WhatsApp incorporated multimedia messaging later in the same year, and was released on Android the following. From that point, WhatsApp marched to ubiquitous status. By October 2011, one billion messages were being sent per day; by early 2013, WhatsApp could boast 200 million active users.
"We're excited to share that, as of today, WhatsApp supports more than two billion users around the world. Mothers and fathers can reach their loved ones no matter where they are. Brothers and sisters can share moments that matter. Coworkers can collaborate, and businesses can grow by easily connecting with their customers. Private conversations that once were only possible face-to-face can now take place across great distances through instant chats and video calling. There are so many significant and special moments that take place over WhatsApp and we are humbled and honored to reach this milestone."
WhatsApp Hits 2 Billion Users
WhatsApp hit 1.5 billion users back in 2018, so it's taken two years to reach this next stage, but as noted, it's now starting to gain more momentum in regions like India, where Facebook is already looking at the next stage, and how it can expand into WhatsApp business use.
WhatsApp announced that it had hit the two billion user milestone on February 12. Those users are now being exposed to a recurring security risk. That risk revolves around a warning that spread about a malicious WhatsApp message that first appeared back in 2016. The warning, which spread virally as these things have a habit of doing, involved a supposed WhatsApp invitation to upgrade to WhatsApp Gold. Accept the invite, and users would be asked to click a download link, which in turn would install malware on their device. This special edition app never, of course, existed. Nor, as far as I can tell, did the WhatsApp invitation that people were warning about or, indeed, any malware payload. It was, dear reader, a hoax. A viral hoax that existed, for all intents and purposes, just to spread to as many users as possible. And now it is back, and there are security implications, which is why I'm warning, erm, about the warning.
WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app globally has now reached the two billion mark. WhatsApp also took this opportunity to highlight the messaging app's end-to-end encryption and how users should trust it.
WhatsApp's latest subscriber mark comes after the messaging app was known to have around 1.5 billion monthly active users. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the company's last earnings call said around 2.3 billion people use at least one of its services daily. Zuckerberg did not explicitly mention how many users are on WhatsApp. Other Facebook services including Instagram and Messenger also have a similar userbase.
Facebook has set a goal to help 1 billion users become part of what Zuckerberg calls "meaningful groups," in a push to reverse what has become a pronounced decline in community membership around the world. Stronger community engagement on and offline will be key to solving critical global problems like climate change and public health issues, Zuckerberg said.
The 2-billion mark is a testament to Facebook's ability to court and maintain users across both developed and emerging markets. Despite Facebook's scale, the company has managed to sustain impressive user growth. In the company's most recently reported quarter, ending March 31, total monthly users grew 17% year-over-year to 1.94 billion people, from the same period a year earlier. And year-over-year, daily active users in that quarter increased by 18% to 1.28 billion.
San Francisco, United States AFP The Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp said Wednesday it now has more than two billion users around the world, as it reaffirmed its stand on the need for strong encryption to protect privacy.
TikTok, for example, launched in September 2016 and by mid-2018 it had already reached half a billion users. To put this in perspective: TikTok gained on average about 20 million new users per month over this period.
With 2.3 billion users, Facebook is the most popular social media platform today. YouTube, Instagram and WeChat follow, with more than a billion users. Tumblr and TikTok come next, with over half a billion users.
WhatsApp is the second Facebook-owned service to reach the 2 billion user milestone. Facebook passed 2 billion monthly users in 2017, but its growth has since slowed amid privacy scandals and increasing scrutiny from officials around the world. Recently, the company has instead emphasized metrics for its "family of apps," which includes Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.
WhatsApp, the messaging service Facebook bought for $19 billion in 2014, hit a major milestone on Thursday. WhatsApp founder Jan Koum said the service now has 900 million monthly active users worldwide.
The Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp said Wednesday it now has more than two billion users around the world as it reaffirmed its commitment to strong encryption to protect privacy.
"WhatsApp started with the goal of creating a service that is simple, reliable, and private for people to use. Today we remain as committed as when we started, to help connect the world privately and to protect the personal communication of two billion users all over the world," the company said in a statement.
