WhatsApp Is Well On Its Way To A Billion Users 116
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."
Re:What?? (Score:2, Informative)
Literally a lie in any civilized country....
True, but that's because there really aren't any civilized countries on planet Earth
Whatsapp is ubiquitous in many places of the world (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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.