If WhatsApp keeps up its recent pace of user growth, the messaging app will have a billion monthly active users by the end of 2015.
CEO Jan Koum recently announced the app has crossed the 800 million MAU mark.
This makes WhatsApp the most popular messaging app in the world, with nearly 200 million more users than the messaging platform of its parent company, Facebook.
WhatsApp hit 600 million MAUs back in August of 2014, and then crossed the 700 million threshold in January of this year. Keeping that pace, WhatsApp should have over a billion MAUs by year’s end.
WhatsApp – now serving 800,000,000 monthly active users. Reminder for the press out there: active and registered users are not the same thing 🙂
Posted by Jan Koum on Friday, April 17, 2015
Facebook’s $22 billion acquisition of WhatsApp officially closed last October – after the Federal Trade Commission approved the deal in April and the EU commission gave it the go-ahead in late September.
Facebook has kind of been sitting on WhatsApp, letting it grow its user base before making any major changes to it. Facebook isn’t going to put ads all over WhatsApp – yet.
Last October, Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook has no immediate plans to further monetize WhatsApp.
I say “further” monetize WhatsApp because technically, the company does have a subscription structure. WhatsApp costs $0.99 a year, but only after the first year.
But like another Facebook-owned company, Instagram, WhatsApp is moving slowly when it comes to Facebook meddling.