By WhatsApp is the sole means of communication for a lot of people, especially in emerging markets like Kenya.
While we get to enjoy all the benefits that come with a well-made messaging platform like WhatsApp, there’s a lot about it (in history and present) that we don’t know about.
The scrollable list below contains twenty interesting facts about WhatsApp you should probably know:
Start off your week with tech news recap and trending conversations in your inbox
WhatsApp was founded in 2009 by former Yahoo employees, Brian Acton and Jan Koum
The app was initially developed for iOS, through app developer, Igor Solomennikov.
From conception, WhatsApp's founders had a strict policy against ads, they even had a saying; "No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!" Unfortunately, that strict policy may soon be a thing of the past seeing that the new owner, Facebook, has been brainstorming on how to introduce ads on the platform.
When the company was founded, WhatsApp had no budgets for marketing. They had no PR or marketing staff.
WhatsApp's worst hack yet happened in 2011 where a vulnerability in the security system was discovered by hackers which left accounts exposed. However, since WhatsApp does not have a database of messages sent on the platform, the damage was minimal.
Probably because of initially charging a negligible $1 annual usage fee, WhatsApp made a loss of over $232 million in 2014.
Google made an offer to buy WhatsApp for $10 billion back in 2014, an offer that was turned down by the founders, who later accepted Facebook's $19 billion offer for the platform.
WhatsApp is currently valued higher than a lot of countries' GDP. Shockingly, WhatsApp's value is higher than Japan's GDP.
WhatsApp gets approximately 1 million new users every day.
In total, WhatsApp has 1.5 billion active users.
Brazil has the highest number of WhatsApp users, they account for 19.91% of all WhatsApp users in the world. India and Turkey also have high volumes of WhatsApp users, accounting for 7.61% and 5.62% of all WhatsApp users, respectively.
Contrary to belief, WhatsApp is not big in first world countries. For instance, the United States has less than 20 million WhatsApp users.
WhatsApp users make 100 million voice calls and 55 million video calls every day.
There are 65 billion text messages sent on WhatsApp daily.
In 2017, it was recorded that WhatsApp users sent around 1 billion videos every day.
The average WhatsApp user opens the app 23 times a day.
As much as we don't like them, there are over 1 billion active groups on WhatsApp, each with an average of 6 members.
There are 3 million companies that use WhatsApp Business App.
WhatsApp is the 5th most downloaded app in the world (both on iOS and Android), falling behind Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
WhatsApp is the most banned app in the world, currently banned in 12 countries including China, Bangladesh, Iran, North Korea, Syria and the UAE.
This curated list of WhatsApp facts constitutes of publicly known facts but was majorly sourced from 99firms.com.
A small correction: WhatsApp isn’t ENTIRELY banned in UAE. Only WhatsApp Voice and VidrV Calling will not work, while all messaging still works. I’m perfectly able to use WhatsApp in UAE!
Other than that, great article!
Thank you got this correction 🙂