Facebook vs. WhatsApp - Which Company Is More Valuable?

Before investors complain about the

, they might want to take a closer look at WhatsApp's statistics.

WhatsApp launched in 2009 -- five years after

and three years after

. Facebook is still the dominant player, but WhatsApp is growing at a rate of more than one million registered users per day. If this keeps up, WhatsApp should cross the 500 million MAU mark before summer.

"Look at the daily active users that WhatsApp has versus what Facebook has," Eleni Marouli, an advertising analyst at IHS Technology, told Benzinga. "It's impressive. It's a much smaller company -- it's 55 employees and 32 developers compared to Facebook's however many thousands. They still managed to have such dedicated and engaged users."

*No exact number was provided for WhatsApp's DAUs, but Facebook said that approximately 70 percent of its MAUs are active on a given day (70 percent of 450 million equals 315 million). This is a higher percentage of DAUs than Facebook (roughly 60 percent of its users sign in daily) and Twitter (which had 218 million MAUs in October -- more than double its DAUs). To be fair, WhatsApp has a number of inherent advantages. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, which are full-fledged social networks, WhatsApp is a high-end replacement for traditional text messages. Users can easily share photos and videos via WhatsApp. And since it uses data (not a texting plan), the $0.99 annual fee is easy for users to swallow. Facebook and Twitter are currently free, but users don't

to sign into them every day. However, you'd be hard-pressed to find a smartphone user who doesn't send at least one text a day.

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