Illustration photo shows "likes" on WhatsApp's Facebook page displayed on a laptop screen (Photo : REUTERS/Mal Langsdon)
WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging application company has just rolled out an update which will allow users to make a backup of their conversations on Google Drive.
The company's CEO Jan Koum shared a statistic on his Facebook account informing that they have now gained 800 million active users, Beta News reported.
The update is only for the Android Platform it is available in the latest version of the app, v2.12.45 for Android and can be downloaded from the company's official website. Though an offline conversation backup existed before but the online feature is more convenient for the users. The update is still not available to WhatsApp's iOS and Windows Phone platforms and neither is it available on Google's Play Store, according to IBN Live.
In 2014, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for $19 billion. In August 2014, they had gained 600 million users and in January the number rose to 700 million, within a span of four months 100 million more users have been added making the number grow to 800 million. In November 2014, it was announced that 70 million users are from India.
Also, WhatsApp has provided users with the voice calling feature update last month, this feature has still not arrived on the iOS and Windows phone platforms. WhatsApp is not the first messaging client to provide internet voice calling feature.
Applications such as Viber, Skype, Facebook provides internet voice calling feature, even Hangouts provides this features but it charges for international calls. WhatsApp still has the upper hand over its rivals because of the sheer volume of active users.
The popularity of WhatsApp has increased even more after its graphical overhaul on the Android platform which added material design language.
