Social media giant Facebook has reported that its direct messaging app now boasts 500 million global users.
The firm has seen a huge increase in its user numbers since April, when the figure stood at 200 million. However, this comes after a concerted effort by Facebook to have its users switch to the separate application. Although the messaging service has been around since 2011, it was in July of this year that people had to switch to the app to send messages.
Before the introduction of the newer app, the direct posts between users did not show up on traditional news feeds, with the messages arriving in a secure inbox within the regular Facebook application.
However, according to Peter Martinazzi, the company’s product management director, a separate service brings a number of benefits to users. He explained:
“Messenger was the first of our standalone apps, and unlike our core Facebook apps, it focused on one use case – messaging.”
As such, Martinazzi believes that the move has allowed the social firm to improve the speed and efficiency of Facebook Messenger. This, he hopes, will allow for users to have a swifter and more “expressive” method for chatting with friends online.
However, the move to a separate application, while still being taken up in large numbers, has received criticism from some quarters. Many users reportedly dislike having to leave the core Facebook service in order to send direct messages, which used to be housed under the same application.
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