Facebook Messenger which has been in the limelight a lot lately owing to its detachment from the official app of the social network, is currently being used by 500 million people each month. That’s a pretty massive number, considering that the most popular instant messaging app in the world, WhatsApp, has a monthly user base of 600 million.
But there’s no competition here, since WhatsApp is owned by Facebook itself as a result of a deal which cost the social networking site a whopping $19 billion. And now, it’s safe to say that its Messenger application is well on its way to entering the top league of instant messaging apps. After all, it has jumped to 500 million active users from an unimpressive 200 million back in April.
So what has changed so drastically that 300 million people have decided to begin actively using Facebook Messenger on their smartphones? The answer is obvious; Mark Zuckerberg’s company recently decided to separate the chat functionality from its official app and make it available only in the form of the standalone tool.
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Although this transition is yet to fully take place, Facebook has been reminding its users for more than a month to download the separate Messenger app in order to keep chatting on their smartphones. Despite this move having been met with some serious criticism, people have clearly not steered clear of the social network’s reworked option.
Zuckerberg recently admitted that requesting so many users to download a new app is a ‘big ask,’ but he made it clear that this was being done due to the popularity of apps created for specific purposes. Facebook Messenger can now be downloaded on your Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices free of cost.