facebook’s big name standalone app, Messenger, crossed 800 million monthly users at the close of 2015, the social community pronounced in a blog put up on Thursday. This reflects a significant elevate, up from 500 million in late 2014—though a chunk of Messenger’s growth may also be attributed to fb’s resolution to nix in-app messaging from its flagship app, successfully forcing users to download Messenger.

As mentioned in quick firm‘s December 2015 quilt story, facebook boasts 1.55 billion month-to-month customers, which makes Messenger’s numbers doubly spectacular. The app has eclipsed facebook-huge growth over the last year, on condition that fb most effective won about 200 million new monthly customers because November 2014. These metrics also spotlight, in contrast, the glacial % of Twitter’s up to date consumer increase: the company’s whole monthly user depend is currently stagnating at about 320 million.

In 2015, facebook spruced up Messenger with a slew of new features, together with peer-to-peer funds and a snazzy digital assistant known as M. the company can be testing e-commerce capabilities to be able to supply shops the flexibility to sell straight away to consumers on the platform.

fb additionally lately launched a instrument development package that empowers developers to create chat bots for Messenger, which in turn will supply users in-app access to third-birthday party services and products. One such chat bot integration used to be already revealed back in December, when fb made it that you can imagine for users to order Uber rides from within Messenger.

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