Is there a difference between the social networking you do online and the interactivity that takes place through text messages and real-time online chatting? If there is, the new Facebook Messenger app for Android will immediately make sense to you. Others, on the other hand, will see it as a needless second app that largely duplicates select features of the original Facebook for Android app (free, 3.5 stars). Facebook Messenger, which was developed by Facebook itself, compartmentalizes the more immediate activities of
SMS texting and instant messaging by putting those two functions into a dedicated app. It's similar in many ways to BlackBerry Messenger, the private instant messaging service that lets BlackBerry smartphone users text-chat with one another, only Facebook Messenger is confined to the world of Facebook rather than one platform (in this case Android, though there is an iPhone version, too).Optional alerts, or push notifications, let you know when incoming messages are received, just as your phone does with ordinary text messages. All the features of the original Facebook for Android app, including Chat, are still available—they haven't disappeared—so if you don't want a second Facebook app, you don't have to install Messenger. But there are a few reasons you might want it.
According to Facebook, the Messenger client works faster than the instant messaging tools in the original Facebook app for Android, although in testing the app, I couldn't see a noticeable difference. The time it took to send and receive a message from Messenger to Messenger versus Facebook app to Facebook app was so slight (less than half a second), I can't say the difference wasn't caused by human error. All my test messages came through in less than three seconds, regardless of which apps I used. The Messenger to Messenger times were all under two-and-a-half seconds.
The real advantages of using the new Facebook Messenger app are that 1) it includes SMS (texting) as an option when sending a message, and 2) it draws phone numbers from your Facebook connections' when those people have made them available rather than contacts list in your iPhone, reducing the chance that you have an outdated or incorrect phone number. Other services have combined SMS with instant messaging before, so Facebook Messenger isn't wholly new in this aspect. What makes it special for most people, however, is that it leverages their Facebook network. One of the often-overlooked strengths of Facebook is that it's a central source of data about your friends, including their phone numbers, email addresses, and whereabouts (and maybe that creeps you out). If you want to send a text message to a friend but don't have her phone number stored in your phone, you can quickly send her a Facebook message instead. And if she's added her phone number to Facebook and granted the appropriate permissions, the app will automatically pull up her number as an option, in case you would prefer to send her a text.
See here all the mobile messenger photos:
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