Are you a user of the world’s most popular messaging app? If not, you may want to give it a try. On 20th February of this year, Facebook bought WhatsApp for a whopping $1.9 billion USD. Here are some interesting facts about the app, which is quickly gaining popularity in Thailand for users of all ages.
· WhatsApp Inc. was found by Brian Acton (American) and Jan Koum (Ukraine), both were former employees of Yahoo!
· WhatsApp has more than 450 million users and 70% use the app daily.
· For one day, there are more than billion messages that are sent per Whatsapp and about 400 pictures shared.
· WhatsApp gained more than 1 million user per day and app’s average growing rate within the first 4 years was higher than Facebook, Skype and Twitter.
· WhatsApp Inc. has only 55 employees and most of them are engineers
· On 31 December 2013, WhatsApp broke their record with more than 1.8 billion messages sent in one day.
· The one check arrow means that your message is sent to the server and the double check arrows mean that your message has arrived to in the receiving mailbox, not that your message has been read.
· WhatsApp has no advertisements or any links to connect their users to apps or games, but has an income of $1 USD per year per member, after a 1 year period of free usage.
· The reason why WhatsApp has no ads is that the founders simply wanted to create a service to make instant messaging easier and cheaper. “The simplicity and the utility of our product is really what drives us” said co-founder Jan Koum.