Meta Bringing Messenger Back to the Facebook Mobile App To Make Sharing Content Easier

You'll soon be able to once again access Messenger via the Facebook mobile app.

Credit: The South China Morning Post

Meta in a blog post announced it's bringing the popular instant messaging service back to Facebook after nine years away. The primary reason for this is to make it easier for you to share the content you discover on the social media service with your friends and family.

"Over the coming year, we’ll build more ways to integrate messaging features in Facebook," wrote Tom Alison, Head of Facebook. "Ultimately, we want it to be easy and convenient for people to connect and share, whether in the Messenger app or directly within Facebook."

Currently, Facebook is already testing the ability for you to access your Messenger inbox from within the Facebook app, and the plan is to expand it to more users soon.

Credit: Meta

Meta made Messenger a standalone app in 2014 to supposedly make it "the best mobile messaging experience possible". Two years later, it would also push Facebook users on browsers, including those on mobile, to use the standalone Messenger app. So if you wanted to message any of your Facebook contacts, you had no other option but to download and install Messenger on your device.

TikTok likely has a lot to do with why Meta is reversing the nearly decade-old change. In an effort to keep Facebook strong against its competitors, Meta is rebranding it as a content-focused platform for entertainment and discovery, rather than one where you only keep up with friends and family. And one way to do that is to make it simpler and faster for you to share content via messaging, without needing to switch to another app. TikTok allows you to share videos you find with your friends via an in-built direct messaging service.

Alison also said that, contrary to reports, Facebook is alive and thriving with over 2 billion daily active users.

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• Meta has announced it's bringing Messenger back to Facebook after nine years away.

• The primary reason for this is to make it easier for you to share the content you discover on the social media service with your friends and family.

• Meta made Messenger a standalone app in 2014 to supposedly make it "the best mobile messaging experience possible".