If you want a statistic on the tremendous reach and widening scope of Facebook Messenger, here’s a fairly impressive one: the chat app logged a total of 17 billion video calls in 2017. That’s double the number from the year prior. Facebook launched group video chat in Messenger last December, further positioning the app as a direct alternative to Skype and WhatsApp (which Facebook owns).
Microsoft doesn’t release year-end totals for Skype, nor does Apple share that type of data for the FaceTime video chat service directly integrated with iOS and macOS. So it’s not easy to contextualize, but doubling anything year over year isn’t a bad achievement. Personally, I’ve only used Messenger’s video chat by accident; few smartphone fumbles are...
