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More than 1 billion people are now using WhatsApp every day

More than 1 billion people are now using WhatsApp every day

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And its ephemeral content feature is booming

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Facebook recently announced in its Q2 2017 earnings call that messaging app WhatsApp now boasts 1 billion users every day. WhatsApp Status, its cloned Snapchat Stories feature, also reached 250 million daily users. What’s more, these WhatsApp users are currently sending 55 billion messages and 4.5 billion photos per day.

More popular overseas than it is in the US, WhatsApp currently supports 60 languages and has rapidly expanded its global user base by being easy to use, free, and sporting features lacking in traditional SMS. It surpassed the 1-billion-monthly-user mark in February 2016.

WhatsApp Status has now surpassed both Snapchat and Instagram in daily use for the comparable feature

While 1 billion daily users is a remarkable achievement, the rapid growth of WhatsApp Status is worth a closer look. As of the beginning of May, WhatsApp Status had 175 million users, meaning it’s added 75 million additional daily users in just under two months. By contrast, Snapchat currently has 166 million daily users, and as of April, Instagram Stories had 200 million daily users, meaning WhatsApp Status has now surpassed both competitors in daily use for the comparable feature.

Despite this, it’s hard to say if WhatsApp’s popularity will steal a significant portion of Snapchat’s audience — more than half Snapchat’s users are not daily Facebook users and about half are not daily Instagram users — but it does show there’s still a huge market to fill in the world of ephemeral content.