Story by
Emil Protalinski
Emil was a reporter for The Next Web between 2012 and 2014. Over the years, he has covered the tech industry for multiple publications, incl Emil was a reporter for The Next Web between 2012 and 2014. Over the years, he has covered the tech industry for multiple publications, including Ars Technica, Neowin, TechSpot, ZDNet, and CNET. Stay in touch via Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WhatsApp today announced it has passed the 500 million active user milestone, up 100 million from December 2013. The company also revealed its users are now sharing more than 700 million photos and 100 million videos daily.
WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum says his service has grown fastest over the last few months in countries like Brazil, India, Mexico, and Russia. In other words, emerging markets and countries with large populations are helping the messaging platform expand quickly.
“We could go on, but for now, it’s more important that we get back to work – because here at WhatsApp, we’re just getting started,” Koum said in today’s announcement. That “work” includes moving over to Facebook, which announced in February that it was acquiring WhatsApp in a deal worth up to $19 billion.
Since then, the messaging app has come under scrutiny for privacy issues and suffered a prolonged outage which benefited rival messaging apps Telegram and Line. Koum also had to reiterate in March that the Facebook purchase wouldn’t affect user privacy.
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