The service was started by two former Yahoo! employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum, who sold it to Facebook in a staggering $19 billion deal in 2014. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg had said two years ago that the service was used by 1.5 billion users.
Why it matters: The milestone puts the Facebook-owned app in a high-end tier of 1 billion+ user apps, along with Facebook (2.2 billion users); Facebook Messenger (2.13 billion users); Whatsapp (1.5 billion users); YouTube (1.8 billion users) and WeChat (1 billion users).
The client application was created by WhatsApp Inc. of Mountain View, California, which was acquired by Facebook in February 2014 for approximately US$19.3 billion.[19][20] It became the world's most popular messaging application by 2015,[21][22] and had more than 2 billion users worldwide by February 2020.[23] By 2016, it had become the primary means of Internet communication in regions including Latin America, the Indian subcontinent, and large parts of Europe and Africa.[21]
By February 2013, WhatsApp had about 200 million active users and 50 staff members. Sequoia invested another $50 million, and WhatsApp was valued at $1.5 billion.[24] Some time in 2013[66] WhatsApp acquired Santa Clara-based startup SkyMobius, the developers of Vtok,[67] a video and voice calling app.[68]
On February 19, 2014, one year after a venture capital financing round at a $1.5 billion valuation,[71] Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms) announced it was acquiring WhatsApp for US$19 billion, its largest acquisition to date.[20] At the time, it was the largest acquisition of a venture-capital-backed company in history.[19] Sequoia Capital received an approximate 5,000% return on its initial investment.[72] Facebook, which was advised by Allen & Co, paid $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook shares, and, advised by Morgan Stanley, an additional $3 billion in restricted stock units granted to WhatsApp's founders Koum and Acton.[73] Employee stock was scheduled to vest over four years subsequent to closing.[20] Days after the announcement, WhatsApp users experienced a loss of service, leading to anger across social media.[74]
In August 2014, WhatsApp was the most popular messaging app in the world, with more than 600 million users.[83] By early January 2015, WhatsApp had 700 million monthly users and over 30 billion messages every day.[84] In April 2015, Forbes predicted that between 2012 and 2018, the telecommunications industry would lose $386 billion because of "over-the-top" services like WhatsApp and Skype.[85] That month, WhatsApp had over 800 million users.[86][87] By September 2015, it had grown to 900 million;[88] and by February 2016, one billion.[89]
WhatsApp software automatically compares all the phone numbers from the device's address book with its central database of WhatsApp users to automatically add contacts to the user's WhatsApp contact list. Previously the Android and Nokia Series 40 versions used an MD5-hashed, reversed-version of the phone's IMEI as password,[179] while the iOS version used the phone's Wi-Fi MAC address instead of IMEI.[180][181] A 2012 update now generates a random password on the server side.[182]Alternatively a user can send to any contact in WhatsApp database through the url https:// api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=[phone number] where [phone number] is the number of the contact including the country code.
By April 22, 2014, WhatsApp had over 500 million monthly active users, 700 million photos and 100 million videos were being shared daily, and the messaging system was handling more than 10 billion messages each day.[313][314]
WhatsApp competes with a number of messaging services. They include services like iMessage (estimated 1.3 billion active users[327]), WeChat (1.2 billion active users[328][329]), Telegram (500 million users[330]), Viber (260 million active users[331]), LINE (217 million active users[332]), and Signal (over 50 million active users[333]). Both Telegram and Signal in particular were reported to get registration spikes during WhatsApp outages and controversies.[334][335][336]
On pace to hit 2 billion monthly active users in 2017, Facebook (META -3.00%) is the world's largest social network by a long shot. But exactly how many users does Facebook have? And what can be learned about these users?
1.86 billion: Facebook has 1.86 billion monthly active users -- far ahead of the rest of the world's social networks. The next three largest social networks, for instance, are each 700 million or more users behind Facebook. WhatsApp and Messenger have 1.2 billion monthly active users each, and YouTube has about 1 billion monthly active users as of last count (a complete list of the world's 10 largest social networks can be found here). 2ff7e9595c
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