1 billion users is an elite number when it comes to web services. Only a few had reached that milestone, and WhatsApp is the newcomer.
On July 26th, 2017, WhatsApp announced the milestone on its blog post:
While WhatsApp hit 1 billion monthly users in 2016, in 2017, it reaches the milestone for the people who are using the app every day. That’s about one person out of every seven or eight people on Earth.
One big reason for WhatsApp's rapid global growth in the first 6 months on 2017 is caused by Snapchat in leaving a huge market open for exploitation by focusing on U.S. teens instead of youths all around the world.
WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum followed up with his own blog post of stats, saying that: "As we celebrate this milestone, we’re committed more than ever to bringing you more useful features to enjoy, while delivering the reliability, simplicity, and security you expect with WhatsApp."
This also marks Facebook's domination on the internet. For comparison, Facebook has 2 billion monthly users in June. And on that same month, at a separate announcement, Instagram said that it was having 250 million users. Facebook Messenger on the other hand, has surpassed 1.2 billion monthly users as of April.
