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WhatsApp Tops the Global List of World’s 5 Most Used Messenger Apps as Competition Continues to Grow Fast

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WhatsApp remains the world’s dominant messaging platform in 2026, according to the latest available data, holding a commanding lead over rivals as billions of people worldwide continue to rely on messaging apps for daily communication, business transactions and staying connected across borders.

The Meta-owned app reached more than 3.14 billion monthly active users in the first quarter of 2026, according to figures compiled by SQ Magazine, cementing its position as the most widely used messaging platform on the planet. Roughly 2.3 billion of those users, or about 83 percent, open the app on a daily basis, and the platform now processes more than 100 billion messages per day, with some estimates pushing that figure toward 130 billion as usage continues to climb. India remains WhatsApp’s single largest market, with an estimated 615 million users, while the app is used in more than 180 countries and remains the leading messaging platform in the majority of markets tracked by analytics firm Similarweb.

WhatsApp’s dominance extends well beyond raw user numbers. According to data compiled by Adam Connell using figures from Datareportal, Similarweb and Statista, WhatsApp users open the app an average of nearly 930 times per month, the highest engagement rate of any messaging or social media platform tracked. The app has also become central to business communication, with more than 200 million businesses worldwide now using WhatsApp Business to reach customers, and roughly 175 million people messaging a business account through the platform daily.

WeChat, operated by Chinese technology giant Tencent, holds the second spot in the global rankings, with the combined WeChat and Weixin ecosystem reaching approximately 1.41 billion monthly active users as of recent reporting. Unlike WhatsApp, WeChat functions as far more than a simple messaging app in its core market of China, operating as a comprehensive “super app” that includes mobile payments through WeChat Pay, a social feed known as Moments, ride-hailing and food delivery services, mini-programs that function like apps within the app, and even access to certain government services. WeChat’s user base skews slightly male, at roughly 52 percent, with usage spread relatively evenly across age groups, reflecting its role as essential digital infrastructure for daily life in China rather than a purely social messaging tool.

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Facebook Messenger, also owned by Meta, ranks third globally with just over 1 billion monthly active users, according to figures compiled by SQ Magazine and corroborated by other industry trackers. While Messenger’s overall user base has stabilized after a period of decline in previous years, the app continues to hold particularly strong footholds in specific countries, including the Philippines, where Meta’s own advertising tools report nearly 66 million users, along with substantial user bases in Mexico and Brazil. Despite its strong raw numbers, Messenger tends to underperform relative to other top apps on engagement metrics such as daily sessions and total time spent, suggesting many users maintain accounts on the platform without using it as their primary daily messaging tool.

Telegram rounds out the fourth position, having crossed the 1 billion monthly active user threshold, according to an announcement from founder Pavel Durov in early 2025 that has since been echoed in multiple industry reports tracking the platform’s continued growth through 2026. Telegram has built its user base in part around a reputation for prioritizing user privacy and offering features such as large group channels, file sharing and a broad set of customization options that have made it particularly popular among younger users, tech-focused communities and audiences in regions where alternative platforms face restrictions or limited functionality.

Rounding out the top five, Snapchat has reported roughly 932 million monthly active users as of its most recent quarterly disclosure, according to data compiled by SQ Magazine and other tracking services. While Snapchat is often categorized primarily as a social media and photo-sharing platform, its core messaging functionality, including disappearing messages, direct chats and multimedia sharing, has kept it firmly within rankings of the world’s most-used messaging services, particularly among younger demographics in markets including the United States and parts of Europe.

Beyond the global top five, regional platforms continue to command outsized influence in their specific markets. Line remains the dominant messaging app in Japan and Thailand, with DataReportal’s 2026 country data placing its Japanese user base at 99 million monthly active users, a figure that represents a significant share of the country’s population. In South Korea, KakaoTalk has reached what amounts to near-universal penetration, with 49.1 million monthly active users representing more than 95 percent of the country’s total population and over 97 percent of its internet users. In China, alongside WeChat, Tencent’s QQ platform continues to serve as a widely used messaging and social platform, reporting roughly 532 million monthly active users, according to figures compiled by SQ Magazine.

