Facebook Messenger soars in usage at expense of Facebook’s core app

Facebook’s unbundling of its Messenger tool into a stand-alone app was a spectacularly successful move for the social media company — except for overall usage of Facebook’s flagship app.

That’s one of the main takeaways from the ComScore mobile app data report for November 2014, released today.

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According to the report, Facebook’s app was the top app (by percent of overall reach) in November, at 69 percent. Its Messenger app came in fifth, with a reach of 43.1 percent. A year ago, those numbers stood at 76.2 percent and 22.1 percent, respectively.

Of course, it’s no accident that Messenger use grew so quickly: Facebook split Messenger off in August, forcing people who wanted to chat with their friends from their phones to use the stand-alone app.

The new ComScore data makes it clear that Facebook’s users consider mobile messaging a vital feature, and were willing to do what it took to keep on doing so, despite significant public hand-wringing at the time at being forced to use a new tool. By November, Facebook said at the time, half a billion people had migrated to the app.

Facebook was a big winner in the report, with Instagram coming in ninth, with a reach of 30.7 percent. Google had six of the top 15 apps, including second-place Google Play, third-place Google Search, and fourth-place YouTube, while Twitter’s mobile app lagged behind, in eleventh place, with just 21.3 percent reach.