Facebook is undoubtedly the most popular social networking site, be it either its mobile app or for its web version.
Sometime back in 2014, Facebook had disabled its feature of chatting from its app. This, in turn, forced the users to download Facebook Messenger, its standalone messaging app which allows the users to send and receive messages, photos, and videos on their smartphones. Now the social networking giant is doing the same even for its mobile web app and has disabled its features to chat from within the app itself.
Many users have reported that when they are trying to open the Facebook Mobile web app to check their messages, a pop-up is displayed which reads “Your conversations are moving to Messenger.”However, the future of the in-app messaging feature on the Facebook’s main app seems to be pretty scorched for the users who refuse to switch over to the Messenger app. There is also a description available which explains to the users that they will”Soon” be able to view their messages from the Messenger only. The users have also reported that by “Soon” in the message description, Facebook means the users have to download the messenger right away. Even after dismissing the pop-up notification, when the users tried to open any message, the mobile web interface directed them to the Google Play Store listing of the Facebook Messenger. So markedly, this new change is applicable as of now only to the Android users.
TechCrunch claims that a Facebook official reportedly explained that the company was looking forward to offering the best messaging experience to its users. Of course, another purpose of forcing the users to download the app might be probably to increase the number of users of the Messenger app. So this means that users who were avoiding the official Facebook app and were instead using the mobile web interface will now have no other choice but will have to download Facebook’s standalone Messenger app.
In April this year, Facebook had announced that it’s Messenger instant messaging and voice calling app had an approximately 900 million active users per month. In January, it was 800 million and it increased by another 100 million users by the end of the quarter. In 2014, Facebook had stopped its instant messaging feature via the company’s main app for both the Android and iPhone domains. This had prompted the users to download the standalone Messenger app for instant messaging services. So this new update of removing the messaging element from the web app and making it mandatory to download the Messenger app might surely gather a lot more monthly active users of the Facebook Messenger app.
Many users might not seem very happy at having a second application for something which was already being done at a single place in the earlier app itself. However, Facebook assures that a different app for messaging and conversations wherein users can send photos, videos etc., will definitely provide an improved and a superior experience, which will be worth its download.