WhatsApp Closing In On A Billion Users

WhatsApp, the messaging app Facebook acquired for $19 billion in February 2014, has recently passed the 700 million user mark, the company’s co-founder and CEO Jan Koum announced in a Facebook post yesterday. According to Koum, more than 30 billion (!) messages are sent via WhatsApp every day, alongside hundreds of millions of photos and videos that are shared within the app.

Since WhatsApp last shared its user number in August 2014, the service added another 100 million to its impressively large user base. WhatsApp even managed to grow quicker than its parent company Facebook once did. Between March 2009 and April 2011, it took Facebook 25 months to grow its active user base from 200 to 700 million – WhatsApp managed to do so in just 21 months, as our chart illustrates.

Considering the unrelenting pace of its user growth, it seems like a matter of time until WhatsApp replicates one of its parent company’s biggest achievements: reaching a billion monthly active users.