Monthly active users of Facebook Messenger grew to over 1.3 billion in 2017. Plus, each day in 2017, over seven billion conversations took place on the platform, with holidays (New Years, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day) proving particularly popular times to connect.

One amusing and slight mindboggling statistic from the annual roundup is that more than 500 billion emojis were shared via Messenger in 2017. American users proved most keen (35 billion).

On the whole, emojis were more popular than GIFs, although some 18 billion GIFS were also shared worldwide on Messenger in 2017.

Facebook reports more than 17 billion realtime video chats via Messenger in 2017, two times as many sessions as in 2016. Plus, 2.5 million new groups were created every day on Messenger, with the average group chat including 10 people.

Messenger data is reflective of January 2017 through November 2017.