Have you used WhatsApp lately? If so, you might have helped set a new messaging record. The real-time messaging app announced over Twitter last night that its users sent and received a record 64 billion messages in one day:
new daily record: 20B messages sent (inbound) and 44B messages received (outbound) by our users = 64B messages handled in just 24 hours.
— WhatsApp Inc. (@WhatsApp) April 2, 2014
The company didn’t specify whether this 24 hour period happened during April 1, April Fool’s Day, which would have indicated WhatsApp’s user base contains quite a few pranksters.
Though the 44 billion received messages seem inflated compared to the 20 billion sent messages (messages received by individual members of group chats are counted separately), it’s still an impressive feat for WhatsApp to achieve shortly after its $19 billion acquisition by Facebook, proving its business might be worth the high price tag after all. As CNET points out, this new daily record beats even the 18 billion messages WhatsApp users sent on New Year’s Eve 2013, though New Year’s Eve is traditionally a high traffic day for communication mediums.
Despite the Facebook acquisition sparking doubts about WhatsApp’s commitment to privacy, it appears people are using the app now more than ever. And when WhatsApp adds voice calling in the next few months, who knows how much traffic the service will see.
