facebook, messenger

Just three months ago, the Internet was swarming with news about Facebook Messenger hitting the 900 million monthly users mark (and Whatsapp going way over 1 billion). That is old news now, as the company announced today that the app has finally hit the 1 billion MAUs milestone.

The announcement comes just four years after Messenger was released as a standalone app, which is saying something. To scale, WhatsApp took almost seven years to hit the same popularity as Messenger right now. Facebook took this opportunity to disclose various important and interesting statistics about its Messenger app.

Most tech geeks know that Facebook recently passed the 1.6 billion monthly active users mark. With Messenger now coming in at a billion users, the company can now happily boast that more than 60 percent of its users are communicating using the mobile Messenger app.

That’s not the whole story, though. Messenger comes in with more features than just instant messaging. We get voice calls, stickers, GIFs and even games on the platform to enjoy with your friends, family and loved ones. These services, Facebook says, are also performing extremely well.

According to the social giant, 10 percent of all Voice over IP (VoIP) calls made globally take place within Messenger. This is saying something, as calling services came to messenger just three years ago. But, if you recall, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had promised that the quality of calls would increase as more people used the service. And true to his words, the service did flower that way.

Voice calls on Messenger aren’t just limited to one-on-one conversations. You can hold group conversations, too which has also caught a great wind.

Just like other IM services, Messenger allows you to share pictures, too. According to Facebook, more than 17 billion photos are distributed by Messenger each month and 22 million GIFs are shared every day i.e. just under 254 GIFs per second.

The company also recently started introducing games into the app. In March, the company released a basketball game within Messenger that has been played more than a billion times since. Last month, it followed that success with a soccer game, just in time for the Euro 2016 tournament.

As part of this journey to 1 billion, we focused on creating the best possible experiences in modern day communications,

said Facebook’s vice president for Messenger, David Marcus.

We remain focused on helping connect people to the people and businesses who matter most.

The company, along with all these numbers, announced that as part of its app hitting a new milestone, it is adding a balloon gift in the app that you’ll be able to send to friends to add “a touch of whimsy and delight” to conversations.


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