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6:05 PM – WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging platforms used these days. It’s a great cross-platform for those who have different types of smartphones and don’t want to use their texts. Rather, you would just use your Wifi or your cellular data to send and receive messages through WhatsApp. The company has just announced a new reached milestone: 400 million active users.
This is quite the milestone achieved by one messaging service. You would think that since the launch of other popular services like Kik and Viber, they would take away some of WhatsApp’s users, however the company continues to grow. Many other messaging services would love to reach this milestone, but they are still quite behind WhatsApp. Kik just recently reached the 100 million active users milestone.
So what makes WhatsApp so successful? For those who use WhatsApp, you will notice that there are no ads, anywhere. As Jan Koum explains on his blog post, they “set out to build a messaging service with a single focus: best possible user experience.” And sure enough, they have built a very strong platform for their users. There are several other companies such as SnapChat never bothered to focus on revenue monetization strategy and have been very successful. Mind you, there are several people in my family who use both WhatsApp and SnapChat. The reason why they use both is because there are no ads or popups to annoy them. On the contrary, there are companies such as INE and WeChat from Asia, embed their apps with advertisements for revenue.
While you may think WhatsApp doesn’t have a lot to worry about, you’re thinking wrong. The company has competition with larger services like iMessage in the iPhone. For example, I use iMessage most of the day, with rarely any text messages sent. Most of the people I talk to have iPhones. One advantage that WhatsApp has over iMessage is that its cross-platform. There is no way Apple would make iMessage available on other platforms, while WhatsApp has reached out and has a very active user base.
