Facebook Messenger now has over a billion users

“They use it to make plans, share dreams, send payments, tell jokes, play games, let their loved ones know they’re thinking about them, and much, much more.”

David Marcus, VP, Messenger said they have focused on creating the best possible experiences in modern day communications. “We remain focused on helping connect people to the people and businesses who matter most. Thank you to everyone who uses Messenger around the world, and we’re looking forward to connecting the next billion.”

READ: Facebook Messenger will now support Instant Articles

Facebook plans to say thank you to the billion-plus users with a floating balloon emoji feature. Facebook claimed Messenger is also the second most popular iOS app of all time, second only to Facebook.

Now, each month more than a billion messages are sent between people and businesses, a number which has doubled since the past year.

READ: Facebook Messenger on iOS now supports 3D Touch

And with the opening up of the platform for bots, over 18,000 of these have been launched. The platorm has over 23,000 developers at the moment.

Messenger also accounts for a tenth of all of the world’s VoIP calls. Also, people send over 17 billion photos through Messenger every month, and this includes 22 million GIFs every day at 254 GIFs per second.

Over 250 sticker packs are available on the platform offering more than 4,000 stickers. And this adds up to 380 million stickers being sent every day.