Facebook sure made a safe bet when it acquired instant messaging service WhatsApp for a staggering $19 billion. The service has now grown to include 700 million active users worldwide, making it the most popular IM service in the world. That’s even more popular than Facebook’s own Messenger.
Back in August, WhatsApp claimed 600 million active users and has gained around 300 million users over the past year. However, the social networking giant has seen losses on its investment so far, as WhatsApp’s 99-cent subscription model does not generate a large amount of revenue. WhatsApp saw losses of approximately $230 million in the first half of last year and generated revenue of only $15 million.
Mark Zuckerberg expects that WhatApp will eventually end up contributing to Facebook’s profits. However, he does not expect this to happen until the app’s regular user base reaches the one billion mark. Based on this recent rate of growth, WhatApp could reach this milestone before the end of 2015.