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Facebook messenger is indeed clever. I recognized Facebook as addictive, and blocked it. But people still communicate with me on there, so I installed the messenger app.

So I'm still in the ecosystem. And when I message someone, I draw them in. FB messenger keeps me from sending messages by email, text, whatever other method.

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I frequently prefer FB Messenger because it is both desktop (web) and mobile, and it handles media. There are other cross-platform messaging services like Google Hangouts (GChat/GTalk), but I still can't attach a photo. Or there are ones like WhatsApp that focus on mobile, and are missing desktop/web. Apple iMessage is good, but it's only usable on iOS devices, which is not always what I'm using. And other cross-platform messaging products don't really have much adoption.

You can attach photos in Hangouts. I do so on iOS and desktop all the time.

Android (obviously) has it too.

I use Trillian and avoid going to FB.

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