WhatsApp Now Has 800 Million Active Users, 1 Billion By Year-End Expected

By Kamal Nayan - 19 Apr '15 12:02PM

WhatsApp now boasts 800 million active users, WhatsApp CEO and co-Founder, announced recently. It was only few months ago when the service had around 700 million active users.

"WhatsApp - now serving 800,000,000 monthly active users," Koum wrote in a Facebook post. "Reminder for the press out there: active and registered users are not the same thing."

Active users only counts individuals who log in at least once during a month.

WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for $19 billion. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently stated that WhatsApp would be a key contributor to Facebook once the messaging app has eclipsed the mark at one million active users served.

"We are about where Facebook was in around 2006 or 2007, where, at that point, Facebook is really just a consumer product -- there were no businesses in the ecosystem," said Zuckerberg.

At the time of acquisition last year, WhatsApp served 450 million users each month. The messaging service was adding about a million new users each day and was drawing near to the global SMS volume.

"WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people," Zuckerberg said shortly after the deal was announced. "The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable."