There are two big announcements besides the Chatbots by Facebook yesterday and they are quite big as well.
60 billion messages between WhatsApp and Messenger
WhatsApp now has a billion users while Facebook Messenger now has about 900 million users. So between these two Facebook has nearly 2 billion people using its messenger chat services. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as part of his announcements at the F8 developers conference yesterday said these two apps now carry messages three time more than SMS daily. They both process 60 billion messages a day compared to the 20 billion SMS processed globally a day. This figure is poised to increase even more when its Chatbots service fully comes alive. This has been a major source of concern for many telecom operators who have now moved to sell more mobile data to its users instead. We had reported that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) was welcoming public opinion on over-the-top services which WhatsApp falls under.
250 million people now use “Save” feature
Another announcement that may have missed headlines is that 250 million people now use the “Save” feature on Facebook. This service allows you to save a link or video for later. The service launched over three years ago, it has seen a steady rise in use by users even though it’s quite hidden to users who may not know about it. At the moment you would have to click on the “More” button to use it. With this, Facebook thinks it’s time to make it a bit more popular so many other users can use it. Publishers can now add the “Save” button to articles. This would make the service even more attractive to those who are more interested in reading articles from specific publishers on Facebook.
