Daily Mirror - Print Edition

Facebook Messenger has hit a billion users milestone

22 Jul 2016 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}      

One Billion People now use, Facebook Messenger app each month and crossing the billionuser
mark makes Messenger one of the biggest chat apps in the world. On Wednesday, the social network giant Facebook announced regarding its recent milestone of surpassing 1 billion monthly active users on its messaging app. This comes after Facebook Messenger crossed 900 million monthly active users in April.

Messenger has come a long way since Facebook began pushing the messaging app in 2014. In fact, the app was widely hated when Facebook eliminated messaging from its mobile app and forced people to download Messenger.As part of this journey to 1 billion, we focused on creating the best possible experiences in modern day communications,” David Marcus, Facebook’s VP of Messenger, said in a statement.

It roughly suggests that 1 out of every 7 members of the population are logging onto Facebook Messenger each month to text with friends and family.Facebook also released some stats related to its messaging service. To put its growing popularity into perspective, according to Facebook, 22 million GIFs are sent every day, that around 254 in a second, and popular holidays saw a noticeable uptick in user messaging, with 300 million flowers sent on Mother's Day and 360 million valentine related chats sent on February 14. Among a growing, robust list of sticker packs, the app's most popular remains related to the Angry Birds franchise. Facebook, in the past, has credited the app’s evergrowing popularity to all the new tools and functions it introduced for Messenger users last year such as video calling, the ability to send money to and receive money from friends and new ways to help businesses interact with their followers.

A few of Facebook Messenger's wellreceived features like sticker packs, money payments, and easilyshareable GIFs will be making their debut in the new iOS 10 Messages app this fall.WhatsApp, the messaging app Facebook acquired for $22 billion in 2014, reached the same number of users in February, while popular Chinese messaging app WeChat has 762 million users and LINE has 218.4 million.