Facebook: Over half a BEELLION loyalists have SPURNED our Messenger app

Facebook says approximately 500 million people use the huge free-content advertising platform's Messenger phone app, which is more than somewhat short of the 1.12 billion people who visit the social network each month from their mobiles.

Meanwhile, rival WhatsApp is said to have more than 600 million regular users.

"This is an exciting milestone but with a half billion people relying on Messenger to communicate and connect, it is also a reminder that there is so much left for us to do," Facebook director of product management Peter Martinazzi gushed on Monday, revealing the gulf between those who love and hate the instant-messaging tool.

After all, Facebook forced its loyal users to download, install and run the Messenger software if they wanted to keep chatting with friends on Facebook – after the chat part of the main mobile app was carved out into a separate application.

Facebook released the Messenger app in 2011, but the company made the app mandatory in late July.

While 500 million is nothing to scoff at, the figure would represent less than half of Facebook's mobile user base. The advertising network claims it has 1.12 billion mobile active users and 1.35 billion monthly active users in total with 864 million of those active on a daily basis.

Messenger isn't the chat software Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook offers. The biz also has an IRC-like client called Rooms, the social network's solution for anonymous group messaging. The app allows users to post to chat rooms under pseudonyms. ®