Cross-platform mobile messaging app WhatsApp recently announced that it has around 430 million active users at the moment and that up to 50 billion messages are sent and received through the app each day.
These numbers were revealed by CEO and co-founder Jan Koum who spoke to David Rowan of Wired at the DLD (Digital-Life-Design) Conference in Munich, Germany.
Koum emphasized that WhatsApp will continue to stay from ads and games or “gimmicks” like disappearing photos and focus on what the product is essentially all about, which is messaging.
According to Koum, the company will focus on monetization someday but for now it’s main goal is to make sure that the company is providing a service that works.
Koum also talked about privacy during the interview and touched on how his upbringing in Soviet Ukraine influenced the company’s stand on advertising and privacy. WhatsApp doesn’t collect users’ personal information and only knows the users’ phone numbers. Koum mentioned that WhatsApp makes it a point to know as little as possible about the users.
Although the company has reached almost half a billion users, WhatsApp still think of themselves as a startup and maintains its focus on delivering a messaging service that works and building a company that will be around for a long time. The company aims to be on every smartphone in the globe.
WhatsApp is free to download but charges users $0.99 a year after the first year.
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