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WhatsApp outrunning Facebook's Messenger after reaching 900 million users

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By Tony Connelly, Sports Marketing Reporter

September 4, 2015 | 2 min read

WhatsApp founder and chief executive Jan Koum revealed that messaging app now has now has over 900 million monthly active users.

Koum made the announcement on the online messaging app’s parent platform, Facebook. The increase in users has grown by 300 million since January and could now see it generating money.

Plans were in place to start charging users an annual fee of $1, with the first year free, however they were scrapped after Facebook purchased the company for 19 billion last year.

Koum has made his aversion to generating money through ads and games well known so it is likely that it could follow a similar model to what Facebook is trying to do with its own messaging app. Mark Zuckerberg is aiming to have his chat app act as the first point of contact between customers and businesses.

WhatsApp’s monthly active user base is currently outrunning Facebook’s by 200 million users and so merging it with Messenger’s business model would make it more attractive to developers and brands to commit.

Last month WhatsApp rolled out a number of new features which have pulled in more users such as the option to now send messages from desktops.

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