THE GOOD TIMES keep-a-rolling for Whatsapp.
The instant messaging application has added another 100 million unique, active users in the first four months of 2014 alone.
That brings its global user total to over 800 million individual users each month.
That’s a whole lot of people typing on their phones.
Given the application had just over half that amount of users when Facebook bought it over just over a year ago, the growth level has been nothing short of phenomenal.
The news was shared with the world in a Facebook post by Whatsapp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum. In his post he made sure to remind the world that active users and registered users are not the same, i.e. all of the 800 million users cited actually use the service.
It seems Facebook’s faith in the company was more than well-founded – Mark Zuckerberg’s original social media behemoth acquired Whatsapp last year in a deal worth an eye-watering €18 billion.
Whatsapp users currently send more than 30 billion messages per day via the app. Mind-boggling.
As popular as instant messaging apps like Whatsapp are, not everyone is enamored with the encrypted nature of their services (i.e. outside agencies can’t decode them, making them very useful for the likes of terrorist cells).
In January, British Prime Minister David Cameron asserted that should his party win the next general election he would seek to ban any services that could not be accessed by security services even with a warrant.
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