Facebook Messenger celebrates 1 billion monthly active users with floating balloon emoji!

New York: Social networking giant Facebook announced that there are one billion people using Messenger every month all over the world.

"We are announcing that more than one billion people now use Facebook Messenger every month, making messenger one of only a handful of apps worldwide that touch so many lives," the company said in a post.

Messenger is now the second-most popular iOS app of all time, behind Facebook.

People are using Messenger to connect with the people and businesses.

They make plans, share dreams, send payments, tell jokes, play games, let their loved ones know they are thinking of them and more.

Thanking all of the users who use the platform every single day, Facebook is celebrating the milestone in its own special way - with an balloon emoji.

“We’re grateful for all the people who are sending billions of messages every day and we hope to send 1 billion thank you in the form of a new floating balloon gift that everyone can use to celebrate. Just send a balloon emoji to your friends to add a touch of whimsy and delight to any conversation.”

Since the Messenger platform opened, over 18,000 bots have launched on Messenger and over 23,000 developers have signed up for Wit.ai's Bot Engine.

Nearly 10 per cent of all VoIP calls globally are now made through Messenger.

People send more than 17 billion photos to friends through Messenger every month and on average, more than 22 million GIFs are sent every day via Messenger -- 254 GIF's per second.

There are more than 250 sticker packs available in Messenger with more than 4,000 stickers. More than 380 million stickers are sent every day.

Messenger has been downloaded more than one billion times on Android and people on Messenger have played 1.2 billion games of basketball.

As per a report on Quartz, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had bigger plans for Messenger though it wasn't apparent at the moment.

The social networking giant's shares also hit an all-time intra-day high on Wednesday.

(With IANS inputs)