Facebook Moves Mobile Chat Users To The Separate Messenger App

If you like to chat on Facebook using your mobile device, then you will have to use the separate Facebook Messenger app from now on. Facebook is spinning out mobile messaging from its main mobile app and routing users to the Messenger app. When Facebook users try to send a message using the main app, there is a new notification message that prompts them to download the Messenger app instead.
A spokesperson for the company said that it is removing the feature from the main app to “avoid the confusion of having separate Facebook mobile messaging experiences.” A Messenger icon will remain on the main app, but it will route users to the separate Messenger app.
The Facebook Messenger app has many more features than the chat service in the main app. Some of the features added to the Facebook Messenger app in the past year include a selfie button for video sharing, a faster photo-sharing interface, group messaging support and animated digital stickers. According to TechCrunch, the Facebook Messenger app is also 20% faster and more reliable than using chat in the main app. However, the change may irk some users because the Chat Heads interface in the main app allowed users to conveniently browse the social network and chat at the same time.
Facebook announced that these changes would be made to the main app back in April, starting with select countries in Europe. The changes are now being applied to Facebook mobile users across the rest of the world. The original Facebook Messenger mobile app launched in 2011.
Facebook is rapidly growing on mobile devices. There are over 200 million people that use Facebook Messenger per month and send 12 billion messages every single day. Facebook has 650 million mobile users that browse the social network every day. On average, people in the U.S. are spending 40 minutes per day using Facebook on mobile devices. To drastically increase its user base on mobile devices, Facebook also acquired mobile photo social network company Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and mobile messaging company WhatsApp for $19 billion this year. Earlier this month, Facebook launched a native Messenger app for the iPad to ease the transition of separating chat from the main app.

Facebook Messenger screenshot

The shift to the Messenger app may accustom users to Facebook’s strategy of operating a number of popular standalone mobile apps. At the Facebook headquarters, there is a skunkworks group known as Facebook Creative Labs that builds projects outside of the core social network. Facebook’s Creative Labs team has built apps like Paper, Slingshot and Mentions. Paper is a news digest app that shows interesting content across a horizontal slider based on categories that interest you such as photography, sports and humor. Slingshot is an ephemeral messaging app — which is used for shooting photos or videos and “slinging” it to your friends — but they will not be able to see what you sent until they “sling” something back. Facebook Mentions is an app for actors, athletes and musicians to track their fans and have conversations with them.
The Facebook Messenger app is available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. It is also available on feature phones like the Asha 500, Asha 501, Asha 502 and Asha 503.
 
Source: Forbes.com