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The United States remains something of an outlier among major global markets, with no single messaging app holding a dominant position. Recent Google Play ranking data from earlier in 2026 shows Google Messages, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Telegram and Facebook Messenger all competing near the top of download charts on Android devices, while Apple’s iMessage continues to carry significant cultural weight among iPhone users given Apple’s majority share of the U.S. smartphone market. Industry analysts have noted that the average person globally now uses between five and nine different messaging apps depending on the specific contacts, communities and countries they need to reach, a trend that has fueled growing interest in unified inbox tools designed to bridge multiple messaging platforms into a single interface.

As artificial intelligence features become increasingly embedded across major messaging platforms, from WhatsApp’s AI-powered message summaries to Google Messages’ on-device spam detection, the competitive landscape among the world’s top messaging apps is expected to keep evolving throughout the remainder of 2026, even as WhatsApp’s substantial lead in raw user numbers appears unlikely to be seriously challenged in the near term.

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OpenAI’s Codex Coding Tool Reportedly Down for Some Users as Outage Reports Spike Overnight

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OpenAI‘s Codex, the company’s AI-powered coding assistant, was reportedly experiencing connectivity and access issues for some users early Tuesday, with outage tracking services and user reports pointing to intermittent disruptions affecting the tool’s desktop application and related services.

According to outage tracking site StatusGator, 21 user-submitted reports of problems with Codex were logged over a 24-hour period ending Monday evening, with the platform describing OpenAI as experiencing a partial outage at the time. The social media account Status Is Down flagged the issue early Tuesday morning, asking followers whether they were affected and using the hashtags #OpenAI, #OpenAIDown, #Codex and #CodexDown as reports of the disruption circulated online.

Multiple users also reported problems directly on OpenAI’s GitHub issue tracker for the Codex project throughout the day Monday and into Tuesday. Several issues logged by developers described connectivity problems affecting the Codex desktop application, including disconnection errors related to networking and endpoint connectivity, as well as separate issues involving the tool’s integration with Model Context Protocol servers, a framework Codex uses to connect with external tools and data sources. Additional reports cited problems with tool-calling functionality and issues specific to the Codex application running on Windows systems.

OpenAI’s official status page acknowledged ongoing issues tied to its systems, though the company’s most recent public update focused specifically on disruptions affecting FedRAMP workspaces, a designation for cloud environments that meet federal government security compliance standards. According to that update, OpenAI said core functionality had been restored following an earlier disruption, but noted continuing issues affecting Codex, workspace analytics, conversation search, the ability to search for custom GPTs, ChatGPT user invites, and the Compliance Logs Platform download feature specifically within FedRAMP-designated environments. The company said it was continuing to work on resolving those remaining issues and would provide further updates as more information became available.

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The disruption adds to what has been a bumpy stretch for Codex’s reliability in recent weeks. According to outage history compiled by StatusGator, OpenAI has logged a series of warning-level service disruptions on nearly a daily basis over the past several weeks, including periods of degraded service lasting anywhere from several hours to a full day at a time between late June and early July. One previously resolved incident specifically affecting Codex and related FedRAMP services lasted approximately five hours and 48 minutes, beginning in the early morning hours of July 1.

Codex has also experienced a range of other technical issues in recent months unrelated to Tuesday’s reported disruption. According to incident logs maintained by monitoring service IncidentHub, Codex has dealt with several previously resolved issues over the past few weeks, including a period in late June when usage limits within Codex appeared to deplete faster than expected, along with earlier incidents involving access token errors, a “Selected Model is at Capacity” error message, elevated error rates specifically affecting the GPT 5.5 model within Codex, and increased latency during a process the company refers to as Codex compaction.

OpenAI has periodically addressed broader Codex-related errors through its own developer community forum in the past, acknowledging increases in error rates and confirming that engineering teams were actively working to resolve underlying issues as quickly as possible. The company has generally directed users to its official status page for real-time updates during periods of degraded service, a practice that appeared to continue during Tuesday’s reported disruption.

Codex, first introduced by OpenAI as an AI coding tool designed to help developers write, debug and manage code through natural language prompts, has become an increasingly central part of the company’s broader product lineup as demand for AI-assisted software development tools has grown across the technology industry. The tool is available both through a web interface and as a downloadable desktop application, with additional integrations available through command-line interfaces used by many professional software developers.

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Outage tracking services generally caution that reported issue counts reflect self-submitted user data and public signals such as social media activity, meaning the true scope of any given disruption can sometimes differ from the volume of individual reports logged at a particular time. Even so, the combination of user reports on GitHub, social media posts flagging the outage, and OpenAI’s own acknowledgment of ongoing technical issues within certain workspace environments suggested that at least some portion of Codex’s user base was experiencing meaningful disruption to the service as of early Tuesday.

