New record for the instant messaging application par excellence, WhatsApp , which today, April 18, 2015, reached an impressive 800 million active users every month. To announce it is the founder Jan Koum through his Facebook profile, where you can not miss – as you can see in the post (incorporated below) the “like” of Mark Zuckerberg , number one of Facebook and owner of WhatsApp (as well as of Instagram and a handful of other new economy companies).

It is still unclear what the secret of this app’s success is. But the figures speak for themselves. WhatsApp beats record after record and the direct contenders cannot keep up. The latter is certainly due to the introduction of voice calls , and the new appearance in Material Design has also played its part.

Do you know someone who doesn’t use WhatsApp yet? The application is now “ universal ”, and the numbers continue to grow at a constant rate. A trend that shows no signs of stopping, especially if the application continues to work so hard to add new features , such as video calling, which could be around the corner in May.

WhatsApp already has 800 million users

Jan Koum, the creator of WhatsApp, announced the new record on Facebook: 800 million users, an increase of 33% compared to the same period last year. But there is more. By the end of the year, forecasts indicate that it will be possible to beat the record of one billion monthly active users, which means that 1/7 of the human beings who inhabit the earth have this instant messaging application on their mobile phones.

A resounding success that will certainly make Mark Zuckerberg very happy, who last year paid a whopping 21 billion dollars for the purchase of the application and who had set the ceiling to be reached at 1 billion to consider it a profitable investment.

WhatsApp in recent years: a slew of records

The growth trend of WhatsApp is mind blowing. As the graph shows , it quickly went from 500 million in 2014 to 800 million in 2015, with the number of users quadrupled compared to two years ago. Furthermore, it should be noted – in the wake of Jon Koum on his Facebook post – that there is a big difference between users who own the application and active users . Only the latter, in fact, are to be considered “real” users and on this level WhatsApp does not fear rivals.

New services on the horizon

There is no doubt that WhatsApp in recent days has been under the lens of the media. Especially for the news on VoIP calls . In Android the process has been completed, after a few weeks of experimenting with a poorly functioning invitation system, now all users can use voice calls.

Now we wait for the update to be released also for the iOS and Windows Phone operating systems . But, in sight, there is already another novelty …

Video calls on WhatsApp

After voice calls, the next logical step is video calls (or video conferences). Other services such as Skype already offer this possibility and WhatsApp will not hesitate to adapt, as confirmed by Mark Zuckerberg himself during an online forum with users held in recent days.

In fact, according to The REM website, WhatsApp has already been testing video calls among its employees for two months and could launch the service to the public next May , for free. It seems like a too hasty date, given that the voice calls on are still not working well, but it is clear that WhatsApp cannot lose pace with the times.

This is actually a much bigger challenge than calling because it puts a strain on data consumption . We will see what level of video quality WhatsApp will be able to offer, and what the costs will be.