It’s hard not to be impressed with WhatsApp’s growth, as the messaging service is poised to surpass a billion users before the year is over. The app has managed to add more than 100 million actively month users every four months since Facebook bought it for $22 billion last year. Now that the service has managed to reach 800 million monthly active users, achieving 1 billion isn’t too far away.
WhatsApp now has 800 million monthly active users, continuing a pace of growth that may put the mobile messaging app on track to hit one billion users later this year. Jan Koum, the CEO and co-founder of WhatsApp, revealed the numbers on his Facebook FB -1.86% page late Friday. The app, which Facebook bought last year for $22 billion, has added 100 million active monthly users roughly every four months since August, when it had 600 million users. In January, WhatsApp announced that it reached 700 million. WhatsApp has more users than any other similar app, including Facebook Messenger, and has become an alternative to text messaging for many people around the world. WhatsApp recently launched a feature allowing users to take calls through the app. It took Facebook roughly eight years to reach the one-billion mark. Facebook now boasts about 1.4 billion monthly users, while its Messenger has about 600 million.