It is not exactly a secret WhatsApp is one of the biggest messaging services in the world, nor that it is owned by Facebook which paid $19 billion for it back in February this year. One more interesting fact to know about WhatsApp is that this is one out of 3 non-Google apps which have crossed the 500 million downloads threshold on Google Play Store. All 3 of those applications are Facebook owned… Facebook, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Facebook app even crossed 1 billion downloads recently. Let me get to the point now.
Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, participated at an event in Mexico organised by Carlos Slim’s Telmex Foundation. Zuckerberg was speaking at an event and said that WhatsApp will remain an independent service and that it will most likely benefit considering Facebook’s resources. Facebook has over 1.3 billion monthly active users, which is mind blowing really. WhatsApp on the other hand has a user base of over 500 million monthly active users, which is also staggering. Zuckerberg also mentioned that WhatsApp has potential to hit 2-3 billion users according to Wall Street Journal, which is quite optimistic of him, though that wouldn’t surprise me to be honest. Facebook’s CEO added that Facebook is prepared to spend billions of dollars over the next decade in order to connect the world, I guess WhatsApp will have a big role to play in his plans. This acquisition is not closed yet though, it is currently under a review by the European Comission. EU competition commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, said to Bloomberg that this shouldn’t take a long time considering it is not the most difficult merger, which are good news for the social giant. Two months ago Facebook did say it might even extend the deadline for closing this deal until August 19 2015, which is almost a year away.
Once this deal closes Facebook will have a really powerful social networking and messaging machine on its hands, even more powerful that it has right now. As far as messaging goes, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are both extremely used messaging services, depending on the location it seems. What are your thoughts on all this, do you use WhatsApp?