Facebook Set to Declutter Messenger
- Mehedi Hassan
- Jan 16, 2018
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Facebook is apparently getting rid of all the junk on Messenger. The social network’s main messaging app, Messenger, was once one of the best messaging apps on mobile devices. The app was simple and focused entirely on one thing: messaging.
Over the years, as social media trends evolved and Facebook played around with different ideas, Messenger slowly became a cluttered app that’s just exhausting to use. The app is bloated with new, supposedly innovative features like Stories (a Snapchat clone), payments, bots, and ads. What was once a simple messaging app built just for texting is now an app full of all kinds of things you don’t really want. The situation got so bad by the end of last year, Facebook ended up releasing a simpler, lite version of its main app on Android devices.
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For Facebook, just launching a lighter version of the main app isn’t the perfect solution. So the company is finally taking steps to declutter Messenger and “invest in massively simplifying and streamlining” its flagship communication app. David Marcus, who leads Messenger at Facebook, noted on a post that the company is aware of Messenger becoming “too cluttered” in the recent years.
“Over the last two years, we built a lot of capabilities to find the features that continue to set us apart. A lot of them have found their product market fit; some haven’t. While we raced to build these new features, the app became too cluttered. Expect to see us invest in massively simplifying and streamlining Messenger this year,” Marcus stated. The company hopes to build on the success of video and voice chat within Messenger this year while continuing to invest more in group chats, Marcus noted.
Facebook isn’t saying exactly what is being changed, or if any of the features that resulted in the clutter will get removed, so don’t get your hopes up yet. But here’s to hoping Facebook keeps its promise by the end of 2018.