Tim
Android and iOS users, you are all about to get Zuck’d. Plans revealed today, show that Facebook is officially removing all chat-based messaging services out of the official application, opting instead to have the standalone Facebook Messenger app be the place to go for all messaging needs.
According to Zuckerberg, who actually gave a reason as to why the company is moving in this direction, says that, “having it [Messenger] as a second-class thing inside the Facebook app makes it so there’s more friction to replying to messages, so we would rather have people be using a more focused experience for that.”
In our words, he could be saying Facebook’s developers can’t figure out a way to make the two functions work well together, not that there is any actual friction between the two. Do you really need to completely remove messaging, a huge aspect of your website, to an entirely separate application?
To say that forcing users to download a separate app to check their Facebook messages is annoying would be an understatement. While Facebook Messenger does its job, and does it well thanks to Chat Heads, it’s the principle we are more concerned about.
The complete migration to Messenger is said to take place in the next couple of weeks, and users will begin seeing warnings and links to download Messenger on their devices.
Is this ridiculous or a good call by Facebook?
Collapse Show Comments137 Comments