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Facebook Messenger

Facebook scraps in-app messaging service for standalone app

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By John Glenday, Reporter

April 10, 2014 | 1 min read

Facebook has announced that it is to pull the plug on its in-app messaging service within a fortnight after deciding that it would be better to route such functionality through a separate standalone app.

European users of Facebook for IOS and Android are now beginning to receive messages informing them of the need to download Facebook’s Messenger app if they wish to continue conversing in this manner.

In an interview conducted with Tech Crunch Mark Zuckerberg explained the move thusly: “… we are actually taking messaging out of the main Facebook app. And the reason why we’re doing that is we found that having it 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.”

The switch follows Facebook’s leviathan $19nm WhatsApp purchase and illustrates the growing threat services such as WeChat, Kik, KakaoTalk, and Line pose in the messaging arena.

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