WhatsApp Is Well On Its Way To A Billion Users

redletterdave (2493036) writes "In just two months since Facebook dropped $19 billion to buy WhatsApp, the five-year-old mobile messaging app on Tuesday announced its its active user base has grown to more than half a billion people. This is not the first time that an app has seen a major pop in users after it was acquired by Facebook: When Facebook bought Instagram in April 2012, the service boasted some 30 million users. In one month after the deal, Instagram gained 20 million new users. By July, Instagram grew to 80 million active users. WhatsApp seems to be having a similar growth spurt, gaining roughly 25 million users each month since the Facebook deal was announced."

Comments

What??

[DogDude]

This looks like a "messaging" app. It seems like the only point is to get around the few remaining billing plans on the planet that don't have unlimited text messaging. Am I insane thinking that this market niche will only exist for another year, at most? I personally don't know anybody who has to pay for messaging, but I understand that some people in other countries still have to (for now)...

Re: What??

[corychristison]

I personally use Telegram (https://telegram.org/), and have for quite some time now. I like it for various reasons. Mainly its open source, and multi-client.

What I /don't/ like about plain jane SMS is I can't sit back at my desk and message people back who message me. I have to completely break my submersion into my computer, pick up my phone, and type on a tiny (virtual) keyboard. Drives me absolutely insane.

Re:What??

[rallytales]

There are plenty of people using prepaid plans which do not come with unlimited text messages.

Re:What??

[Anonymous Coward]

Literally a lie in any civilized country....

True, but that's because there really aren't any civilized countries on planet Earth

Re:What??

[linuxci]

No prepaid plans in the UK come with unlimited texting.

Almost all the plans on giffgaff.com include unlimited texting. Those from £12/month include unlimited data too.

Re:What??

[TheRaven64]

I switched from giffgaff when they put up their prices and engaged in misleading advertising ('look, we're cheaper than everyone else if you pick the really expensive plans that you have to dig around on their web sites to even find and ignore the ones that are the same price we were offering before we put prices up!'). I guess the difference is what you count as a plan. I regard their goody bags as an add-on, not a plan. On a pre-pay plan you don't get anything included - that's the point. Given that Giffgaff's cheapest goody bag (which expires after a month) costs what I spend on my phone in 3-4 months, I think it reinforces my point. You get unlimited texts only if you buy them in bulk. The 200 minutes and 250MB that the £7.50 goody bag gives you would cost me £8.50, so if I used that much it would be a good deal (although I'd then be paying 7p/minute more for calls above that, so I'd have to be making close to exactly 200 minutes of calls a month for it to make sense). I spend under £2/month on my phone currently though, so it's a pretty poor deal with that in mind.

Not really true

[SuperKendall]

This is going against what almost everyone here predicted would happen with both services: That no one wanted Facebook in their lives...

I think that statement is accurate.

What did not happen was those apps becoming Facebook. If you didn't know Facebook owned them, you might not guess it otherwise... Facebook has only been used to steer users to those apps, not to change what they do.

The same will happen for Oculus.

Re:Not really true

[SuperKendall]

I simply don't trust a company that farms out their userbase's private information for monetary gain,

But the point is they have not done that with either of those two companies (at least not any more than those companies were already doing).

Your mistake is in treating all subsets of a company equally based on what one part is doing. If you want to see change, reward what a company does that you like, do not instead curse them forever for the mistake of one part. Otherwise you will never see change because there is no motivation nor visibility to what people want more.

Re:Not really true

[tompaulco]

While Google claims to have an unofficial "do-no-evil" policy, Facebook makes no such claim and their actions generally follow suit.

So, then Facebook is to be commended for doing evil and not claiming otherwise, while Google is to be lambasted for claiming to not do evil and then doing it.

Re:Not really true

[gerf]

Given these rates of increase, I fully expect 10 Billion active users by the end of the decade, and the stock price should reflect that.

Real users?

