Facebook Messenger Reaches 700 Million Active Monthly Users

It looks as though the strategy of forcing users into a new app to send and receive messages worked out well for Facebook. The social media giant has just announced that Messenger has reached 700 million monthly active users, up from 600 million registered just three months ago (via Re/code).

The new numbers were announced by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during the company’s annual investor meeting on Thursday.

You may recall that Facebook forced you to use the Messenger app last summer, as it split the messaging feature of the Facebook app into a new app. What seemed like a horrible move – you may recall your reaction back then – was brilliant marketing, it seems, because the numbers don’t lie: 200 million new users added the past seven months.

The growth of the Messenger app is important to Facebook’s plans for the service: It recently added commerce-related features, and changes to location sharing suggest a possible ride-sharing integration sometime in the future.