WhatsApp and Gmail both have hit the 1 billion milestone and while each one of the product are very different from one another they still tell the growth story of two famous products. With the WhatsApp monthly active users exceeding a billion it will give Facebook a great leverage for creating an ecosystem of services.
WhatsApp has been known for its unparalleled reach and the loyal customer base it enjoys, now the messenger has joined the Billionaires club with monthly active users exceeding 1 Billion in number. The announcement came directly from Jan Koum who is currently heading WhatsApp, he further revealed that 42 billion messages are being sent through WhatsApp daily alongside 1.6 billion photos, 1 billion groups and 250 million videos shared.
WhatsApp had earlier reported that it had 900 million monthly active users and in less than five months, the numbers seem to have climbed by another 100 million, a growth rate that is still amusing considering the fact that WhatsApp has been out there for a while and the growth rate should have been saturated. Facebook, the company that owns WhatsApp has 1.5-Billion users alongside the Messenger which has 800 million monthly active users. As we can see from the numbers, Facebook seems to have the edge over other messengers with the highly populated customer base.
It was just recently that WhatsApp squashed the idea of monetizing the service by charging a subscription fee and this move seems to be bought in effect by the fact that WhatsApp doesn't want to hinder the growth, especially at this juncture when the threat from other Messenging apps is still looming large. It is still not clear how the company wants to monetize the services but it will most probably revolve around organic interaction between the product and the businesses.
On a separate note, Gmail has also managed to embark on the Billion list with 1 billion monthly active users, an announcement which was part of the Q4 earning call for Alphabet. Gmail has been climbing the growth charts rather steadily after it added up 100 million users in the last 8 months or so. The earning reports however failed to outline the number of active users on the Google Hangouts and the other related products.
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