Facebook Messenger 3.0 | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Messenger 3.0

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43 pointsmvbrasil59 comments

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

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it is more than just messaging and might include SMS. From the Play store description, "Not just for Facebook friends: Now you can message people in your phone book. And it's easy to add new contacts—just enter a phone number.". The android app also requires permission to edit/create SMS messages and make phone calls.

If so, does this mean we can be able to send an SMS from facebook now or just from our phones?

It's worth noting that the screenshot from the android phone also shows you missed calls.

I assume (but don't know!) that the "find people by entering their phone number" feature simply tries to find Facebook users with lax enough privacy settings such that (a) they expose their phone numbers to maybe friends or friends and (b) they allow non-friends to message them. Otherwise I feel like they would phrase it as "message people who aren't on Facebook!"

What Android screenshot are you looking at that makes you think it shows missed calls? I see two icons: a sort of bolt and a facebook "f". I think that the bolt means the user is using "Messenger" (i.e. fb on mobile) whereas the fb "f" means facebook.com.

Can anyone confirm or deny? I no longer have a facebook account and don't want one so I can't check.

The first android screenshot on the linked page, shows that there is 1 missed call from Mac Tyler. Just worth noting, not sure if it means anything but it is interesting.

This seems to answer the question: https://www.facebook.com/help/458736564237313

Now you can message people in your phone book

Doesn't this mean FB will be hacking your phone book? Nice backdoor...

When you launch the updated Messenger app on iOS, it asks for permission to use your contacts. The alert message was sufficiently creepy that I didn't give it permission to "sync contacts" with Facebook.

Yep. Just another bite at the apple. It only takes one mistake.

At least on Android, you can send SMS through the Facebook app, which is what I assumed they were referencing here. It doesn't send the message through Facebook in the sense of web-to-SMS gateway, though; it's just that Android apps are allowed to send SMS, and Facebook has built that functionality into their app, so that 'all of your messages are in one place'.

Very misleading considering the FAQ page [1] says: "Can I use the Facebook Messenger app to send texts (SMS)? Texting (SMS) is not currently available on Messenger."

1: https://www.facebook.com/help/151024075021791/

To those complaining about this, you're not the target market.

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.

They all agreed Facebook was not as cool anymore and confessed to being addicted to messaging apps that their parents couldn't check up on like they could with texts. Snapchat, Kik, and Whatsapp were among those mentioned.

It's interesting because if you look at these apps in the App Store, the screenshots are definitely targeting that age demographic as well.

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.

Facebook isn't just losing ground to a specific demographic, they're losing centrality and relevance in a market they defined. While Facebook may be pervasive, it's pervasive in the way that Microsoft Office was in an era of Macs and Google Apps 2 years ago; We all kept a copy of Word installed for when someone emailed us a .doc or .ppt file.

Would love to grab lunch or discuss further where this is all headed from a broader market and societal standpoint, for anyone in the Bay Area.

Wouldn't the better analogy be "pervasive in the way MySpace was X years ago and America Online was, X years before that"? The question is, what's going to replace it? The "instant messaging" market is too fragmented right now (though one could argue the social network space was just as fragmented before FB exploded). SMS has no fundamental single 'owner' to drive change/feature improvements.

You're missing the distinction; Nobody kept their MySpace around or created a new one once is was replaced because it was unnecessary. You could say it's like AOL Instant Messenger, but if anything that's a weaker analogy since nothing really replaced it so much as IM became a commodity.

Based on the App Store screenshots, there's basically no Facebook branding. Just colors and a like button. Even the app icon doesn't say Facebook.

Interesting.

Indeed... When I saw the updated icon on my home screen I wondered for a minute what this thing was.

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

strong troll?

Sarcasm I imagine. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/02/business/la-fi-tn-fa...

The email switch didn't work out so well.

They do have email.

>'say it better with stickers'

Can't believe how much money is to be had from selling stickers in messaging apps

One of those asian messaging app companies makes 20%+ of their revenue from stickers (tens of millions of $ a month)

Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/08/08/line-corp-brings-in-13...

If you install this, the messaging tab in the primary Facebook app now just switches you to the Messenger app. What a weird choice.

I decided to uninstall Messenger, I like being able to chat while browsing other Facebook pages.

Just tested, this happens on iOS. Not sure about Android. I definitely agree with you.

Pressing back brings you back into the standard Facebook app.

That's extremely strange behaviour. I can't imagine that sticking around in the long term. Switching views takes milliseconds, switching apps take much longer.

In-app messaging still working as normal on my Nexus 4.

