Facebook Messenger reaches over 500m monthly users

Facebook’s Messenger app has over doubled the amount of users it had in April, where the count stood at around 200m.

The increase is attributed to Messenger being separated from the main Facebook app, a move enforced across some European countries in April. Messenger was originally launched as a standalone app in August 2011.

In a blog post, the company said: "Today more than 500m people are using Messenger each month and we're more committed than ever to make it the best possible messaging experience. We've also continued to improve speed and reliability. Updates to Messenger ship every two weeks so it continues to evolve and improve.”

Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg explained that creating a separate mobile app was necessary for development: "Even though it was a short-term, painful thing to ask folks to install a separate messaging app, we knew that we could never deliver the quality of experience as just a tab inside the main Facebook app."

Looking forward, Facebook’s objective to reach the forefront of mobile messaging was further ratified after finalising a deal to buy popular messaging service WhatsApp last month for approximately £13.8bn. The latter mobile messaging app had more than 600m monthly users at the time of the acquisition.