Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said WhatsApp mobile messaging service has one billion users — exchanging 42 billion messages daily.
“One billion people now use WhatsApp. There are only a few services that connect more than a billion people. This milestone is an important step towards connecting the entire world,” Mark Zuckerberg posted on Facebook.
Users share 1.6 billion photos and 250 million videos daily in 53 languages on the WhatsApp messaging platform.
WhatsApp’s community has more than doubled since joining Facebook. In 2014, the social media platform acquired WhatsApp for a whopping $19 billion.
“We’ve added the ability for you to call loved ones far away. We’ve dropped the subscription fee and made WhatsApp completely free,” the 31-year-old Facebook founder added.
“Next, we’re going to work to connect more people around the world and make it easier to communicate with businesses.”
Founded by Ukrainian immigrants to America Jan Koum and Brian Acton in 2009, WhatsApp was acquired by social media giant Facebook for $19 billion in 2014.
WhatsApp waived its annual subscription fee because it has not worked well.
“For many years, we have asked some people to pay a fee for using WhatsApp after their first year. As we have grown, we have found that this approach hasn’t worked well,” WhatsApp had said in a blog post recently.
Despite not being able to charge its hundreds of millions of users the annual fee, WhatsApp said it would not subject its users to advertisements.
“Naturally, people might wonder how we plan to keep WhatsApp running without subscription fees and if today’s announcement means we are introducing third-party advertisements. The answer is no.”
IANS
