Facebook successfully makes over a half-billion people download Messenger app

November 11, 2014

Over 500 million people have now downloaded the standalone Facebook Messenger app since it was first made available in 2011, and it's likely that it has seen a surge in users since Facebook removed the messenging features from its main app several months ago.

The company didn't offer a breakdown of how many of its Messenger users are on Android, iOS and Windows Phone with today's announcement, nor did it offer any clues as to what will be included in future updates, saying only that it will continue to "evolve and improve". The removal of messaging features from the main Facebook app has been a source of controversy for many people. However, it would appear that Facebook has managed to get a large amount of its over 1 billion worldwide users to download the Messenger app to chat with their friends.