In February this year, the WhatsApp team announced that they were 1 billion users on the platform. They have now revealed that this group of people make 100 million calls a day – that’s over 1,100 calls a second!
This is what CEO Jan Koum said on his Facebook page to commemorate this achievement:
When I first moved to the USA, making a phone call to friends and family that I left in Ukraine was a frustrating process. You had to pick up a phone that was connected to a wall and hope that the person you were calling was near their phone on the other end. Years later, mobile phones began to make this a bit easier, but switching SIM cards and worrying about your mobile plan still made it challenging to call home. Since the early days of WhatsApp, we’ve worked to tear down the boundaries that stand between people staying in touch with their friends and family. A little over a year ago, we made it possible to make calls using WhatsApp – for those times when it’s important to hear a voice on the other end of your phone. Today, we’re proud that people are making 100 million calls a day on WhatsApp!
One must emphasise that WhatsApp has indeed affected the way we communicate. Its success has adversely affected the traditional telco operations leading to its continual drop on voice revenues. And with the pace at which it brings out new features, there is no reason why it will not continually change the landscape and dictate the way we communicate.
We should be expecting video calls on WhatsApp very soon
Keep disrupting….
