Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp hit one billion ‘monthly active users’, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced, five months after reaching the 900 million mark.

“WhatsApp’s community has more than doubled since joining Facebook. We’ve added the ability for you to call loved ones far away. We’ve dropped the subscription fee and made WhatsApp completely free. Next, we’re going to work to connect more people around the world and make it easier to communicate with businesses,” wrote Zuckerberg in a Facebook post.

“There are only a few services that connect more than a billion people. This milestone is an important step towards connecting the entire world,” he added.

Facebook Messenger, in comparison, has 800 million users.

WhatsApp co-founder and CEO, Jan Koum, said he “couldn’t be more proud of our small team doing so much in just seven years.”

He also shared figures revealing that the app supports 53 languages, with 1.6 billion images and 250 million videos shared on it everyday (click image below to enlarge).

When it shared its Q4 results last week, Facebook said it had doubled its investment in “next generation” products like WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger in 2015.

Earlier this month, Koum revealed plans to focus on “commercial participation” for monetisation, which involves improving communication between consumers and businesses.