WhatsApp has a billion users
The short-message service WhatsApp has crossed the 1-billion-user mark, its co-founder said Monday.
Jan Koum announced the milestone on Facebook, which acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for 22 billion dollars. At the time of the acquisition the messaging service had 450 million users.
Facebook has assured WhatApp that it can continue to operate largely independently and its user data can stay separate.
Koum said WhatsApp, which operates in 53 languages, transmits 42 billion messages a day. In addition its users send 1.6 billion photographs and 250 million videos daily, according to Koum.
Internet-based short-message services have surpassed the classic short message services with the advance of mobile phones and faster mobile data networks. WhatsApp is the first of the services to reach
the billion-user mark.