Dive Brief:

• Messenger has reached the one billion active monthly users, according to a blog post from the company. 
• Messenger joins Facebook’s signature platform and the company's other messaging app WhatsApp in reaching the 1 billion monthly active user milestone.
• The news comes after Messenger added 200 million new users over the first six months of 2016.

Dive Insight:

The world of messaging has primarily been a tale of Facebook's two apps: WhatsApp and Messenger. 

While WhatsApp skews as a more international messaging app (which Facebook acquired for $19 billion in 2014), eMarketer released a study earlier this month that found 40% of mobile users in the U.S. are on Messenger. The standalone version of the Messenger app came out in 2011, but never really gained a lot of traction until after Facebook dropped messaging from within its flagship mobile app, forcing users to download Messenger in order to send messages to contacts within the Facebook ecosystem.

Messenger is the more marketer-friendly of Facebook’s two messaging apps, according to Eyal Pfeifel, co-founder and CTO of imperson Ltd. Pfeifel explained to Marketing Dive earlier this year that its open API makes it easier for marketers to take advantage of the service.

After teasing that "marketing" and not "advertising" was coming to the Messenger app earlier this year, Facebook has since rolled out chatbots to the platform. Facebook first unveiled chatbots in April, exciting the business world about the possible applications for marketing and customer service. Facebook recently announced 11,000 bots have launched since the Messenger Platform was released. Facebook has also begun adding other not-so-typical features for chat apps, such as mobile commerce, gaming and customer service for brands.