LONDON: WhatsApp has 800 million ‘monthly active users’ worldwide. That’s quite something in this age, when the leading global social networks and Internet services are well established. Breaking into that club isn’t easy, but WhatsApp has done it nearly doubling its user base over the past year, since it was acquired by Facebook for an eye-popping $19 billion.
Yet, impressive as those numbers are, there is something troubling about this new data point.
At this point, most people know the difference between these two metrics. Monthly active users are a more accurate way to measure the reach and engagement of a service but it is far from definitive.
To suggest that MAUs provide a true picture of a business and its user base is at best naive, or at worst misleading.
“We aren’t giving any additional data beyond the 800M MAUs,” a WhatsApp spokesperson told TechCrunch after we got in touch to ask for more info.
To suggest that MAUs provide a true picture of a business and its user base is at best naive, or at worst misleading.
Messaging apps are core services; they are meant to be used more regularly than once a month because we talk to our friends, families and colleagues on a daily basis.
A better metric to gauge WhatsApp traction might be the number of weekly or monthly users, messages sent between users, messages per user per day, etc.
Going Beyond Chat
There are only so many ways that you can monetize chat while maintaining the user experience. As Facebook showed when it launched its Messenger platform, the future is connecting services such as payments, business-to-consumer communication and more. In Asia, commerce and online-to-offline services are increasingly a focus for messaging apps.
WhatsApp Challenges
WhatsApp has 800 million ‘monthly active users’ worldwide. We know that it is particularly huge in India, with over 70 million monthly active users, but it isn’t clear where else its network is strong with highly engaged users.
That’s important because in the future, if it looks to monetize beyond a $1 annual fee, it will need strength and depth in local markets to make its platform appealing.
It seems likely WhatsApp will win out in India and parts of Europe and the Middle East, but it has lost the top markets in Asia (China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan) and is up against a range of competitors in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world. The U.S. market is also hugely challenging given the high usage of iMessage, and competitors like Kik and Snapchat.
That’s a very different picture to “800 million monthly active users,” which implies world domination.
