Facebook to disable messaging from the mobile web application

In the latest news from Facebook, you can say goodbye to the messaging feature on the mobile web application. Users are being served a notice that reads “Your conversations are moving to Messenger”. What this means is that now, even if you want to just view the messages, you’ll have to download the app and not to mention agree to the long list of ‘permissions’ that come with the act of actually downloading the app.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to TheVerge that stripping Messenger out of the main Facebook app is not a test, and will at some point in the near future happen in every country. There are a few exceptions to the new rule, however. First, lower-end Android devices with memory constraints won’t be required to download Messenger. Second, Windows Phone and tablet users will still see messages inside their Facebook apps. Third, messaging will remain, for now, inside Facebook’s newly launched news app Paper.

It might also mean that Facebook will shrink the size of its main app, making it work faster and at the very least clearing up a few MB’s on your device. “Once the whole process is complete, we expect the core apps to be faster,” the spokesperson told the news site. Admittedly, chatting in Messenger is a far better experience than in Facebook’s main app, but some users might be disappointed by the fact that they now need two Facebook apps instead of one.

TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey raises a valid point in this article when he calls it a hostile move- if everyone in the company is constantly saying that they want to connect the world, shouldn’t a diversity of access options be part of that motive?

Facebook acquired Whatsapp for $19 billion in 2014. The fact that this move comes after an acquisition of mammoth proportions makes it obvious that Facebook is committed to upping its messaging game plan. This is only the next logical move for Facebook, given the fact that Messenger excels in some countries where WhatsApp does not.