alternative to SMS. This was first ad-free messaging client and launched at price of 99 cents (it also had 1 free year subscription) |
| April 2011 | Get $8 million Series A funding |
| October 2011 | WhatsApp touched 1 Billion messages per day milestone |
| August 2012 | WhatsApp grows to touch 10 Billion messages per day milestone |
| December 2012 | WhatsApp acquisition rumours are everywhere |
| January 2013 | They reach 18 billion messages per day milestone |
| April 2013 | It’s reported that WhatsApp has turned down acquisition offer from Google |
| June 2013 | WhatsApp announces they have 250 million active users. They create a record of processing 27 billion messages a day |
| October 2013 | 350 Million Active users / 20 million users in India |
| December 2013 | 400 Million users / 54 Billion messages processed at peak |
| February 2014 | Facebook Acquires WhatsApp For A Whopping $19 Billion |
| April 2014 | 500 Million users / 700 Million photos & 100 million videos processed in a day |
| August 2014 | 600 Million Active Users / 60 million users in India |
| November 2014 | 70 million Active users in India alone |
| January 2015 | 700 million Active users globally / 30 billion messages on average every day |
| April 2015 | 800 Million Active users globally |
| Sept 2015 | 900 Million Active users globally |
Do you think it will soon surpass its parent company Facebook?
