A global report from SimilarWeb, looking at the amount of time people spend on messaging apps, is a useful aside to the recent run of news around Facebook Messenger bots for travel.
Over the past few weeks, there have been Facebook Messager bots launched by, among others, Kayak,Cheapflights and Musement.
(Click on the company name for Tnooz coverage)
But the SimilarWeb study finds that people are spending significantly less time on Facebook Messenger than the other top ten messaging apps. In fact, Facebook Messenger is the second-least used app in each of the ten markets analysed, apart from Russia (where it is the third-least popular) and the Philippines.
For reference, the least-used app - in every market - is Google Hangouts. It props up the charts despite the fact that the SimilarWeb study is only looking at messaging app use on Android phones.
The chart for the US is typical of the findings from other markets (other than the gap between Hangouts and Messenger being smaller than elsewhere).
So we have US users spending an average of 9 minutes 39 seconds on Facebook Messenger compared with nearly 30 minutes on WeChat. The average amount of time spent on Messenger across all ten markets is 9 minutes 36 seconds, although the average is skewed by the Philippines where users are spending nearly 15 minutes.
The only other market where it hits double figures is the UK.
The most popular app in terms of time spent is, consistently, South Korea's Kakao, although the number of users is relatively low outside its home market.
Clearly travel firms should not consign Facebook Messenger bots to the Betamax bin and push resources into Kakao. But as the evidence emerges that other apps get more use than Messenger, it will be interesting to see the extent to which travel firms start launching WeChat and WhatsApp bots.
Not forgetting of course the elephant in the messaging room - Google's soon-to-be-launched Allo.
Click here to see the SimilarWeb results in full.
Related reading from Tnooz:
Allo, can Google have your attention please, travel execs… (June 2016)
Are bots hot or not? (June 2016)
KLM on Messenger and being a speck in a galaxy of digital giants (June 2016)