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Facebook Communications Social Networks Software

Facebook Messenger Hits 1B Monthly Active Users, Accounts For 10 Percent Of All VoIP Calls (techcrunch.com) 55

Posted by msmash from the facebook-world dept.
Speaking of instant messaging and VoIP call apps, Facebook announced on Wednesday that Facebook Messenger has hit the 1 billion monthly active users milestone. The company adds that Messenger is just more than a text messenger -- in addition to the ambitious bot gamble, a digital assistant, and the ability to send money to friends -- Messenger now accounts for 10 percent of all VoIP calls made globally. Messenger's tremendous growth also underscores Facebook's mammoth capture of the world. The social network is used by more than 1.6 billion people actively every month. WhatsApp, the chat client it owns, is also used by more than one billion people.

TechCrunch has a brilliant story on the growth of Messenger from the scratch.
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Facebook Messenger Hits 1B Monthly Active Users, Accounts For 10 Percent Of All VoIP Calls More

Facebook Messenger Hits 1B Monthly Active Users, Accounts For 10 Percent Of All VoIP Calls

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  • I'm not exactly sure why Facebook owns both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. In any case, if I understand correctly, WhatsApp has end-to-end encryption by default, whereas for Facebook Messenger you have to manually opt for a "private" conversation to get EtEE. It would be best if they deprecated the latter in favor of the former.
    • Why continue to develop what you already have with developers you already employ? Why not spend billions of dollars acquiring software and engineers you don't need? You have to think like an executive. If they aren't "buying" stuff they aren't important. There is a reason that Facebook has 13,000 employees now. It has nothing to do with the business.

      • Because servants are their own reward.

        The goal of business isn't to generate wealth, it's to control your fellow man.

        It's good to be King.

      • Why continue to develop what you already have with developers you already employ? Why not spend billions of dollars acquiring software and engineers you don't need? You have to think like an executive. If they aren't "buying" stuff they aren't important. There is a reason that Facebook has 13,000 employees now. It has nothing to do with the business.

        I doubt they cared very much about the software or the developers in the valuation. In that respect I think we agree; they didn't really need those things. What they needed and what they bought was 1 billion active users.

        • But many/most of those active users already used Facebook as well. So they paid $18 billion to get a small increment of users? These acquisitions are driven by ego, not business sense.

      • You have to think like an executive.

        Something you're not capable of. You brush this off as a failed acquisition rather than a successful market capture. For anyone not using Messenger Facebook has WhatsApp. Developers or competing products have nothing to do with it as long as money is funnelled into the same final account.

        • I didn't say it was "failed" (even though it is). They spent $19 BILLION on a company that has no profit, and maybe around $800 million in revenue. Just for "market capture". Except many WhatsApp users also used Facebook Messenger, so you are "capturing" people you have already "caught". For a fraction of that they could have built WhatsApps features into their platform and competed. But for an executive with too much cash, it is more fun to acquire and bloat the company some more.

    • WhatsApp has end-to-end encryption by default

      What is the use of end to end encryption if a malicious app can read your keystrokes.

      ____________________
      What good is a phone call Mr. Anderson , if you are unable to speak.

    • WhatsApp covers a somewhat different market segment. One of its strong points is that accounts are (in most cases) tied to phone numbers. This makes it an attractive option for mobile phone users: the app instantly knows who on your contact list is also using Whatsapp. When the service was launched, this made the switch from SMS rather painless, since there was no need to add existing contacts manually into a new list. Whatsapp probably has a fair slice of those users who do not, for whatever reason, ha

    • I'm not exactly sure why Facebook owns both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger

      Why they want to own both markets or why their code bases didn't immediately converge? Both seem like rhetorical questions.

      It seems very likely that, over time, both will share a core messaging base. If they have different skins on them at that point, it will be for market segmentation purposes.

      The Signal protocol is currently limited to three devices. That doesn't suit the Messenger model well. Messenger's e2e is limited to one

    • Because Facebook's userbase is limited primarily to only a few countries. WhatsApp basically has the rest.

      By having both, Facebook basically has an almost world wide monopoly on messenger services.

      https://www.similarweb.com/blo... [similarweb.com]

  • Or complete and utter lack of them. Wake me when they start support xmpp/sip for txt and voice.

    • The wonderful thing about taking the noble stance on this issue is ... the silence of no one being able to communicate with you.

      Open standards would be nice, but until that happens WhatsApp / Messenger / Skype are on my phone to stay.

      • Actually do just fine without whatsapp and skype I just refuse messenger calls and use a third party app on the pc/phone.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by chrish ( 4714 )

        On the third hand, it's really freakin' annoying that I don't use any of the apps you've listed, and yet I've got three messenger apps open at all times (BBM, Hangouts, Slack), with Signal on there as well (although texts are rare for me).

        At least I can run Hangouts and Slack on my laptop too, but man, I miss the days of being able to communicate with "everyone" using one app, even if it needed several connections.

        Laptop's got Adium running for IRC and XMPP as well. At least those are the open standards, bu

    • The situation is even worse:

      They are in the process of destroying standards.

      At some point in the past, Facebook used to have a XMPP gateway into their chat system. You could use it with (e.g.: Pidgin) and have the chat into your desktop computer (or phone if your smartphone supports XMPP, etc).

      But eventually, Facebook dropped their XMPP support.

      (Luckily for 3rd party support, pidgin developers have reverse engineered their JSON and XML based protocol used by the android application. So you can still use pid

  • Check everyone's pipes for lead (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Because apparently people are getting stupider and stupider. Headline should read:

    Facebook Messenger Spies On 1B Monthly Active Users, Accounts For 10 Percent Of All Surveilled VoIP Calls

  • Facebook is your friend.
    Facebook watches over you.
    Everybody loves Facebook.
    Trust Facebook.

  • TechCrunch has a brilliant story on the growth of Messenger from the scratch.

  • I'm always suspicious of the term "User" when people say they have X number of users. Does "user" mean unique people? Does it mean "account"?

    Because I have a hard time believing that 1/7 of the world population is actively on Facebook and I also know full well that there are millions of bot accounts whose likes are purchased.

  • I used to be an ardent user of Hangouts for VOIP and video calls home. Depending on quality of the hotel wifi, it was spotty, but usually worked OK. One trip it was on the fritz, so I tried Facebook instead. The voice and video quality was noticeably better. I switched back and forth between thema few times after, and every time, Facebook had far better quality on average. I no longer use Hangouts at all. I am not sure if the difference is in the protocol stack or in the compression algorithm, but at the en

  • The world population is 7.4 billion.

    Facebook cannot have 1 billion active Messenger users.

    I think they might be counting daily usage, so someone who is on Facebook every day will count as 28-31 "users".

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