Facebook Messenger app gathers 500 mln users in 6 months

Cutting off access to in-app chat, the social media network forced its users to install the Messenger app

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Facebook's Messenger app has reportedly doubled the size of its base in the last six months with about 500 million people using the app actively every month.

Facebook's decision to spin off messages into a separate app although an unpopular one but a success nonetheless. Cutting off access to in-app chat, the social media network forced its users to install Messenger app in order to receive, send and read messages, which caused the sudden spike, reported CNET.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the percentage of people who used Facebook online (85%) was less than those who used SMS (99%) in a lot of countries. He added that it was "a short-term, painful thing to ask folks to use a separate messaging app" but the company had to build a dedicated and focused experience in order to serve the majority of people using the text message service.