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Comment by rlu | Hacker News Reader

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/

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