WhatsApp is totally dominating video calling, too
WhatsApp users are spending a lot of time on video calls. Together, the app's 1.2 billion users are spending more than 340 million minutes a day making more than 55 million video calls, WhatsApp announced.
To mark the milestone, WhatsApp is finally updating its Android app to make video calling more prominent. Now, the feature will appear right next to the voice calling menu within chats on Android.
The stat comes almost exactly six months after the app first rolled out its video calling features to all its users. That the feature has managed to rack up so many users in such a short period is indicative not only of WhatsApp's overall dominance in the messaging space, but also why video calling was such an important feature to begin with.
WhatsApp is hugely popular in countries like Brazil and India, where not everyone has access to the most high-end phones or stable LTE connections.
When the company announced video calling last year, WhatsApp emphasized that the reason it had taken so long for the feature to roll out was because the company wanted to bring video calling to all users, not just those "who can afford the most expensive new phones or live in countries with the best cellular networks."
Six months later, it's clear that the investment in optimizing for slower connections and low-end devices is paying off. Notably, the company took a similar approach with its Snapchat Stories-like feature Status, which, unlike Snapchat, is optimized for countries like India. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that WhatsApp's Status feature has 175 million daily active users.
Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @karissabe.
