At a conference in Germany, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum had some interesting remarks. The most newsworthy of which being that the messaging service now traffics over 50 billion messages daily. That’s impressive, especially when you consider there are only about 50 people working at WhatsApp, and 430 million users of the service.
According to one analyst, WhatsApp may be more ubiquitous that SMS itself. Via Twitter, Benedict Evans highlighted his belief that WhatsApp handles more messages than to total of SMS, and outlined it in a handy little chart. We’re not sure we can buy into that, but we’re certainly listening. Fans of Whats App will find solace in the fact that the CEO of the service won’t be selling it short any time soon, either.
At the DLD conference where he noted the massive traffic WhatsApp sees daily, Koum also made a point to discuss the future of WhatsApp. “No ads, no games, no gimmicks” Koum said, adding “We just want to focus on messaging. If people want to play games there are plenty of other sites and also a lot of great companies building services around advertising”. He went on to note that WhatsApp is profitable, but that monetization wasn’t their goal just yet. The service is currently free to download and use for one year, and then runs a mere $0.99/year afterward.
Koum also said WhatsApp is in it for the long run, saying “When we started the company we wanted to build something for the long term and sustainable. It’s not hard to sell a company, but if you look at [leading online] companies today like Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Twitter, they didn’t sell. They stuck around and built a great offering for users.” That’s great news for WhatsApp’s users, but potentially troubling for competitors. A profitable service with the patience to ride out the bumps any newer service encounters? Watch out, Snapchat.
Source: Tech Crunch
The one and only thing that stops me from using WhatsApp exclusively is the lack of a desktop client. If I could chat on my phone and then continue that chat on my desktop, similar to how Hangouts works, I would switch from hangouts in an instance.
That’s why Hangouts is so good, you can talk on any device and any browser.