WhatsApp just hit a major milestone

Financial reports have been landing over the past couple of days, and in determining the who had a good quarter and who didn't, we can safely count WhatsApp among the winners. As part of its end-of-quarter financial report, WhatsApp announced that it has surpassed a major milestone in terms of user count. If there was ever any question that WhatsApp would become one of the world's most popular messaging apps, the matter can now be laid to rest.

WhatsApp has revealed that it now has more than 1 billion daily active users. If this announcement sounds familiar, you can rest assured that you're not going crazy. WhatsApp made a very similar announcement in February of 2016, though back then, it was celebrating one billion monthly active users.

In the time since then, WhatsApp's monthly active users have climbed to 1.3 billion, so that figure is on the rise as well. On top of that, WhatsApp users send 55 billion messages per day, which is a pretty insane number that represents some solid user engagement. Those users also share 4.5 billion photos and 1 billion videos each day.

It's fairly easy to see the appeal of WhatsApp, as it promises to encrypt your communication with other users. Last year, WhatsApp rolled out end-to-end encryption and made it default for all users, which makes the platform attractive for those who don't want others snooping on their communications.

It seems that even a fair amount of controversy with parent company Facebook isn't enough to stop WhatsApp from growing at a breakneck pace. Even though there was a sizable outcry when it was announced that WhatsApp would begin sharing some data with Facebook, that doesn't seem to have affected WhatsApp's user numbers in a significant way. Are you one of the one billion people using WhatsApp every day? Head down to the comments section and let us know.