Facebook-owned WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, has reached a new level of popularity.
WhatsApp, with its service that allows users from all over the world to communicate with each other using text messages that do not come with carrier charges, revealed that it has reached the milestone of having 700 million active monthly users. This represents rapid growth for the company, which reported that it only had 600 million active monthly users back in August of last year.
WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum revealed the company's milestone through a post on Facebook, adding that users are collectively sending out 30 billion messages daily.
With the milestone, WhatsApp has become one of the biggest social networks in the world, bigger than the 284 million active monthly users of Twitter and the 300 million active monthly users of Instagram.
Parent company Facebook, however, still holds the top spot among all social networks, with active monthly users reaching as high as 1.3 billion.
"We're grateful that so many of you are using WhatsApp to stay in touch with your friends and family, business colleagues and classmates," wrote Koum in his Facebook post.
WhatsApp's achievement of this milestone will dampen the fears of investors regarding the acquisition strategies of Facebook, as the company's $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp is one of the biggest deals in the history of Silicon Valley.
A spokesman for WhatsApp, however, declined to reveal how many of the 700 million active monthly users are paying users, or if the company's growth has exceeded the expectations of Facebook.
Investors have been pressuring Facebook as they are finding it difficult to accept the view of CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the company's acquisitions will not become meaningful until the monthly users of the businesses and services reach the 1 billion mark.
Last year, Zuckerberg said that within a time frame of five years, services that the company thinks are on their way to reach 1 billion active monthly users include WhatsApp and Instagram.
"And once we get to that scale, then we think that they will start to become meaningful businesses in their own right," Zuckerberg said.
Facebook ordered WhatsApp to keep the company's costs in line and to keep as close to operating on a break-even status as possible as it moves forward to the milestone of 1 billion active monthly users. The order is reportedly the same one that Facebook told to some of the company's other acquisitions.
