Facebook Messenger reaches 1.2 billion monthly active users

WeChat is a popular instant messaging product in China. So which product is the most similar to WeChat in the world? It is not Facebook or Whatsapp, but Facebook Messenger. Riding on the spring breeze of mobile Internet, Messenger was born from Facebook, just as WeChat was born from QQ. In addition, it is precisely by learning from WeChat's product strategy that Facebook Messenger has also abandoned its past simple style and started to add more and more functions, such as official accounts, mobile payments, etc.

WeChat is a national social application, and Facebook Messenger is undoubtedly a global social application. Thanks to China's demographic dividend, as of the fourth quarter of 2016, WeChat's monthly active users reached 889 million, while Facebook Messenger reached the 1.2 billion mark in April 2017.

That’s the same number as Facebook’s other messaging app, WhatsApp, and twice as many monthly active users as Instagram, according to Facebook’s 4Q16 earnings report. Facebook’s flagship app has 1.74 billion monthly mobile active users. Facebook has bolstered Messenger with games, chatbots, voice calls, video calls, and a modified camera with masks, frames, stickers, and effects. Facebook said in February that 400 million people use voice and video calls on Messenger each month, sending 1 billion messages between people and businesses each month.

Messenger added 200 million monthly active users, which is closely related to the large number of updates it released in the past few months, including the launch of Messenger Day, the introduction of polling and quick reply features to encourage P2P payments, allowing users to easily switch between video and phone conversations, and introducing a unified inbox for apps such as Messenger, Instagram and Facebook to manage all information, upgrading the camera function to support photo and video art and special effects, adding group video chat and group payment functions, and releasing the suggested replies function supported by Messenger's intelligent assistant M.