In April, Facebook announced it had 900 million active users each month on its messaging platform. Now, a few months later, Facebook Messenger has officially reached one billion monthly active users.
This makes Facebook Messenger the fourth Facebook-owned app to have this level of outreach. The other three are Facebook Groups, WhatsApp and the Facebook app. To celebrate the milestone, Facebook is adding a balloon feature, which will add animations when users use the balloon emoji in messages.
“We’re grateful for all the people who are sending billions of messages every day and we hope to send 1 billion thank yous in the form of a new floating balloon gift that everyone can use to celebrate,” wrote Facebook in a statement. “Just send a balloon emoji to your friends to add a touch of whimsy and delight to any conversation.”
According to the company, users share 17 billion photos every month on the messaging platform and 22 million animated GIFs on a daily basis. As for business messages, communication between users and companies number over a billion, and the platform boasts more than 18,000 bots.
“We know that every message is important to you — no matter what you want to say — and our team is committed to building experiences you love and to making all the interactions in your life easier no matter who you are communicating with,” said Facebook.
Earlier this month, Facebook Messenger announced it is testing a new timer feature, allowing users to give each message in a thread an expiration date. Translation: chat messages on the platform can self-destruct. The social media giant announced in a blog post it is testing secret conversations with end-to-end encryption, which means only the participants in the conversation can read the contents in the thread.
“We’ve heard from you that there are times when you want additional safeguards — perhaps when discussing private information like an illness or a health issue with trusted friends and family, or sending financial information to an accountant,” wrote Facebook on the company blog post. “To enable you to do this we are starting to test the ability to create one-to-one secret conversations in Messenger that will be end-to-end encrypted and which can only be read on one device of the person you’re communicating with. That means the messages are intended just for you and the other person — not anyone else, including us.”
