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Facebook is a global juggernaut, in terms of the number of users it has. One of their many products, Facebook Messenger is now their fourth product to reach 1 billion monthly active users (behind Facebook itself, Instagram and WhatsApp). That’s nothing to sneeze at, considering Twitter has about half that many active users for the platform as a whole.
To celebrate 1 billion monthly active users, Facebook has released an infographic (shown below) showing some stats about their Messenger app, and those that use it. Probably the most telling statistic there is the fact that Facebook Messenger is the second most popular app on iOS, of all-time. There’s also 1 billion messages sent between people and businesses each month, which is a pretty astounding number. Even more astounding is the fact that there are 17 billion photos sent each month through Facebook Messenger. Making it a pretty popular messaging service, behind Facebook-owned WhatsApp. There’s also 380 million stickers sent each day and 22 million GIFs sent daily. This definitely shows that users do love their animated GIFs, and Facebook is one of only a few platforms that actually support them – surprisingly enough, WhatsApp doesn’t.
The company has continued to work to improve Messenger over the years. The most recent changes have come in the form of bots. Something that has become quite popular in Silicon Valley in 2016. Facebook Messenger bots are here to allow you to get information on your flight, keep up with your favorite NBA teams and the NBA Draft, and so much more. Of course, this is really only the beginning with bots, and Facebook is working on more and more partnerships with companies for creating their own bots. Since social media is a pretty big platform for companies and customer support. Automating that with bots can be a pretty beneficial.
Facebook Messenger also has the ability to be your default SMS app on your Android smartphone (that functionality isn’t available through iOS). There aren’t any numbers on how many users use it as their default SMS app, but there’s likely quite a few out there. It likely won’t be long before Facebook Messenger hits that 2 billion monthly active users milestone, especially seeing how much Facebook is still growing, after all these years.
