Half-A-Billion People Now Use Facebook Standalone App
Few months after splitting its Messenger off from the main application, Facebook has announced that the number of users on its standalone Messenger mobile app every month as reached 500 million. This is in spite of criticism, which trailed the company’s decision to separate its Messenger from Facebook some months back.
“Today more than 500 million people are using Messenger each month and we’re more committed than ever to make it the best possible messaging experience.”
A lot of people questioned the company’s decision to separate the Messenger from the main app, but the Facebook has always emphasised it had very good reasons for doing that.
Zuckerberg addressed this and other issues while in a Question and Answer session.
“The first thing I want to do is acknowledge that asking everyone in our community to install a new app is a big ask. We really believe that this is a better experience and the messaging is really important. Each app can do one thing well.”
The company has always held the view that having or creating a separate app for would allow for better performance. By doing this, Facebook has not only removed some frictions along the line, it has also improved speed, which is one of the reasons it did that in the first place.
“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. You can send stickers or videos, take selfies, chat with groups and make free calls. We’ve also continued to improve speed and reliability. Updates to Messenger ship every two weeks so it continues to evolve and improve.”
Facebook plans to encourage as more people as possible to use its Messenger application, which it claims has more features than SMS.
The company said each day; 10 billion messages are exchanged, which requires navigating through the Facebook application before one could get to the relevant tab.
To Facebook, this is just the beginning as it reveals through a recent post that a lot still has to be done.
“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.”
