Facebook Waits To Hit A Billion Users For Messenger Before Turning It Into A Meaningful Business

Investors have been asking about how Facebook's Messenger can earn more money. CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed plans during the earnings call on how Facebook will bring more dollars to its recently acquired messaging app.

In the past, he has already expressed Facebook's strategy of hitting a billion users first before turning its apps into meaningful businesses. As of now, Messenger has 700 million users. 

Business Insider reported that Zuckerberg said, "The playbook that we're gon'na run with Messenger and WhatsApp is kinda similar to how we thought about building a business in Facebook and Newsfeed."

Investors pushed Facebook to put more banner ads on its site back in 2006 to monetize the platform faster. But Facebook decided that making money through ads would be better if there is a real interaction between its users and the businesses. Facebook encouraged business to sign up to the platform and try to get as much likes from the users to know the real deal on how their businesses are really doing. Later on, Facebook let businesses pay to promote their posts. Now, Facebook earns more with Promoted Posts than banner ads. Zuckerberg said, this is how Messenger is most probably going to earn money. 

According to The Register, Facebook's Messenger is now the second most popular app, overtaking Google's YouTube. According to the latest comScore numbers, Facebook got 73.3 percent of app users, next is its Messenger with 59.5 percent, while YouTube only has 59.3 percent.

Facebook's Messenger became a standalone app in 2014. The app was shoved down users' throat as means to message other Facebook users.

This app was developed to compete against other messaging apps, like Snapchat. It seems like Facebook won that competition as Messenger is now second in the list of most popular app. Messenger can make video calls, money transfers, instant video sharing, and other useful features.