Facebook's Messenger, an app independent of the social network's mobile version, is now used by half a billion people each month.
Earlier this year, Facebook, which has around 1.3 billion users, began to push its users towards using Messenger instead of the Facebook mobile app for chatting with their friends. Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said in an earnings call in April that Messenger had 200 million users.
"Messenger was the first of our standalone apps, and unlike our core Facebook apps, it focused on one use case - messaging," said Peter Martinazzi, Director of Product Management at Facebook.
Martinazzi further said that the company is working to improve speed and reliability of the app, with updates rolling out every two weeks.
Messenger's ascent is comparable to WhatsApp's, which was acquired by Facebook in a staggering $19 billion deal this year. WhatsApp reached the half-billion mark in April, propelled by fast adoption in countries such Brazil, India and Mexico, and hit 600 million four months later.
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