Whatsapp, the Facebook owned rapidly-growing messenger application now has 800 million active users, according to a Facebook post made by its founder, Jan Koum, who used the occasion to take a swipe at its competition Viber Tango Skype and Line.
"WhatsApp - now serving 800,000,000 monthly active users," Koum posted on the social network.
The new milestone comes just a few months after WhatsApp said it had surpassed 700 million users, and comes a year after Facebook paid a $19 billion price tag to acquire the company. Facebook's own message software recently broke 600 million users.
At the current rate of growth, WhatsApp is well on pace to catch up to the social network's more than 1 billion monthly users.
For WhatsApp, the spectacular growth hasn’t really meant a lot of profits.
According to official results put out by Facebook, WhatsApp lost over $138 million last year. Facebook has so far said that it has no plans of exploring a business-model like say ads with WhatsApp.
In the local market Whatsapp plays second fiddle to Viber, which in recent years has become one of the most used forms of communications for Iran's mobile users.
Since the adoption of 3G services, mobile internet messaging has grown rapidly and is expected to continue throughout the current year as smart phones continue to replace older feature phones which use standard SMS messaging.
