WhatsApp Announces 400 Million Active Users

In a big announcement yesterday, popular messaging service WhatsApp has announced that it now has 400 million active users.

The news marks the culmination of several mobile messaging services revealing a number of shady figures regarding their user base. Last most Line said it had 300 million users, and Kik Interactive announced that it had 100 million users last week, however these figures are somewhat inflated, and could be anything from number of downloads to pages views…

Yesterday, WhatsApp announced that it had 400 million active users, not downloads or page views, but active users who regularly use their service. WhatsApp’s user base has grown by 100 million active users since August, and its users now send 16 billion messages a day, with around 32 billion being received each day, meaning that it handles some 48 billion messages every day, along with 500 million images. Despite this it has just 50 employees.

In a statement to AllThingsD, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said:

“We want to steer the conversation to be about active users, not registered users…We’re a bit fed up and frustrated about people talking about registered users. We think it’s important for us as a leader in the space to speak up and be ethical.”

It’s awesome to see WhatsApp posting some pretty phenomenal growth, despite the popularity of rival messaging services and the introduction of BBM into the fray.

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