New York, Nov 12 (IANS): The new messaging service from Facebook has crossed 500 million users worldwide - a figure that has more than doubled from 200 million in April this year, the social networking site said in a statement.

“Messenger was the first of our standalone apps and unlike our core Facebook apps, it focused on one use case - messaging,” Peter Martinazzi, Facebook's director of product management, wrote in a blog post.

“We have also continued to improve speed and reliability. Updates to Messenger ship every two weeks so it continues to evolve and improve,” he added.

Messaging is an important part of how people stay connected and since Messenger launched in 2011, “we have been passionate about giving people a faster and more expressive way to communicate”, the post read.

Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that releasing new standalone apps would be a top priority for the social networking site.

Facebook has already launched an ephemeral messaging app called Slingshot.

Facebook-owned Instagram has also released a standalone private messaging app called Bolt.