Facebook Messenger Gets A Facelift

Messenger recently received a redesign that adds several alluring features making it simpler and easier to start a conversation.

Facebook’s Messenger app has over 900 million monthly active users which though significantly lesser than WhatsApp, is nonetheless a huge number.

For the app to garner new users while holding onto the current members, the app needs to provide an enjoyable experience and be as holistic as possible, without getting messy.

To that end, the FB Messenger recently received a redesign that adds several alluring features, including the attempt at making it simpler and easier to start a conversation.

The updated interface of the messenger will now have a Home tab. Instead of the infinite scroll of conversations, the home tab organizes messenger into a few Recent Conversations, followed by a new Favourites section which obviously includes those people that the user messages frequently.

With the Active Now section, the user will be able to see their contacts who are currently available online, browsing Facebook or using Messenger.
This is not a new feature, but has earned a mention due to a more prominent placement in the new interface.

In addition, there will be a new Birthday section displaying people who have their birthdays on the day; a handy reminder of your friend’s birthday which the messenger team believes will prompt users to wish them on their special day.

The messenger app will retain a Search bar at the top and will show results similar to the Facebook mobile search.

Facebook says that the new redesign is an update “aimed to make messenger simpler to use by presenting more relevant information”.

Announcing the new redesign, Facebook’s Messenger team in a blog said “up until now, most inbox experiences haven’t kept up with the new ways people connect. So we’ve been thinking about how we can make it simpler and easier to find what you want, to start a conversation”.

While 2015 already saw significant improvements with Facebook giving its texting app a few Material Design-inspired changes, the social baron is obviously not amused by the growing bunch of messenger applications that are eroding FB’s traffic.

Most recently, Facebook messenger rolled out an important feature that allowed it to handle both Facebook messages and standard SMS messages (for Android users), all combined into one interface.

Also, in tribute to the UEFA Euro 2016 championship, the app introduced a new football game hidden as an Easter egg inside of it’s platform.

At a Wired conference in New York, Facebook’s Vice-President of Messaging Products David Marcus described the update as a “first stab at reinventing the inbox”.

Clearly the intent is to make it convenient for the users to have all of their chats in one place. Should the Facebook team succeed in creating a unified interface that also includes SMS and WhatsApp conversations in one screen, it will most cetrainly spell trouble for other, leaner chat apps.

While, the Messenger team’s mission is to make messenger the best place to communicate with people and businesses in the world, it’s all about Facebook trying to make you even more reliant upon its services; to interact with friends and have you as an active user interacting with their platform.

Though the redesign may look like a subtle reorganization which may seem like a visual overhaul to some, the update speaks volumes about Facebook’s continuing efforts to attract more users by providing them with an engaging experience.

There seems little or no doubt that Facebook will continue to add services and features to its app and there is much more in store for the users.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.