For some reason, when I messaged someone on Facebook Messenger, it always felt to me more like I was bothering them, than when I used AIM/ICQ in the past. So I felt it was never really used in the same way. So I think this app is an attempt to make it a bit more casual, less formal.
for my age-group (or at least for those i hang around) it seems that facebook messenger is the space between email and linkedin.<p>There have been plenty of articles on how facebook is losing traction, it's mainly due to pivoting relationships on the user's end. We all started out with trying to add everyone we knew - this is fun, seeing what everyone is doing. Now i really only use facebook to keep up with friends that are outside of my close circle (cause i don't need facebook for the close circle). I don't use facebook messenger for 90% of my friends list because of this, but i'd still like to have something for that 10%. If the Google Hangouts app wasn't such a resource hog, i'd probably just uninstall facebook messenger from my phone.
Well here in India WhatsApp is really big and Facebook messenger is nowhere to be seen. This article doesn't explain how the new Facebook messenger is better than all its competitors.