WhatsApp Messages: 100 Billion Sent Daily
WhatsApp, the widely-used messaging application belonging to Facebook, currently processes approximately 100 billion messages daily, as stated by company CEO Mark Zuckerberg during Thursday’s quarterly earnings discussion.
To illustrate, WhatsApp users sent 100 billion messages on the last day of the previous year. This date typically represents the peak in user activity for the platform, and historically has been associated with occasional service disruptions. (However, there were no reported issues on the most recent New Year’s Eve!)
Currently, WhatsApp’s primary competition is with its own performance. Combined, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp facilitated the exchange of 60 billion messages each day in early 2016. Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned in May that iMessage and FaceTime experienced record levels of use, but did not disclose precise numbers. The last publicly available data from Apple indicated usage significantly lower than WhatsApp’s at that time (podcast). WeChat, with a user base exceeding 1 billion, also lags behind WhatsApp in terms of daily message volume.
Back in early 2014, WhatsApp was handling around 50 billion messages per day, as disclosed by then-CEO Jan Koum at a public event.
At that point, WhatsApp’s user base was under 500 million. The application now boasts over 2 billion users, and in India – its largest user market – it enjoys greater popularity than any other smartphone application, even Facebook itself.
“This year, we’ve all increasingly depended on messaging to stay connected with family and friends and to conduct business,” posted Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, on Twitter.
Unfortunately, this was the extent of the information the company released regarding WhatsApp today. The timeline for the resumption of WhatsApp’s payments service in Brazil remains unclear, as does the planned launch of payments in India, where testing began in 2018. (The company has previously announced significant ambitions for financial services within India, however.)
“We are pleased that WhatsApp can now deliver around 100 billion messages on a daily basis and we are enthusiastic about future developments,” stated Cathcart.