Smartphone instant messaging app WhatsApp is currently posing to be the world's biggest instant messaging application. Just recently, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Jan Koum confirmed that that WhatsApp has reached a milestone of 700 million active users.
Since the company's acquisition of Facebook in February 2014, WhatsApp's user base has grown exponentially. Some experts even say that it could achieve the one billion mark faster than that of Facebook. Last Aug. the app has 600 million active users and in just a span of less than four months the app has managed to gain 100 million additional users.
Koum shared on his Facebook account, "Today, we're thrilled to share that WhatsApp has more than 700 million monthly active users. Additionally, every day our users now send over 30 billion messages."
In February 2014, WhatsApp's users total to roughly around 4.5million and a market valuation of $1.5 billion and Facebook acquired the company for $19 billion, Facebook's biggest investment. WhatsApp received $4 billion paid in cash an additional $12 billion was in form of Facebook shares, an additional $3 billion were stock units given to WhatsApp founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton.
Many analysts concluded that the acquisition from Facebook has helped skyrocket WhatsApp into a wider user base. However, WhatsApp's popularity is virtually unknown within the North American region; in fact its biggest user base is in Asia. In Asian market, many instant messaging apps vied for supremacy. Tango, a cross platform instant messaging application, received financial backing from tech giant Alibaba amounting to $215 million. Another messaging app, WeChat is owned by Tencent Holding Limited, a Chinese investment holding company.
Right now, WhatsApp sits confidently in the second spot just behind Facebook as the world most widely used app. Messenger and Instagram are in third and fourth spot. All these companies are owned by Facebook.