WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum was on stage today at the AllThingsD Dive Into Mobile conference in New York City, where he said that the app is now larger than Twitter by monthly active users. He wouldn’t say exactly how many the company had, just that it was north of 200 million users.
Koum also noted that the messaging app now sees an average of 8 billion inbound, and 12 million outbound messages per day, and with less than 50 engineers, the highest ratio of active users per long-term employee today of any active tech company.
Twitter noted that it hit its own 200 million monthly active user count back in December, while WhatsApp noted in January that it had reached the 7 billion inbound messages per day milestone. To some extent, comparing the two is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, but recent evidence suggests that social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter are losing the attention of younger users, who are turning to platforms like WhatsApp instead.
Koum said that the company has yet to see any drop off in user numbers or engagement resulting from their recent decision to start charging $0.99 per year, which means that right now WhatsApp has a pretty ideal combination of user growth, user activity and inbound revenue. Koum is adamant that the company isn’t entertaining any acquisition offers, and with those pieces in place, there’s little reason for them to.
