In the elite club of internet services with enough penetration to reach about 1/7th of the earth's population, members are few and far between. But now Facebook Messenger can say that it has earned the badge that gives it access to this exclusive circle. After getting to 1 Billion installs on the Play Store a year ago, Messenger is now boasting, for real, 1 Billion monthly active users.

Whatsapp, the other Facebook-owned chat service, got to 1 Billion monthly active users several months ago, in February, so Messenger is still playing catch-up with its in-house rival, but I'm sure Facebook is not crying over the friendly competition going on between these two. Whichever growth each of them gets benefits the company, and however monetization happens or will happen in the future can only fill Facebook's pockets.

[EMBED_VIMEO]https://vimeo.com/175465548[/EMBED_VIMEO]

To celebrate, Facebook Messenger has made this video and is adding a small floating balloon animation whenever you send a balloon emoji to someone on the service.

Source: Facebook Newsroom