WhatsApp Users Exchanged Over 100 Billion Messages on New Year’s Eve, A New Record
WhatsApp Users Exchanged Over 100 Billion Messages on New Year’s Eve, A New Record
WhatsApp is one of the most widely used communication apps on the planet and as such, clocks an insane number of messages and media exchanges on a daily basis. But the New Year’s Eve broke a record that has been standing since WhatsApp’s debut a decade ago. WhatsApp has revealed that users exchanged over 100 billion messages on New Year’s eve. And out of that number, more than 20 billion messages were shared by Indian users alone. Moreover, around 12 billion out of the 100 billion+ messages shared on the platform were images.
WhatsApp wrote in a press release that over 100 billion messages were shared globally on December 31 in the 24-hour duration leading up to the midnight of New Year’s Eve. This is a record-breaking volume and is the highest number of messages exchanged in a single day ever since WhatsApp kicked off its services ten years ago. Out of those 100 billion+ messages shared on New Year’s eve, WhatsApp says over 12 billion were images.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp users in India sent over 20 billion messages on December 31 as they ushered in 2018 with wishes to family and friends. In a release, WhatsApp revealed that of the 75 billion messages shared on New Year’s Eve, 20 billion were just from India. These figures the highest-ever number of messages shared on the platform, which has over 1 billion users worldwide and counts India as its biggest market with 200 million users. It is notable that WhatsApp suffered an outage lasting more than an hour late on December 31, 2017, and in the early hours from January 1, 2018.
While the net global volume of message exchange in a single day is impressive, the contribution of Indians is also quite notable. WhatsApp says that Indian users shared over 20 billion messages on New Year’s Eve, which is nearly one-fifth of the total number of messages exchanged globally. It is not surprising, given the fact the largest share of WhatsApp users are Indian, and the number keeps growing at a rapid pace. The Facebook-owned company adds that text-messaging is the most popular WhatsApp feature (obviously), followed by status, picture messaging, calling, and voice notes in the same order.
It’s calling the partnership the ‘App Defense Alliance’ Google announced today that it’s teaming up with three security companies to help identify malicious apps before they’re published on the Play Store and can potentially do harm to Android users. The company is calling this partnership the App Defense Alliance. Android is on over 2.5 billion devices, according to Google, and the company says that it makes the platform “an attractive target” for abuse. That abuse can take the form of hidden malware or secret code designed to spy and siphon away sensitive user data. This seems to be particularly true of the Play Store — over the past year or so, Google has had to take action against multiple developers for releasing apps on the Play Store using scammy ad practices. By forming the App Defense Alliance, Google is enlisting security companies ESET, Lookout, and Zimperium to help scan for bad apps before they hit the Play Store in the first place. Google already builds Google Play Protect, it…
Originally published at https://teknologiiacybernews.blogspot.com on January 4, 2020.
