This one chart perfectly sums up why companies pour billions of dollars into messaging apps

Facebook dropped $19 billion on WhatsApp, Snapchat is valued at $15 billion, and even the anonymous messaging app Yik Yak, despite being a little over a year old, is already valued between $300 million and $400 million. Messaging apps are big business, and here's why.

Based on new data from mobile analytics firm Flurry charted for us by BI Intelligence, messaging apps retained nearly six times as many users they attracted in their first months compared to the average user retention across all applications. The average retention rate for all apps was 32% in the first month, and fell to 11% by the 12th month. In contrast, messaging apps held onto 68% of their new users after the first month, and slipped just a little bit, down to 62%, by the 12th month.

But that's not all: According to BI Intelligence, people also use messaging apps more frequently and for longer periods of time, too.

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