17 October, 2024
Mark Zuckerberg says WhatsApp has 100M monthly active users in the US
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday on his channel that WhatsApp now has more than 100 million monthly active users in the U.S., a country where SMS/texts is a popular mode of communication.
The announcement is the first time WhatsApp has released data about users in the U.S. The company also noted that more than 50% of WhatsApp’s users have iPhones, which is not surprising given that iOS has the majority market share in the country.
WhatsApp is a popular app worldwide, with more than 2 billion active users monthly. The company has historically focused on countries like India, which is WhatsApp’s largest user base with more than 500 million monthly active users, and Brazil and Indonesia.
WhatsApp has recently ramped up its marketing push in the U.S. In the past few years, WhatsApp has placed ad campaigns, placements in Times Square and TV spots emphasizing privacy and end-to-end encryption protection. Most recently, it started a national campaign about WhatsApp by bringing back some of the cast of the TV show “Modern Family.”
Just like Google, Meta has emphasized in its marketing the differences between green bubble and blue bubble devices caused by Apple’s iMessage. But now that Apple has adopted Rich Communication Services (RCS), Android users can send and receive high-quality media files and have options to look at typing indicators and read receipts. The messages will still be green, though, according to screenshots of Apple’s website.
However, Meta is still pushing its cross-platform app by highlighting some other features, such as polls, high-quality video calling and reactions. The company is capping off the announcement with another marketing campaign by placing a 200-foot bubble between the Apple and Samsung stores in The Americana Mall in Los Angeles.
Mark Zuckerberg says WhatsApp has 100M monthly active users in the US
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday on his channel that WhatsApp now has more than 100 million monthly active users in the U.S., a country where SMS/texts is a popular mode of communication.
The announcement is the first time WhatsApp has released data about users in the U.S. The company also noted that more than 50% of WhatsApp’s users have iPhones, which is not surprising given that iOS has the majority market share in the country.
WhatsApp is a popular app worldwide, with more than 2 billion active users monthly. The company has historically focused on countries like India, which is WhatsApp’s largest user base with more than 500 million monthly active users, and Brazil and Indonesia.
WhatsApp has recently ramped up its marketing push in the U.S. In the past few years, WhatsApp has placed ad campaigns, placements in Times Square and TV spots emphasizing privacy and end-to-end encryption protection. Most recently, it started a national campaign about WhatsApp by bringing back some of the cast of the TV show “Modern Family.”
Just like Google, Meta has emphasized in its marketing the differences between green bubble and blue bubble devices caused by Apple’s iMessage. But now that Apple has adopted Rich Communication Services (RCS), Android users can send and receive high-quality media files and have options to look at typing indicators and read receipts. The messages will still be green, though, according to screenshots of Apple’s website.
However, Meta is still pushing its cross-platform app by highlighting some other features, such as polls, high-quality video calling and reactions. The company is capping off the announcement with another marketing campaign by placing a 200-foot bubble between the Apple and Samsung stores in The Americana Mall in Los Angeles.
Mark Zuckerberg defends teenage creators' right to public Instagram accounts
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Meta, commented in today’s Senate hearing on children’s online safety that teenagers should be able to be creators and share their content widely.
Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) questioned Zuckerberg about Meta’s privacy controls for teenagers. On Instagram, for example, teens under 16 — or 18 in some countries — have their accounts automatically set to private when they join the platform. But teenagers can toggle these safety measures to make their accounts public at any time.
“Yes, we default teens into a private account so they can have a private and restricted experience,” Zuckerberg told the senator. “But some teens want to be creators and want to have content that they share more broadly, and I don’t think that’s something that should just blanketly be banned.”
Research has shown that becoming a content creator is a dream for many young Americans. In 2019, Morning Consult reported that 86% of teens would consider trying to become an influencer, and that influencers held as much sway as traditional celebrities. For example, as many teens were familiar with the creator PewDiePie as they were with NBA legend LeBron James. When Lego surveyed 3,000 children in 2019, the toy company found that “vlogger” was a more popular dream job for kids than “astronaut.”
Some of the most successful creators started out when they were teenagers, like 19-year-old Charli D’Amelio, a self-made millionaire whose family now has its own venture capital fund. MrBeast, another of the world’s highest earning creators, began posting on YouTube when he was 13.
Of course, there are safety risks for these young creators, as well as any young person on the internet. But Zuckerberg affirms that their contributions to culture — and Meta’s bottom line — are worth it. For a business like Instagram, it’s important to keep talented creators happy on the platform so that their viral content continues to drive ad revenue.
“There have been a lot of teens creating amazing things, and I think with the right supervision and parenting and controls . . . I don’t think that’s the type of thing that you want to not allow anyone to be able to do,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg is one of five tech CEOs who testified before Congress about children’s online safety on Wednesday, including X’s Linda Yaccarino, Discord’s Jason Citron, Snap’s Evan Spiegel, and TikTok’s Shou Chew.
CEOs from Meta, TikTok, Snap, X and Discord head to Congress for kids’ online safety hearing
The creator economy is ready for a workers’ movement