Facebook has announced that its instant Messenger application now has more than 1 billion monthly active users.
Facebook Messenger was launched in 2011 and was growing steadily since then. However, it has grown rapidly in 2016, with marking 800 million users in January and 900 million users in April, that’s gaining around 100 million users every three months. Facebook has also shared some more impressive statistics about Messenger like it is the second most popular app on iOS, over 1 billion Android version has been downloaded, more than 17 billion photos are shared every month and more than 22 million animated GIFs a day. The company also claims that the Messenger is responsible for 10 percent of all Voice over IP (VoIP) calls made globally.
To celebrate this huge milestone, Facebook has introduced a new balloon emoji to its Messenger app. After sending the balloon emoji, the person receiving the message will see a stream of balloons fly up their screen when they read it.
Facebook-owned Whatsapp has already crossed 1 billion monthly active users in February 2016 while its photo sharing app Instagram has more than 500 million monthly active users.