Categories: Mobile

Facebook launches standalone Android and iPhone messaging app

Facebook has just launched a standalone messaging app, Facebook Messenger, for Android and iOS devices. The app allows Facebook users to message friends individually or by group, send photos and share location information.

Facebook Messenger is a direct descendant of Beluga, a group messaging service that Facebook acquired in March of this year, and is the first standalone app from the social network. This app could signal the start of an emerging trend as Facebook is also rumoured to be working on a standalone photo sharing app.

With Facebook Messenger app-to-app messages are delivered via push notifications. If the receiving user does not have Facebook Messenger, the update is delivered via Facebook Chat, Facebook Messages or by good old-fashioned SMS instead.

The app imports all your existing conversations on Facebook Messages. New conversations are started by adding one or more Facebook friends or phone numbers from your list of phone contacts. The app won’t quite replace your phone’s basic SMS application just yet however, at least not until a sizable portion of the current 750 million active Facebook users download it first.

The app is currently not available in Ireland but we’re expecting it within the next few hours.

Albizu Garcia

Albizu Garcia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gain -- a marketing technology company that automates the social media and content publishing workflow for agencies and social media managers, their clients and anyone working in teams.

View Comments

Recent Posts

Meet agentic AI: Your AI agent just leveled up to teammate (Brains Byte Back Podcast)

You’ve probably been coming across the term “agentic AI” a lot more recently, and in…

20 hours ago

True robot intelligence requires a digital twin of the entire world: WEF ‘Summer Davos’ in China

In order to achieve true robot intelligence, a digital twin of the entire world would…

1 day ago

Sensors to surveil people & cities among WEF top 10 emerging technologies at ‘Summer Davos’

Autonomous Biochemical Sensing can turn human bodies into surveillance tools for monitoring and control, Collaborative…

2 days ago

AI and the Dopamine Trap: How Algorithms Are Rewiring Our Social Cravings

New research shows AI companions can lift mood and teach social skills, but only when…

5 days ago

Hate speech, deepfakes & false info undermine UN work: comms chief

Hate speech is a launching point for crackdowns on narratives that impede UN agendas: perspective…

5 days ago

Making Sense brings strategic insight to the SIM Hartford Chapter

On June 4, technology executives gathered at the SIM Hartford chapter presided over by Fariba…

1 week ago