Facebook Messenger has taken a look at the messaging trends that shaped the year, uncovering interesting data about how people are messaging with each other and businesses.

According to Messenger, over two billion messages have been exchanged between people and businesses each month in 2017.

This year, Messenger achieve a key milestone by reaching an audience of 1.3 billion people worldwide and 13 million people in Australia – more than half of the country’s population and almost 80 per cent of smartphone users.

When comes to people connecting with businesses via Messenger, the top verticals in 2017 are professional services, retail, local entertainment, public good, and media.

Furthermore, the top five countries where people messaged businesses in 2017 are the US, Brazil, Thailand, Mexico, and Vietnam.

This year was also key for bots, with over 200,000 monthly active bots available on Messenger, and over 100,000 developers are building bots for the platform.

Additionally, more than 20 million of the 70 million Pages on Facebook are active on Messenger.