
Facebook to pull chat from iOS and Android apps in favour of Facebook Messenger - rocky5
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2339143/facebook-to-pull-chat-from-ios-and-android-apps-in-favour-of-facebook-messenger
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sujito
The new battlefield is the real estate on your phone´s front page. FB +
Messenger + Instagram + Whatsapp: 4 out of 16 icons, not bad.

~~~
rimantas
iPhone 5* screen has a place for 20 icons + 4 in the dock.

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
Can you have folders on iOS? I've bundled all of my messaging apps together.

~~~
bighi
Is there people still using iOS?

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jaegerpicker
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but let's all be clear iOS still has a
large percentage of web traffic, app downloads, and money spent in the app
store/in-app purchases and it's lead it actually growing.

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koyote
I see this as a good thing.

It will hopefully reduce the memory and processing the main Facebook app
leaves and at the same time it will give everyone a great opportunity to ditch
the Facebook messaging service in favour of the plethora of other messaging
apps already installed on their devices.

I, for one, will stop using the Facebook messenger entirely on my phone.

~~~
jfoster
Will be interesting to see if they see this through. I might be missing
something, but I don't see any business reason for them to do this. They will
lose some users, and that seems a painful prospect for them. They value user
bases so much that they paid $19B for Whatsapp.

Difficult to imagine them not reversing this decision at a later date.

~~~
jaegerpicker
Their purchase of whatsapp is exactly why they did this, IMO. I'd be very
surprised if facebook messages doesn't become whatsapp and get completely tied
into it. That's really the only way buying WhatsApp for $19B makes sense.

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jasonlingx
This is incredibly annoying. For the last couple of months the FB app has been
switching me to the messenger app every time I accidentally hit the messenger
button in the middle of the bottom navbar. And every single time it nags me
with a full screen interstitial asking me to turn on notifications!!! Removing
all FB apps now.

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phatfish
If the Messenger app will work without the Facebook app this could be a good
thing? I would like to know about IMs people send me, but i have no interest
in the stream of adverts and status updates...

~~~
JonLim
I've been using the Messenger app exclusively for the past year, as I had no
interest in looking through status updates or anything that the Facebook app
did. Works wonderfully if you just want to respond to messages or send
messages to people.

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alexbilbie
I've been using the two apps for a while now and I'm perfectly happy - the
only annoying aspect is sometimes I have a little red notification counter
above both apps when I receive a message.

The principle reason why I like the Messages app is that it's very fast to
load - presumably because it isn't trying to download my friends' terrible
photos and timelines and events and all the other junk that is in the main FB
app.

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jdevonport
I have tried and uninstalled Messenger a few times, it seems like a really bad
user experience to be bounced out of the main app whenever you want to have a
quick chat with someone.

Waiting for apps to multitask switch can get very irritating and I think for
me it would mean I use Facebook chat less if anything.

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robk
I'm quite pleased about this actually. I find FB messenger to be annoying and
I hate getting interrupted when I'm just popping into the FB app for a minute
or two. This way I can leave it uninstalled entirely and check FB messages
later from home.

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brohoolio
For people like myself who have Facebook on my mobile but not the messaging
app it means we now need to install it.

For some percentage of folks like myself that means we might start using
facebook messaging more instead of using it as the messaging platform of last
resort.

~~~
SixSigma
Or just use a web browser and use the FB mobile website.

~~~
w1ntermute
I use Tinfoil for this:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco.fbwrapper)

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klapinat0r
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7562642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7562642)

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qzc4
This is just an opportunity for Facebook to show twice as many ads as usual.

It's sad, but I really do feel bad for the people who use Facebook nowadays.
When I have to look at the job market again, I'm really not looking forward to
having to (a) sign up in the first place, (b) have that stupid like button
following me around everywhere _again_ and (c) have to become "friends" with
people that I really don't want to see anymore.

And then they bought Oculus VR. Seriously?

~~~
jfoster
How does it let them show more ads? Users already spend a huge amount of their
time on mobile devices in the Facebook app. One user can only pay attention to
one app at a time.

~~~
qzc4
I guess not on iOS, but on Android you have to go through a few more steps to
"chat" \-- home > messenger app > search contacts > chat, versus just tapping
a button. That is 2 more screens worth of ads to go through.

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welly
Looks like I won't be messaging anyone on Facebook from my phone then.

That was an easy decision.

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nemasu
I dislike fragmentation, so this is probably a good thing? I don't use
Facebook to really care either way though.

~~~
higherpurpose
If you dislike fragmentation, then you shouldn't like this.

~~~
nemasu
I was under the impression they're consolidating 2 messaging front ends into
one? I guess they're really just deleting one, but same difference.

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corobo
You could see it as that but if you were only using the Facebook app you'd be
going from a single app to two apps

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mantrax4
Fragmentation is having multiple incompatible versions of the same thing,
namely, two apps which both have a Facebook chat.

Now there'll be one app with Facebook chat and one Facebook app without chat.
No fragmentation.

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err4nt
There is absolutely fragmentation! What used to be one app is now three:
Facebook (minus chat), Paper (with chat), and messages (only chat).

This time last year 2/3 of those apps did not exist. They have fragmented the
user experience into entirely different apps. The concept you are mistaking
for fragmentation seems to be the concept of duplication'. Right now all three
apps do messaging and they will soon be reducing that number to two (Messages
and Paper).

Not sure your math checks out…

~~~
mantrax4
Well I'll give you this example.

If Facebook would release 3 Facebook apps, where each has mostly the same
features, but slightly different, and on top of that each requires a different
user/login, that's definitely fragmentation.

Say, you can argue WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, or Instagram and Facebook
picture posting represent fragmentation for Facebook, as they do mostly the
same thing, but are each in their own space and with their own APIs and their
own users etc.

Another example. iOS having lots of apps in one App Store is not "app store
fragmentation". But Android having many separate app stores, many apps in each
being the same (but tweaked or different versions) is "app store
fragmentation".

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hownottowrite
Not much of a surprise. It's a necessary first step to slowly integrating
WhatsApp.

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celebril
Oh great, now there's a double whammy 40 MB + 40 MB for the stupid
MqttPushService that is run twice by the Facebook and the Facebook Messenger
apps.

Might as well not use Facebook on this 512 MB device. Why can't Facebook just
implement push via GCM without sucking all the memory and wakelocks itself?

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balladeer
Maybe it doesn't want to pass through a Google service.