For affected users, common troubleshooting steps recommended by technical support resources typically include checking OpenAI’s official status page for the most current information, verifying internet connectivity, restarting the Codex application, and, where relevant, checking whether an issue is isolated to a specific integration such as an MCP server connection rather than reflecting a broader outage of the underlying service. Developers experiencing persistent issues are generally encouraged to file detailed reports through OpenAI’s GitHub repository, where the company’s engineering team can track and triage individual bug reports alongside broader service-wide disruptions.

As of Tuesday morning, OpenAI had not issued a comprehensive public statement addressing the full scope, cause or expected resolution timeline for the reported Codex disruptions occurring outside the FedRAMP environment specifically referenced in its most recent status update. The company’s history of frequent, relatively short-duration service warnings over the preceding weeks suggests that intermittent disruptions of this kind have become a recurring, if generally short-lived, feature of Codex’s operation as OpenAI continues to scale the tool’s usage among a growing base of developers relying on it for day-to-day coding tasks.

Users experiencing ongoing problems with Codex are encouraged to monitor OpenAI’s official status page at status.openai.com for the most current information, as the company works through what appears to be a mix of both newly reported connectivity issues and previously acknowledged, more narrowly scoped disruptions affecting specific workspace configurations. Given the pattern of past incidents, similar disruptions affecting Codex have historically been resolved within a period ranging from several hours to roughly a day, though OpenAI has not provided a specific timeline for full resolution of Tuesday’s reported issues as of this report.

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Managing Risk in Volatile Markets: Lessons From Crypto Trading

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Managing Risk in Volatile Markets: Lessons From Crypto Trading

In volatile markets, the gap between people who last and people who blow up rarely comes down to who picks the best opportunities.

It comes down to how they handle risk. Cryptocurrency — one of the most volatile asset classes in existence — makes this lesson unusually clear: traders who ignore risk management tend to disappear quickly, while those who respect it survive long enough to let good decisions compound. The principles behind that discipline are not unique to crypto. They apply to any investor, founder, or business managing exposure to an uncertain market.

Survival comes before being right

The first job of any serious market participant is not to make money — it is to avoid catastrophic loss. The mathematics are unforgiving: a 50% loss requires a 100% gain just to break even, and a 90% loss requires a tenfold return. This asymmetry is why experienced traders treat capital preservation as the foundation of everything else. Good risk management isn’t about predicting the future; it’s about making sure that being wrong — which happens to everyone — never ends the game. In a market that can move 10% or 20% in a single day, that mindset is not optional.

Position sizing: the quiet core of the discipline

If risk management has one most important habit, it is position sizing — deciding how much of your capital to put behind any single idea. The professional approach is to define, in advance, the maximum you are willing to lose on one position, commonly one to two percent of your account, and then let that figure determine the size of the trade. It is a subtle inversion of how beginners think: instead of asking “how much could I make,” you start with “how much can I afford to lose.” Tools such as a position size calculator make this straightforward, translating your risk tolerance and stop distance into a precise position size. Done consistently, it ensures no single mistake can do lasting damage.

Define your downside before you enter

Alongside sizing, disciplined traders decide their exit before they enter. A predefined stop-loss caps a loss at a level you chose calmly, rather than one forced on you in a panic. This matters even more when leverage is involved: borrowing to amplify a position amplifies the losses just as fast, and can turn ordinary volatility into a threat to your entire stake. Whatever the instrument, knowing your worst-case outcome in advance is what separates calculated risk from gambling.

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The lessons travel well beyond crypto

Strip away the jargon and these principles describe sound financial management anywhere. Don’t concentrate everything in one bet. Keep reserves for when conditions turn. Size your exposure to what you can afford to lose, not to what you hope to gain. And treat emotional discipline — resisting the urge to chase gains or to freeze in a downturn — as a skill worth practising. Crypto simply teaches these lessons faster, and more painfully, than most markets, because its swings leave so little room for error. For any business owner or investor weighing an uncertain opportunity, the first question worth asking is not how much there is to win, but how much there is to lose — and whether the balance sheet could withstand it.

Volatility isn’t going away, in crypto or anywhere else. But it is survivable, and even useful, for those who put risk first. The market participants who endure are not the ones who never lose; they are the ones who make sure a loss is never fatal. That is a lesson worth borrowing, whatever you invest in.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. All investing and trading carries risk, including the loss of capital; always do your own research.

