​New York, July 21 (IANS) With the announcement that one billion people are now using Facebook Messenger every month, the social networking giant's shares hit an all-time intra-day high on Wednesday.

Messenger is now the second-most popular iOS app of all time, behind Facebook.

"We are announcing that more than one billion people now use Facebook Messenger every month, making messenger one of only a handful of apps worldwide that touch so many lives," the company said in a post.

"We are grateful for all the people who are sending billions of messages every day and we hope to send one billion thank yous in the form of a new floating balloon emoji that everyone can use to celebrate," it said.

People are using Messenger to connect with the people and businesses.

They make plans, share dreams, send payments, tell jokes, play games, let their loved ones know they are thinking of them and more.

Since the the Messenger platform opened, over 18,000 bots have launched on Messenger and over 23,000 developers have signed up for Wit.ai's Bot Engine.

Nearly 10 per cent of all VoIP calls globally are now made through Messenger.

People send more than 17 billion photos to friends through Messenger every month and on average, more than 22 million GIFs are sent every day via Messenger -- 254 GIF's per second.

"As part of this journey to one billion, we focused on creating the best possible experiences in modern day communications. We remain focused on helping connect people to the people and businesses who matter most," said David Marcus, Vice President, Messenger.

There are more than 250 sticker packs available in Messenger with more than 4,000 stickers. More than 380 million stickers are sent every day.

Messenger has been downloaded more than one billion times on Android and people on Messenger have played 1.2 billion games of basketball.​