Around one billion people use Facebook Messenger every month, revealed Facebook on its newsroom. On the occasion, Facebook has sent “thank you” to the users in the form of a new floating balloon gift that everyone can use to celebrate. “Just send a balloon emoji to your friends to add a touch of whimsy and delight to any conversation,” Facebook stated in the news.
Messenger is the third app from the social networking giant. The other two are the main Facebook app and the messaging app Whatsapp, which the company acquired in the year 2014 for $22 billion. On February 1, Whatsapp announced that it crossed one billion users.
Although initially a part of Facebook app, Messenger was made it into a standalone app later. In April 2014, the company notified users to install the standalone Messenger app in order to continue using Facebook chat on their smartphones. More features and better experience, such as faster access, voice calls, etc. were the cited reasons for the shift. Reports appeared in June 2016 that Facebook is disabling the ability to view and respond to messages through a mobile web browser.
"Using the Messenger app is faster and enables richer interactions. We're continuing to bring the best experiences we can to the 900 million people on Messenger," the company said in a statement. Whatsoever the reasons are, Facebook convinced the users to download the standalone Messenger app, which has resulted now in 1 billion users.
Facebook is upgrading the features of Messenger from time-to-time, the latest being the way conversations are arranged. With the latest update, the users can see the first few most recent messages at the top of the screen, followed by a new Favorites section, which highlights people they message most frequently, so they can quickly pick up the last conversation.
The company also made Messenger a part of the business community via Bots. “Bots can provide anything from automated subscription content like weather and traffic updates, to customized communications like receipts, shipping notifications, and live automated messages all by interacting directly with the people who want to get them,” said Facebook in an announcement.
It allowed companies to create their own bots for the social network's Messenger service, using them to field queries and provide information to customers and fans. According to a statistics released by Facebook on June 30, 2016, more than 11,000 bots have been added to Messenger. In future, Messenger seems to make bigger leaps.
