Whatsapp is edging closer to Facebook when it comes to active monthly users as the green messaging service now has over 1.5 Billion active monthly users. These send over 60 Billion messages between them on a daily —This as reported in Facebook’s recent quarterly earnings of Q4 2017.
In retrospect, Whatsapp only had 1.3 Billion monthly active users in July of 2017, of which just 1 billion were active users. In a stretch of 4 months, both numbers have jumped to their current standing of 1.5 Billion monthly active users and 60 billion of messages sent everyday.
Amongst the growing areas on Whatsapp is stories, a Snapchat clone that first found its way to again Facebook owned Instagram before it ever came to Whatsapp. Mark Zuckerberg is quoted to have said that in the near feature, Stories might even replace the Newsfeed as the main medium used to share content on social.
Zuck also said the duo that is Instagram and Whatsapp are the most popular Stories sharing products taking the number 1 and 2 spots respectively.
Questions arose as to why Facebook had to cough an upwards of $15 Billion for Whatsapp but it seems the investment is paying off for the social giant. Monetization queries of the product have almost been silenced with the recent launch of Whatsapp for Business which is also available in Uganda.
Facebook wants to use the product as a way of helping small and medium enterprises to reach out to this 1.5 Billion audience. It will charge them for using special tools within the app covering customer service, broadcast and commerce.
Facebook’s arsenal of social apps also dominate social networking and the list includes Facebook the main app which now has over 2 Billion users, Messenger with over 1.3 Billion users, Whatsapp which now has 1.5 Billion users and Instagram which is soon making a billion users.
