Facebook Messenger May Soon Reunite With Main Facebook App After Bitter Divorce
There is evidence to suggest that Facebook might be reintegrating its standalone Messenger app into the social network, rather than having the two exist as separate entities. The feature is currently being tested, and presumably if all goes well, Facebook and Messenger will get back together, allowing users to send messages from within Facebook.
Messenger's roots trace back to 2008 when it debuted as Facebook Chat. Two years later, Facebook overhauled the messaging platform, and in 2014 it split from Facebook as a standalone Messenger app for mobile devices. A year after that, Facebook ported Messenger to the web, and also released a version for Tizen.
Throughout the years, Facebook has fleshed out its messaging platform with additional features and functionalities, such as direct messaging, the ability to transfer money, location sharing, support for multiple accounts, and so forth.
Facebook is bringing the Chats back to the app for preparing integrated messaging
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) April 12, 2019
Tip @Techmeme pic.twitter.com/LABK7qrk0e
So, what's next? Jane Manchun Wong, who is "not [a] Facebook employee" but does enjoy "reverse engineering apps because it feels like solving puzzles," posted an interesting screenshot to Twitter. It shows Facebook testing Messenger as part of the main social network app.
"Facebook is bringing the Chats back to the app for preparing integrated messaging," Jane wrote. "For now, this new 'Chats' section seems to only contain the basic chat functionalities. To give message reactions, make a call, send photos, etc., you'd still have to open the Messenger app."
Where things go from here is not known. Speculation is that Messenger will find its way back into Facebook for the general public, but will also still exist as a standalone app, perhaps for business users. Nothing has been confirmed, however, so we will have to wait and see.
