WhatsApp has 1bn daily active users globally and with 2bn users, Facebook profits up 71% in Q2

New Delhi: WhatsApp has garnered one billion daily active users around the world who transfer over 55 billion messages and one billion videos everyday, the company said on Thursday.

The monthly active users of Facebook-owned WhatsApp are over 1.3 billion and it supports 60 languages globally. Over 4.5 billion photos are shared around the world on WhatsApp every day.

The introduction of video call, Status (Posts that disappear after 24 hours), two-step verification security and a revamp in design has helped WhatsApp attract more users since last year when it had just one billion monthly active users.

Facebook recently updated the file sharing feature, letting users to share a file of any format. Users can also share multiple videos and photos at a time and send files up to 100MB size.

Users can now easily make their text bold or italic and also send GIFs which they can choose from app's in-built gallery.

Despite WhatsApp's move to adopt end-to-end encryption by default for its billion users around the world, rights groups have termed the policies of the instant messaging app too weak to protect user privacy from governments.

Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in early 2014.

However, locking over two billion monthly active users (MAUs), Facebook has posted a net income of $3.89 billion in second quarter of 2017 -- up 71 per cent from the same quarter last year.

Riding on increased mobile video ad sales, Facebook stocks hit record high as total revenue was up 44.8 per cent to $9.32 billion, the company said in a statement late Wednesday.

"We had a good second quarter and first half of the year. Our community is now two billion people and we're focusing on bringing the world closer together," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The daily active users (DAUs) were 1.32 billion on average for June 2017, an increase of 17 per cent year-over-year.

Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 87 per cent of advertising revenue for the second quarter, up from approximately 84 per cent of advertising revenue in the second quarter last year.

The growing monetisation of video within the Facebook News Feed and the popularity of photo-sharing app Instagram contributed majorly towards these results.

"Clearly, the biggest driver of growth is, overall, Facebook News Feed. Instagram is making a contribution, and an increasing contribution," Chief Financial Officer David Wehner was quoted as saying in The Guardian.

Capital expenditures for the second quarter of 2017 were $1.44 billion.

Facebook currently employees 20,658 people -- an increase of 43 per cent year-over-year.