Does anyone know how to remove the reminder to turn on notifications?

Details: - Using latest iOS

- All notifications are off in iPhone's settings

- 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!)

- In the Facebook messenger settings, there are only 2 options: to "Turn off until 8:00am" or "Turn off for 1h".

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'm pinged.

If intentional (speculation coming), I bet they'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've pretty much increased the cost of cognitive cost of using their app.

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.

Agreed, I had to remove messenger because of that - it annoyed me that much.

The nice thing I've found about using the Messenger app is that it seems to put a lot less strain on my battery, especially after I disabled location services for the Messenger app. I like being able to disable location services in Messenger, but leave it enabled in Facebook. I don't really care if my location is tied to IMs (and often prefer that it's not), but it's usually nice for Facebook status/image posts that are essentially check-ins on the go.

I didn't, but making it a requirement to enter your phone number to use the app with no mentions of what the privacy controls for people being able to message you with just your phone number are made the new app a quick uninstall.

Facebook, you've had enough privacy problems in the past, is it really that hard to outline what's going on here or even just not require the number? I've heard that GVoice numbers don't work, as well, which just makes it even worse.

The iOS release notes (on https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook-messenger/id4546384...) say:

"Not just for Facebook friends: Now you can message people in your phone book. And it's easy to add new contacts—just enter a phone number."

so perhaps it does include an SMS bridge.

Just checked. No SMS bridge, just a WhatsApp-like phone numbers based contacts system.

This means you can message anyone who uses Messenger if you have his phone number.

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

... and LINE, and Kakaotalk, and ...

The thing is that many of these apps are both pretty good, and have insane market penetration... It's hard to see why anybody would switch to a FB app that's very likely worse if they're already using something else (so all their contacts are there).

Yeah, if Poke couldn't take down Snapchat, then I don't know what hope this has of displacing those other apps.

They didn't really throw much weight behind Poke. They also had the fb camera app which was a competitor to instagram if you recall. Poke I thought was a weekend project.

If they're on Facebook all their contacts will be on Facebook Messenger. Does Facebook have poor market penetration in Asia?

I do not have numbers, but while a fair number of people use FB in Japan, it's far from the juggernaut it is in the U.S. According to Wikipedia, Japan has about 17 million FB users, Korea about 10 million, and China only about 0.6 million!

LINE, in the meantime, just celebrated its 300 millionth user, and its user base is concentrated in Asian countries.

This is only really a shot across the bow if Facebook ports their messenger app to feature phones.

WhatsApp and the like didn't invent mobile messaging, they just went through the trouble of building J2ME clients across all the cheap handsets found in the developing world so that mobile messaging was available across all devices. Facebook isn't going to make any dent at all in the developing market unless they do the same.

Do you know if doing J2ME apps is still necessary in the developing world?

Sorry, didn't see this. But yes, the vast majority of handsets are still dumb, lots of Techno J2ME handsets still being sold.

That said, Android is getting so cheap that it is turning into a chasm between totally dumb phones (not J2ME, just a simple handset) and Android. The former is still the vast vast majority.

Yeah, developing nations like most of Europe and so on...

Most of my friends in South America use it, that's why I said developing nations. I do have EU friends who use it, but their coverage is typically better.

Affirming the consequent?

I wouldn't limit that to developing nations, pretty much everyone I know uses WhatsApp in the UK, simply because mobile coverage is so poor that it's easier to send a Whatsapp than it is to send an SMS.

I seriously hope it doesn't cause any issue for these companies, I've just got back from a few months travelling and Whatsapp was invaluable.

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's more similar to something like Snapchat, where it uses your phonebook to find people who have registered their phone numbers with the app.

Furthermore, last week, information leaked regarding Facebook dropping SMS support due to lack of uptake. One source for this: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/10/29/facebook-testing-new-m...

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 & 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

If you're talking about Poke, no one uses it. It hasn't been updated for iOS7, and most likely never will.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/facebook-poke/id588594730?mt...

check the new Facebook messenger, with sms verification, send message to your contacts on phone and a lot more.

same as whatsapp and snapchat does

I hate the direction FB is going with the messaging system. It doesn't work well when you try to send anything longer than a few words. Send an email you might say, many people don't read emails as much as they read FB. Sad but true.

/rant

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

Only if you opt-in to it.

When you launch the app you're prompted to decide if you want to sync your contact list so the app can be used to contact non-Facebook friends. It's not doing it without your explicit approval.

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.

Nevermind… waited a couple minutes, and the update showed up. Strange though, that a fresh install installed the old version…

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