Facebook Messenger hits 1 billion user milestone

It looks like Facebook’s constant nagging has finally paid off as the company announced today that Messenger has crossed the 1 Billion monthly users mark after 5 years of existence.

Messenger only hit 900 million users back in April, meaning that the service has grown rapidly this year, and has now become the second most popular iOS app of all time – after the official Facebook app.

An update on the official Messenger Facebook page said, “On behalf of the entire Messenger team, we’d like to thank the more than 1 billion people who are now using Messenger every month”.

It’s an impressive milestone to be sure, but reaching it is all the more noteworthy because of the initial backlash to Facebook splitting Messenger off from its flagship app in 2014. The person receiving the message will see a stream of balloons fly up their screen when they read it.

Facebook, by comparison, now has two separate messaging applications with one billion users each – and growing.

Facebook plans to say thank you to the billion-plus users with a floating balloon emoji feature.

The Wednesday announcement means that Messenger added approximately 300 million new users since last June. Determined to stay ahead of the chasing pack and keep its users engaged within the app, Facebook added more interesting features, including SMS.

Venture Beat notes that the Zuckerberg-led social media company has not been shy about touting the advantages of Facebook Messenger, particularly as it extends to businesses and chatbots. So now if the company wants to popularise the platforms comma it’s decided that it has to make use of boats and developers to bring about a new change. 17 billion photos are distributed by Messenger each month, with 22 million GIF’s shared every day. Furthermore, Messenger is also responsible for about 10% of global VoIP calls.

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 1.39 billion monthly active users.