In its blogpost, Facebook has announced that year 2015 was very exciting for Facebook as it achieved many milestones. Facebook Messenger was named the fastest growing app of 2015 (according to Nielsen). It is also the second most popular iOS app of all time behind Facebook. Eight hundred million people now use Facebook Messenger each month.
According to Facebook’s Vice President of Messaging Products David Marcus, 2015 was a year when we made significant improvements to how we enable people to communicate. Among other things, we made Messenger blazing fast, we introduced video calling, the ability to customize conversations with colors, nicknames and emojis, and with Businesses on Messenger, we introduced a new way for businesses to engage their customers by providing them with a delightful, personal experience. We rolled out the ability to send and receive money to friends right from conversations, launched Messenger Platform for expression apps, and updated the way you can choose to share your location. We added helpful information at the top of new conversations so you always have the context of who you’re talking to if it’s not a Facebook friend, and with Message Requests, we built the foundational step of enabling you to find and talk to anyone. We also made photo sharing with friends easier than ever with our new feature Photo Magic. Additionally, we started testing M, a digital virtual assistant, and closed the year by launching our transportation platform with Uber. It was a busy year! We created all these experiences with a mindset of helping hundreds of millions of people manage their daily interactions with people, businesses, and services more seamlessly than ever.
Some facts of Facebook Messenger shared by Facebook:
1. Messenger was the fastest growing app of 2015 in the U.S. (according to Nielsen)
2. The number of messages sent to businesses on Facebook has doubled in the past year
3. People send more than 9.5 billion photos to friends through Messenger every month
4. Messenger is the second most popular iOS app of all time, behind Facebook. (according to App Annie)
5. On average, more than five million GIFs are sent every day via Messenger
6. Messenger has more than 800 million monthly active users
7. Messenger has been downloaded more than 1 billion times on Android
8. Since the launch of Messenger Platform, a number of Messenger apps have gotten more than a million installs. These include Talking Tom, GIPHY, Sound Clips, and Bitmoji.
9. Across the Facebook family of apps, on average more than 45 billion messages are now sent daily.
10. Two days after launching video calling in Messenger, Facebook crossed the one million call mark.
11. Messenger already accounts for more than 10% of all mobile VoIP calls globally.
