Mobile messaging app WhatsApp claims it now has 430 million active users every month. The huge number might not be shocking in this day and age but it can be quite intimidating for other players in the industry since it just raked in 30 million more active users since December. The volume of messages sent by WhatsApp users may also make telecom companies nervous as it reaches 50 billion messages on a daily basis.
The mobile app that enables users to send text messages, images, video clips, and voice messages through the Internet made headlines when it reported that it had 350 million active users in October and 400 million users last month. It surpassed Twitter with 232 million users and continues to close in on Facebook with 1.2 billion active users.
Looking at its direct competitors' active users per month, WeChat has over 272 million in November and SnapChat has around 30 million as of December. Meanwhile, KakaoTalk boasts of 130 million registered users as of last month.
In an interview at the Digital-Life-Design (DLD) Conference in Germany moderated by Wired editor David Rowan, WhatsApp chief executive and co-founder Jan Koum shared what they have been doing to make the service such a hit and how he envisions the future of the company.
"We feel that we just want to focus on messaging. To us there is a lot of coolness in having a pure and simple messaging and if people want to play games there are plenty of other sites and applications they can go to...there are also a lot of other great companies that are built around advertising," Koum explained after Rowan mentioned about the Post-it that states "no ads, no games, no gimmicks" on the former's office desk.
"We are not focus on monetization today because we are still growing. Someday in the future we will focus on monetization but today we're more interested in making sure that those people who signed up have a great user experience," the WhatsApp Ukraine-born co-founder who dropped out from college explained when asked about the profitability of the business.
Immigrating to the United States was not easy as recalled by Koum. He said technologies were not there to make keeping in touch with family and friends easier. He compared WhatsApp to utilities and why they charge a measly $0.99 a year after letting users test drive it for one year.
The DLD14 interview also touched on other technology and Internet giants, which overcame difficult times and yet stayed independent.
"When we started the company.. we wanted to build something that is here for a long term. Something sustainable. It's not that hard to sell a company but if you look at the great companies that we have today [such as] Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, the companies have been around for a long time because they didn't sell. They actually stuck around, stayed independent, and built a great offering to serve user," Koum pointed out.
Talking about the long term, Koum emphasized that they want to see WhatsApp in every single smartphone in the world with a projection of 5 billion handsets in existence in a few years.
The co-founder of WhatsApp also emphasized on how the company values its users privacy. Without advertisers to please, the company does not collect personal information. The company does not know its users' names, address, or gender. Koum also boasts that even messages are not stored on the company's servers.
To close the talk, Koum said that WhatsApp will remain what it is - loyal to its users - and snub big wigs that will try to say "what's up" and buy them out.
