Facebook Messenger has half a billion active users

Facebook now has half a billion users who use Messenger at least monthly. The American company announced this on Monday evening. Facebook would also bring more features to the service in the coming months.

Facebook started Messenger three years ago. Now 500 million active users use the chat application, a top executive said. By ‘active’ he refers to users who communicate via the service at least once a month.

With that, Facebook seems to be on WhatsApp in terms of use. WhatsApp, which was acquired by the social networking site this year, said in August that the service has 600 million active users. However, the American company did not disclose how active users are; it is therefore unknown whether that number relates to, for example, users who use WhatsApp on a monthly basis.

The Facebook CEO who made the announcement Monday evening, David Marcus, went on to say that Facebook will be rolling out “more innovation and updates” for Messenger in the coming months. It seems that more functionalities will follow. This is in line with the discovery that Facebook Messenger will probably be able to make payments between friends.