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Ciena: Successfully Riding The AI-Powered Wave

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Ciena: Successfully Riding The AI-Powered Wave

Ciena: Successfully Riding The AI-Powered Wave

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Bernstein initiates SpaceX stock coverage with Outperform rating

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Allen Caratti case drags on

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Allen Caratti case drags on

The Commonwealth’s dispute with Allen Caratti over charges of financial deception continues in court, with the property developer calling in former attorney-general Christian Porter as his lawyer.

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Major changes to Bristol Temple Island deal needed amid rising costs

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Plans for affordable housing at the site are being halved in a blow to the city council

How the Temple Island development could look
Picture: Legal and General
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How the Temple Island development could look(Image: Local Democracy Reporting Service / Legal and General)

A deal for a landmark Bristol development featuring hundreds of new homes, office blocks reaching up to 19 storeys, and a hotel and conference centre close to Temple Meads station is set to become considerably more costly for the city council.

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The local authority has already pledged £32m to remediate the derelict former diesel rail depot at Temple Island — previously earmarked for an arena and known as Arena Island before being scrapped by then-mayor Marvin Rees — and lay the groundwork for construction.

It has taken four years to decontaminate the site ahead of developer Legal & General overhauling the land with a £350m investment, which is expected to take roughly a decade to complete.

However, a Bristol City Council report now reveals the agreement signed with L&G in 2022 — which pledged that 40 per cent of the 520 homes would be designated as affordable and included the council guaranteeing office rent to the financial firm for 40 years, estimated at £2m annually — is no longer financially viable.

The report states that both elements have shifted considerably against the council’s interests, meaning it will be forced to absorb additional costs to keep the project, part of the broader Temple Quarter and St Philips regeneration scheme, on course.

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The report, due to be ratified by the strategy and resources committee on Monday, July 13, confirmed that land value had fallen sharply owing to a 35 per cent rise in construction costs since 2022 and the introduction of new safety regulations. Yet simultaneously, demand and pricing for Grade A office space in central Bristol has climbed steeply.

All of this means that without a fresh agreement, the 2022 deal would be incapable of delivering the development.

The committee is therefore being asked to halve the proportion of affordable homes from 40 per cent to 20 per cent — a figure that became apparent months before L&G secured planning permission in April — though even this reduction is contingent on a grant from Homes England.

The council, which will sublet the offices, will also be required to pay a higher guaranteed rental income to L&G — a figure that is either unknown, yet to be agreed upon by officers under delegated authority, or not available to the public.

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The report said: “As the prevailing rents for Grade A office space have increased significantly since 2022, it is proposed that the rental guarantee is now valued proportionately higher so that it can still contribute to the development viability.”

It noted that the figures were commercially sensitive and were contained within an exempt report.

The report said: “The proposed lease arrangement creates a long-term revenue commitment for the council.

“There is a risk that income generated from office occupiers may be insufficient to meet lease payments to L&G due to void periods, slower-than-anticipated occupation, market rent fluctuations, rent-free incentives, operating costs or wider market changes.

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“This may create a revenue budget pressure, particularly during the early years of occupation.”

Finance officers stated: “Finance supports the principle of the proposed variation as a pragmatic route to progressing the scheme in current market conditions.

“However, members should be clear that the decision creates a long-term revenue exposure for the council and that the financial position will require active monitoring and management over the life of the lease.”

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Netflix: Don't Overlook The Structural Threat Of Microdramas

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Netflix: Don't Overlook The Structural Threat Of Microdramas

Netflix: Don't Overlook The Structural Threat Of Microdramas

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Asia stocks fall as AI valuation fears overshadow Samsung’s blockbuster earnings

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Great Western Mining reports tungsten results from Nevada project

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Dubai International Airport Is Open Today and Operating Normally After Months of Regional Disruptions

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Dubai International Airport

DUBAI — Dubai International Airport is open and operating normally today, with flights moving through all three of its terminals and real-time tracking data showing low delay levels across arrivals and departures, according to Dubai Airports’ flight information system and independent monitoring services.

The airport, known by its code DXB and recognized as the world’s busiest international aviation hub by passenger volume, is now fully functional after navigating one of the most disruptive periods in its history. That disruption was triggered by the outbreak of the U.S.-Iran conflict earlier this year, which caused intermittent airspace restrictions, flight suspensions and widespread rerouting across the broader Gulf region for several months.

