WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum has revealed that the mobile-based messaging service now has 800 million monthly active users, up from 700 million in January.
Koum posted the update on his Facebook page taking a dig at other messaging services that disclose number of registered users and don’t give details on active users. He said,” WhatsApp – now serving 800,000,000 monthly active users. Reminder for the press out there: active and registered users are not the same thing.”
The figure makes WhatsApp one of the world’s largest in terms of active users, bigger than Twitter’s 288 million active users. Even the photo-sharing service Instagram, counted 300 million users. Facebook’s Messenger app has 600 million monthly active users while Facebook tallies 1.39 billion users signing in every month.
WhatsApp had recently flipped the switch to enable voice calling for all users of its Android app. The feature is still not available yet on the iPhone. It also doesn’t work on Windows Phone handsets, at the moment. The voice calling feature brings WhatsApp in direct clash with apps like WeChat, Viber and Line that already allow users to make calls and send messages. It’s worth noting that WhatsApp has not announced the feature officially.