Facebook Launches Standalone Mobile Messenger App (And It’s Beluga)

I think this explains it - http://twitter.com/#!/bwalkin/status/101012800406683648

A lovely login screen. Followed by a not very well explained request for my mobile phone number, so they can send me a text that has a link to Facebook that makes me login again.

All to log in to my Facebook account, which I am already logged in to in the Facebook app on the same phone.

Aside from the fact that it's entirely redundant and ignorant of an Android feature meant specifically to appease people who hate repetitiously entering their account credentials. The Facebook Proper app even uses AccountManager properly. Messenger should prompt for permission to access the device's Facebook account and I shouldn't have to retype my credentials. It's the entire point of that API.

I'm sorry, but I'm not typing in my 25 character secure password for another device that will confuse Facebook's Messaging client. I've missed two messages in the last week because it notified me somewhere and then didn't notify me on my desktop when I returned. I just happened to notice because I click on Messages to compose a new one.

I'm an engineer on the Facebook Messenger team.

Quick answer: Messenger does not sync your contacts to the server.

Official answer to the inaccurate meme that's going around: https://www.facebook.com/facebook/posts/10150353502026729

You might wonder how we match up your Facebook friends with your contacts so you don't see duplicates in the list: with Messenger, instead of doing it on the server, matching and de-duplicating of Facebook friends and local address book contacts is all done on the client.

The only time Messenger will send a phone number from your local address book to the server is when you use Messenger to send an SMS message to:

1) A non-Facebook user, or

2) A Facebook user who doesn't have a mobile contact point already on the server

Facebook on Android is a consistently bad experience. What's worse, I occasionally deactivate my account for periods of time to focus on school / work /etc. The app comes pre-installed on my HTC so I can't remove it. However, it keeps trying to authenticate and randomly gives me can't-authenticate errors or launches the browser to a facebook login. Pretty disappointing experience.

Maybe the localization wasn't ready in time for launch?

Not available in AU either, but someone has uploaded the APK according to the comments of this post http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/08/this-is-the-facebook-messe...