Facebook celebrated July 20 another monster milestone: its home-brewed messaging app Facebook Messenger currently boasts 1 billion monthly active users (MAUs) in nearly all countries of the world.
Analysts said that hitting such a rare milestone is for most tech companies just like hitting the jackpot as chances for it to happen are very slim. However, Facebook had had hit the lottery with two other apps, each having more than 1 billion users every month.
And this is not a small feat, as Facebook currently monopolizes what people use on their phones. It is well known that mobile phone users are keen on just a select number of apps on their devices.
Currently just two tech companies, Facebook and Google, were able to dominate the mobile app world. Analysts noted that the secret recipe for their success is as simple as making an app people want to use over and over again.
Two years ago, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg bought another app that has reached the 1 billion user milestone in the meantime: WhatsApp. Though the price was hefty – $19 billion – the investment paid off in less than three years.
Facebook has another recipe for success it was willing to share with us: it starts to make ad revenue after an app jumps over the 1 billion limit.
Facebook Messenger boss David Marcus was over thrilled with the achievement. Marcus, who joined the firm when Messenger was used by “just” 300 million users, explained that serving and building stuff for $1 billion people is “a great feeling.”
Facebook Messenger was first rolled out in 2011, but it started to gain steam after Facebook shut down the social media platform inbuilt messaging feature. The app’s popularity grew even larger after the company added some extra features such as voice and video calls and the ability to transfer money.
Messenger accrued 100 million users to hit the 1 billion user threshold in just three months. The app’s Android version was downloaded over 1 billion times. Facebook Messenger is also the second-best app for iOS platforms after the Facebook app.
When asked whether the new milestone will mean more ads, Marcus replied that there is no rush to monetize the service yet. He said that after the “real problems” are solved the “other things” would happen naturally.
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