Facebook Messenger 3.0

It's interesting how they call it texting rather than messaging. I almost thought for a second they really meant SMS.

To those complaining about this, you&#x27;re not the target market.<p>I was on a train from Chicago to Detroit a week ago and there was a group of about 10 high schoolers sitting behind me. We got talking about iPhone apps and I asked what was popular.<p>They all agreed Facebook was not as cool anymore and confessed to being addicted to messaging apps that their parents couldn&#x27;t check up on like they could with texts. Snapchat, Kik, and Whatsapp were among those mentioned.<p>It&#x27;s interesting because if you look at these apps in the App Store, the screenshots are definitely targeting that age demographic as well.<p>Facebook is losing ground fast for this age group. The group that has grown up using Facebook and is now moving on to other mediums. This release looks very promising in helping to win back that interest.

Based on the App Store screenshots, there&#x27;s basically no Facebook branding. Just colors and a like button. Even the app icon doesn&#x27;t say Facebook.<p>Interesting.

This is amazing. Now if only they took over email too. Facebook should completely pivot into an identification and messaging platform.

&gt;&#x27;say it better with stickers&#x27;<p>Can&#x27;t believe how much money is to be had from selling stickers in messaging apps

If you install this, the messaging tab in the primary Facebook app now just switches you to the Messenger app. What a weird choice.<p>I decided to uninstall Messenger, I like being able to chat while browsing other Facebook pages.

Does anyone know how to remove the reminder to turn on notifications?<p>Details: - Using latest iOS<p>- All notifications are off in iPhone&#x27;s settings<p>- Every time I switch to the app, a full page message reminds me to turn on notifications (even just swiping to Control Center reproduces the full page message. Aggressive!)<p>- In the Facebook messenger settings, there are only 2 options: to &quot;Turn off until 8:00am&quot; or &quot;Turn off for 1h&quot;.<p>If this is intentional (or rather if it persists past today), Facebook just lost the last stronghold they had on me. I use them for nothing but messaging. And the one caveat I have for using them is that I only check in when the thought occurs to me not as I&#x27;m pinged.<p>If intentional (speculation coming), I bet they&#x27;ve run the engagement #s to show it makes sense. But this is a bad principle that is pretty restrictive for a company at their scale. They&#x27;ve pretty much increased the cost of cognitive cost of using their app.<p>The facebook messenger user in me is hoping this is a feature that times out after the first day of installs. Otherwise goodbye Zuck.

I just prefer to use the FB app it self. When I was using the Messenger app, I would get a notification from Messenger and the FB app, it got rather annoying.

The iOS release notes (on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook-messenger/id454638411?mt=8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;facebook-messenger&#x2F;id4546384...</a>) say:<p>&quot;Not just for Facebook friends: Now you can message people in your phone book. And it&#x27;s easy to add new contacts—just enter a phone number.&quot;<p>so perhaps it does include an SMS bridge.

So this is a shot across the bow at WhatsApp and kik and MessageMe right? Those apps are incredibly popular in developing nations.

This appears to be a reaction to Google Hangouts more than anything else. From the Play Store description for Facebook Messenger, it sounds like you can indeed send messages to friends based on their phone number, but it does not appear to be via SMS. It&#x27;s more similar to something like Snapchat, where it uses your phonebook to find people who have registered their phone numbers with the app.<p>Furthermore, last week, information leaked regarding Facebook dropping SMS support due to lack of uptake. One source for this: <a href="http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/10/29/facebook-testing-new-messenger-app-android-drops-sms-support/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thenextweb.com&#x2F;apps&#x2F;2013&#x2F;10&#x2F;29&#x2F;facebook-testing-new-m...</a><p>Long story short, this appears to be a data-only messaging app, not unlike pre-SMS Hangouts or some of the other apps people in this thread have mentioned (Kik, Whatsapp, etc.).

Sleek, simple UI. Too bad no Windows Phone release just yet.

What a coincidence. I just had a conversation with a friend about how FB failed with its Messenger to get the users of Whatsapp &amp; other similar apps. Apparently they know this and are trying to improve it. Same discussion applies to Skype that was never able to make a fast user experience on mobile: every update of Skype on my iPhone seem to slow down the app and make it more crash friendly...

so facebook saved 3billion dollars and rolled out a snapchat clone in 30 days, it can claim a billion user in next 60 days

I hate the direction FB is going with the messaging system. It doesn&#x27;t work well when you try to send anything longer than a few words. Send an email you might say, many people don&#x27;t read emails as much as they read FB. Sad but true.<p>&#x2F;rant

Note: I think the app is syncing your address book with FB servers.

The android one has an iOS 7 aesthetic that feels really odd on Android. Also, Google Hangouts just absorbed actual SMS on Android, so that will be interesting.

Is anyone else still seeing the old UI? I even tried removing and re-installing. On iOS.