Facebook Messenger reports two-fold growth in video calls in 2017

Social media giant Facebook reported that a total of 17 billion video calls were made in 2017 via its Messenger platform, which is double the figures from the previous year.

While Facebook launched group video chat in Messenger last December, the company has registered a significant growth in the number of video calls. Over seven billion calls were happening (on average) every day of the year, it claimed.

Apart from this, Messenger also witnessed the exchange of 500 billion emojis and 18 billion GIFs, as per a piece penned down by Sean Kelly, Product Management Director, Messenger.

On average, Messenger noted that there are over 7 billion conversations taking place on Messenger every day in 2017. Subsequently, on an average, 260 million new conversation threads were started every day in 2017.

With group chats becoming increasingly popular, Messenger noted that in 2017, 2.5 million new groups were created on Messenger every day with an average group size of 10 people.

Further, people shared more than 11 billion reactions, up from two billion shared in June.

Earlier in the year, Messenger rolled out its version 2.2, helping developers and businesses reach their customers in new and engaging ways, improve the quality of their messaging experiences and make it easier to build and iterate on the platform.

In a blog written by the team, Messenger revealed that the move was taken after extensive feedback that was received from the aforementioned target audience regarding the usage of the platform for official purposes.

The new and improved version consists of a customer chat plugin, using which people can chat with businesses on their websites and on either of the versions of Messenger (web, mobile or tablet) and transition back and forth seamlessly without losing the conversation's history and context. This makes it easier for customers to continue the conversation with a business as per convenience.