[sstamps]

I'm sure Farcebork brought them some more visibility than they had, but what evidence is there that even most of them are actual bona fide new users, rather than just new accounts? FB has a history of having a significant percentage of their "accounts" being little more than "likebots" to float their "pay for likes" scheme.

(See VSauce's channel on YT for a rather telling commentary on the FB "like" scam).

Re:Real users?

[radarskiy]

"what evidence is there"
The $1 per year after the first year of use.

Re:1 in 7

[clovis]

1 in 7 people on Earth uses it and I know none of them. And I know people in India

Same for me, but I also always got picked last at kickball so I'm not surprised the 6 in 7 other people don't tell me about their messaging.

Three problems, at least, with the number of users

[Futurepower(R)]

Exactly. Funny and not funny.

Why do people accept what Facebook says about the number of users? There are problems: 1) No independent verification. 2) Conflict of interest. If Facebook claims more users, Facebook makes more money. 3) Many "users" are people who merely tried something and never came back.

Re:1 in 7

[perryizgr8]

i live in india, and i don't know anybody who does NOT use whatsapp. literally everyone uses it. every nokia phone (dumb/smart), every android, and even some local branded dumbphones have whatsapp. unlimited texting is not a thing over here. data is much, much cheaper. also, with texts you can't send pics, or audio, or video. and sms is not instant messaging. whatsapp is like fb chat, but on your phone.
also, i been using it for 3-4 years, and they always renew my subscription for free every year. and even if this stops happening in the future, 50 bucks (INR) per year is literally negligible compared to any other cost in your life.

Whatsapp is ubiquitous in many places of the world

[Anonymous Coward]

You should just take your heads out of that hole you have it in and look at other countries of the world.
There is a couple of things you should know:
1. No, non unlimited SMS plans are going nowhere in many places and SMS cost so much in some countries that you may pay for your data plan by sending 100-200 SMS a month.
2. Whatsapp has market penetration of over 90% in some countries, and many people from Latin America, many European countries (And I think Asia too, although I'm not too sure whats the scenario there, I know in India is wildly used) will tell you they don't know anyone who doesn't use whatsapp (unless they know an american). I have over 95% of my contacts in Whatsapp, and I haven't received ANY SMS in the past 3-4 years, unless it's spam or a message from the telco letting me know I have a lost call.
3. Whatsapp is very convenient for anyone that lives abroad or has friends abroad, which is becoming an increasing trend (probably in many cases but the US too)
4. Whatsapp is fast, many criticise how simple the app is, but this makes the app very fast, specially in low end phones and thats the reason many use it.
5. You can form groups which is very convenient, send photos, etc which makes it much more convenient than SMS once you get used to it.

Re:Whatsapp is ubiquitous in many places of the wo

[franciscohs]

I may add to this, when you're traveling it usually costs ~$1/day for some megs of data roaming (5-50mb i've seen), which is more than enough to send lots of messages, while ONE roaming SMS may cost the same. Again, probably not very common in the US to travel abroad, but think about Europe how much people travel and live in any other European country other than their own and where they have most of friends/family. You'd use Whatsapp (or something similar) lots more if you had to pay roaming charges to send SMS across states in the US.

Re:Three problems, at least, with the number of us

[korbulon]

This observation deserves beaucoup points. More and more we live in a world where headlines and press releases are treated as news, accepted prima facie without much vetting or scepticism, a lot of it propagated by websites trying to generate clicks. Slashdot for one is certainly not blameless in this racket. Digging a little behind this story, does it mention how many people have stopped using WhatsApp since the buyout? Fairly mum about that, but pretty sure theyr'e still counting those people too.

Like so much in IT, it's hard to tell what's what and what's not.

Re:That's wierd...

[Opportunist]

Oh, that's easy to explain: Everyone's a user!

Everyone who ever tried WhatsApp is. Everyone who turned away from it when they were scooped up by Farcebook still is. And everyone who ever clicked any kind of button concerning it in FB.

It's a bit like how Microsoft counts its users. Everyone who ever bought a system where some of their junk was preinstalled is a user, whether he still uses it or whether the first thing he did after unpacking was to wipe the HD.