Free Messaging Stalwart WhatsApp Fends Off Newcomers, Processes 27 Billion Messages Per Day

Up and comers don't like to hear it, but experience often times beats youth. Ask the 2011 Dallas Mavericks, in which the average age was just over 32 years old (ancient in the basketball world) or 2008 Boston Celtics, which had half a dozen players over the age of 30 on the roster, including two 38-year-olds. Both teams won the championship against younger foes during their respective years, but we're not hear to talk sports. In the tech world, WhatsApp is proving it has what it takes to compete with a relatively recent rash of rivals.

WhatsApp is a proprietary, cross-platform instant messaging app for mobile devices (sixth most popular paid app on the iPhone). It's been around for nearly four years, which isn't very long in the grand scheme of things, but when you're talking about the fast pace of technology, and especially in the ever-changing mobile market, it might as well be an eternity. Despite increasing competition from similar services, WhatsApp just notched a new daily record.


"10+ billion messages sent (inbound) and 17+ billion messages received (outbound) by our users equals 27 billion messages handled in just 24 hours!," WhatsApp announced in a Twitter post.

That's up from its previous 24-hour record of 18 billion combined messages (7 billion inbound and 11 billion outbound) that was set on December 31 of last year. In both cases, you'll notice there's a discrepancy between sent and received messages, and the reason for that is because WhatsApp supports a group chat feature. A single message sent can be viewed/received by several recipients.