Facebook Messenger user-base hits half a billon

Facebook today announced that its Messenger app was now being used by at least 500 million people every month, The Indian Express reported.

The app, launched in 2011, had shot into the news recently when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted ''forcing'' users to download the new app, rather than messaging within the Facebook app.

In a post, Peter Martinazzi, director of product management, said Facebook was ''more committed than ever to make it the best possible messaging experience''.

''Messenger was the first of our standalone apps, and unlike our core Facebook apps, it focused on one use case – messaging. With Messenger, you can reach people instantly. It is just as fast as SMS but gives you the ability to express yourself in ways that SMS can't.''

According to Facebook, it continued to improve speed and reliability and updates to Messenger ship every two weeks.

In an informal Q&A session last week, Zuckerberg had said ''asking folks to install another app is a short term painful thing, but if we wanted to focus on serving this [use case] well, we had to build a dedicated and focused experience.'' He added, the primary purpose of the Facebook app was News Feed, but messaging was this behavior people were doing more and more.

"This is an exciting milestone but with a half billion people relying on Messenger to communicate and connect, it is also a reminder that there is so much left for us to do," Martinazzi wrote.

As a standalone app, Facebook Messenger allows users to send videos, stickers, make free calls, chat with groups and more, NDTV reported.

"Messaging is an important part of how people stay connected and since Messenger launched in 2011 we've been passionate about giving people a faster and more expressive way to communicate," added Martinazzi.

The popular messaging service, WhatsApp, which was part of Facebook, crossed 600 million monthly active users globally, with the company seeing 100 million active user growth in about four months from 500 million active users in April.

Similar services were offered by WhatsApp except that it was yet to integrate voice-calling feature to it. The feature, which was in the pipeline, had been delayed to the first quarter of 2015.