Facebook Messenger Goes Independent of the FB app
In a corporate move that has gone public with recent messages in the main Facebook app warning users, loyal Facebook users are beginning to be asked to download the Facebook Messenger app to continue to chat with their Facebook friends and transfer them across to Messenger.
Though the chat feature in the Facebook app continues to be there for now, shortly it is expected to be removed entirely leaving users abandoned who prefer to stick with the chat they know in an app they use every day.
Public Disclosure
In a recent shareholder earnings call, the CEO Mark Zuckerberg, confirmed that they planned to move the millions of chatting customers, who combined send 12 billion messages daily, over to the Messenger app instead. The app includes text chat, voice chat, video calling and other features which are not present in the main Facebook app.
Two App Trend Grows
This move follows the decision by the people behind FourSquare to remove their chat features and push them out to Swarm, their new chat app whether customers want to or not. It's possible this is a new trend in the dot com space. The question is though, do smart phone and tablet owners who have limited internal storage space already and in the case of Android 4.4 and later versions are unable to transfer apps or app data to a microSD card to free-up some of that space taked up by apps really want yet another chat app on their device? Generally users want simplicity rather than app overload.
Adding In-App Payments to Messenger
The longer term strategy with the Facebook Messenger app, as Zuckerberg confirmed in last week's earnings call with shareholders, was to include a payments element to the app. The details of this have not been nailed down as yet, but there are definite ideas brewing in this direction. It will still be some months before payments will be seen in Messenger though.
Adopt Facebook Messenger or Lose Chat
The official word from Facebook is that 200 million users already use the Facebook Messenger app regularly and that it provides a better chat experience than the Facebook app currently does. That may be true, but not giving users the choice whether to move over or not is a worrying trend from software developers. For some users, this may be a step too far and they could abandon chat or Facebook entirely.
This is already starting to happen with FourSquare wish users upset about the switch from FourSquare over to the Swarm app if they wish to keep chatting and is could well be a public relations problems for Facebook soon enough if not handled correctly.
