WhatsApp has a message for its users — a lot of them.
The mobile messaging service announced today that it set a WhatsApp record on New Year’s Eve, processing 18 billion messages on the last day of the year. The company said it delivered 7 billion inbound messages and 11 billion outbound messages, surpassing its previous record of 10 billion messages processed in one day back in August.
In comparison, Apple revealed in October that its iMessage text service had delivered about 300 billion texts sent by iOS users during the previous 12 months — an average of less than a billion a day.
WhatsApp is an ad-free, paid service intended to replace your text messaging plan. Generally it works out cheaper, particularly when sending messages overseas, because it uses WiFi or mobile networks to carry texts instead.
It’s available for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Phone and Nokia phones.
Its success hasn’t gone unnoticed – according to rumours published last year by Techcrunch and others WhatsApp might still be facing a potential acquisition by Facebook.
WhatsApp denies that Facebook has made an attempt to buy the service, but with this kind of success it can’t be out of the question that several companies would be sizing up a potential takeover.
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