WhatsApp adds 100 mn users in four months

Facebook-owned social messaging app has added another 100 million users in four months, proving that Mark Zuckerberg was right  in his assessment of the apps potential to connect 1 billion people around the world, AFP reported.

WhatsApp's CEO and founder Jan Koum tweeted the achievement yesterday saying the number of people who actually used the app on a regular basis was 100 million, rather than how many times the title had been downloaded and installed on a tablet or smartphone.

When Facebook acquired the company in February for $19 billion, it was thought to mark the beginning of the end for the social messaging app, as a connection with Facebook could cause users to shun the platform. However, it appears to be quite the other way round according to commentators.

Aldo with 600 million users who send texts, images, videos and emojis on a regular basis, it was now the world's most popular social messaging app.

According to the Next Web, the nearest rival to WhatsApp,  WeChat currently had only 438 million users mostly China based.

Deloitte said the rise of social messaging apps, from Apple's iMessage to WhatsApp had created a new way of communicating, which in many cases led to teenagers sending 100,000+ messages a year, many of which were single words, individual characters or an emoji.

"Now serving 600,000,000 monthly active users. Yes, active and registered are very different types of numbers...",  WhatsApp CEO and founder Jan Koum tweeted, CNET reported.

WhatsApp is in the process of being purchased by Facebook for around $19 billion in cash and various stock options. Though the proposed deal had been approved by the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook still needed to get international regulatory approval before it could complete the purchase (See: Facebook asks EU antitrust regulators to examine WhatsApp deal).

The app announced in April that it had reached the half a billion users milestone and that people shared 700 million photos and 100 million videos on a daily basis. The app had 450 million active users at the time of Facebook's buyout announcement.

At $1 a year, WhatsApp was   a cheaper alternative to SMS for users in emerging markets, and appeared to be already growing Facebook's total audience beyond the 1.23 billion people using the social network -- though it was not clear just how many people used both apps.