Throughout the height of the crisis, Emirates and flydubai, the two primary airlines operating out of Dubai, continued flying and served as the backbone of connectivity through DXB even as capacity from many foreign carriers collapsed. At various points during the disruption, the airport maintained more than 220 combined daily departures between the two airlines, even as numerous international carriers suspended or significantly reduced their own Dubai routes in response to regional security concerns. Dubai Airports issued a standing advisory throughout the disruption period urging passengers to confirm departure times directly with their airlines before heading to the airport, guidance that remained in place for much of the crisis.

The path back to normal operations accelerated following a tentative ceasefire between the United States and Iran that took effect in early April, which triggered a series of successive airline reinstatements over the following weeks. British Airways, one of the more prominent European carriers to scale back its Dubai service during the crisis, announced it would resume flights to the city starting July 1, though initially at a reduced scale of one daily flight compared with the three daily flights it had operated before the disruption began. That announcement was widely regarded as the clearest signal yet from a major European carrier regarding what the post-crisis landscape for Gulf air travel would look like going forward.

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The disruption period itself unfolded in stages over several months. Regional tensions escalated sharply in early June, when Iran launched missiles and drones at Kuwait and Bahrain, both of which host U.S. military bases, following a U.S. strike near the Strait of Hormuz. That escalation resulted in a terminal at Kuwait International Airport being struck and several people being wounded, forcing flight suspensions across Kuwait even as Dubai’s airport continued operating throughout the same period. At the time, UAE airspace remained open even as the broader security situation across the Gulf deteriorated, though Dubai Airports had not ruled out the possibility of further disruption depending on how the conflict evolved.

European aviation regulators played a significant role in shaping the pace of the recovery for international carriers. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency’s conflict zone advisory for the Middle East and Persian Gulf region remained in force for an extended period, with revisions gradually softening the recommended guidance for airlines regulated by the agency from advising against Gulf travel entirely to recommending carriers exercise caution. Until that bulletin was fully lifted, most European carriers were unable to resume Gulf routes regardless of their own individual assessments of the security situation, a regulatory reality that delayed the return of airlines such as KLM, Lufthansa and Air France even as demand for Dubai travel began recovering.

By early July, however, the recovery had become firmly established. Dubai International Airport has now been able to consistently maintain full operational status since the diplomatic de-escalation of the U.S.-Iran conflict allowed regional airspace to normalize over the preceding several weeks. Major airlines, particularly Emirates and flydubai, have resumed their normal flight schedules, with travelers arriving from destinations across Europe, South Asia and the United States now proceeding largely as scheduled according to current flight information.

The broader context surrounding Dubai’s recovery underscores the scale of what the airport navigated during the disruption. DXB welcomed a record 95.2 million passengers in 2025, becoming the busiest airport in the world by international passenger volume for the first time. Dubai’s broader tourism sector also continued growing even amid the aviation disruptions earlier this year, with the emirate recording 19.59 million international arrivals, a 5 percent increase over the prior year and marking the third consecutive year of record visitor arrivals. Hotel occupancy in the city has also remained strong, with rates around 80 percent supporting a robust meetings, incentive travel, conference and exhibition market that continues to draw international business travelers to the region.

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Dubai Airports has also continued investing in the physical infrastructure of the facility even amid the disruption. The organization recently completed a major expansion of the bridge connecting to Terminal 1, a project intended to increase road access capacity and improve overall passenger flow ahead of the peak summer travel season, which typically brings a significant surge in visitors to the region.

Despite the return to normal operations, Dubai Airports and aviation analysts continue to advise travelers to confirm flight details directly with their airlines before heading to the airport, given the fluid nature of the regional security situation that characterized much of the earlier disruption period. While current conditions reflect a full return to normal operations across all three DXB terminals, the broader Gulf region’s recent history of rapidly shifting airspace restrictions means that travelers with itineraries connecting through Dubai or other regional hubs are generally encouraged to remain attentive to airline advisories in the days leading up to their travel.

For now, Dubai International Airport’s return to full operational capacity marks the conclusion of a challenging chapter for one of the world’s most critical aviation hubs, with the facility once again processing hundreds of flights daily and serving as a central connecting point for travelers moving between Europe, Asia, Africa and North America, much as it did before the regional disruptions of earlier this year began affecting operations across the Gulf.

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