Mobile messaging service WhatsApp is going from strength to
strength and now has more active monthly users than Twitter, according to the
company’s CEO Jan Koum.
Speaking in a mobile conference in New York last week Koum
revealed that the mobile app now has more than 200 million users claiming that
it carries an average of 20 billion messages per day – more than double the
number of messages carried by Facebook.
The company will not go down the same route as Facebook and
Twitter by introducing advertising, however. Currently the app charges a 99
cents annual subscription fee on Android, but Koum admits that the company is
against advertising.
“We’re bombarded with ads so much in our daily lives and we
feel that smartphones aren’t the place for that,” said Koum. “Putting
advertising on a device like that is a bad idea. You don’t want to be
interrupted by ads when you’re chatting with your loved ones.
“Our monetization strategy is simple; one dollar a year. If
we did something besides that, it would just get in the way.”
Koum added that the company has yet to see any reduction in
user numbers since they introduced the charge meaning that WhatsApp is in a
better condition than other apps with continued user growth, user activity and
inbound revenue.
Despite all this positive news the firm has denied the
rumours that it is in talks to sell up to Google or any other large tech
company. Watch this space to see where this success story goes.
For more information on the world of mobile apps head down
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