Facebook Messenger crosses 1 billion monthly users mark

Facebook announced that its Messenger app has crossed over 1 billion active monthly users, making it one of the top three apps across the globe. The main Facebook app is by far the most popular app with 1.5 billion monthly users, followed by Messenger and WhatsApp.

Facebook owns all the top three apps, proving its supremacy in the mobile app segment. Closest to these apps are Google’s Maps and Youtube, according to independent data.

Messenger is also the second most popular iOS app besides Facebook. People send more than 17 billion photos to friends through Messenger every month and more than 22 million GIFs are sent every day via Messenger.

Facebook made Messenger a standalone app in 2014, forcing users to download the app to continue chatting on their mobile devices. The app since then grew in popularity allowing Facebook to make Messenger an essential part of its business.

Since the Messenger platform opened, over 18,000 bots have launched on Messenger and over 23,000 developers have signed up for Wit.ai's Bot Engine.