Here’s a tweet from WhatsApp that proudly announces its feat of a new record daily messaging volume:
64 billion messages in 24 hours – that’s a solid improvement from the 27 billion daily messages that WhatsApp carried this time last year.
It’s another matter that shortly after the announcement WhatsApp suffered its second major outage after being acquired by Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) in February this year.
Nevertheless, the number is perhaps validation that ‘WhatsApp remains WhatsHot’ – the title of a research note issued April 1, 2014 by Citi analysts Mark May and Kevin Allen.
“Given the size of the transaction and the perceived low switching costs of mobile messaging apps, investors are paying particular attention near-term on user growth for the WhatsApp messaging app to see if MAUs (monthly active users) are trending toward Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s goal of ‘over one billion people in the next few years’,” says the note.
Is WhatsApp measuring up on the App stores?
The analysts examine the current ratings of WhatsApp on the iOS and Google Play app stores to get a handle on the popularity of the app since its acquisition for $19 billion by Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB).
It’s interesting to note that WhatsApp is doing well on both the app stores when analyzed for country-wise app positions in the Top 5, as well as the #1 rankings.
On an average basis, across both the iOS and Google Play app stores, the number of countries where WhatsApp was placed amongst the top five apps is up from 78 countries before the deal in February, to 91 countries on 30th March.
The same evaluation also shows that WhatsApp rose from 41 to 45 countries in March when evaluated for the #1 ranking.
WhatsApp’s rankings, separately on the iOS App Store and Google Play App Store, are shown in the charts below and reflect the same steady improvement.
“WhatsApp’s popularity appears to have not only remained strong but may have even risen since its acquisition by Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) was announced, based on its global ranking in the iOS and Google Play app stores,” observed the analysts.
I’ll leave you with another interesting chart that shows Zuck perhaps did not really overpay for WhatsApp when compared to other mega deals in the tech business on a cost per user basis:
