WhatsApp is edging closer to being as big as its parent company Facebook, according to the instant messaging platform’s CEO Jan Koum.

Koum posted a simple sentence on Facebook, letting the world know WhatsApp now has 900 million active monthly users and tagged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In January, WhatsApp had 700 million active users and by April it clocked 800 million. By the second quarter of this year,l Facebook had 1.49 billion active monthly users.

Facebook Messenger is WhatsApp’s closest contender, with 700 million active users recorded last month; Tencent’s QQ Mobile in third at 603 million.

In January, we picked up a growth pattern among WhatsApp user numbers that shows that according to the updates its bosses provide, the service grows by 100 million users roughly every five months, and it certainly seems as though it’s stuck right through 2015.

Which is your favourite mobile messaging platform?

[Source – Jan Koum via Facebook]