the standard version. In 2019, Messenger announced to be the 2nd most downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2011 to 2019.[44] In December 2019, Messenger dropped support for users to sign in using only a mobile number, meaning that users must sign in to a Facebook account in order to use the service.[45]
In March 2020, Facebook started to ship its dedicated Messenger for macOS app through the Mac App Store. The app is currently live in regions including France, Australia, Mexico, Poland,[46] and many others.
In April 2020, Facebook began rolling out a new feature called Messenger Rooms, a video chat feature that allows users to chat with up to 50 people at a time. The feature rivals Zoom, an application that gained a lot of popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.[47] Privacy concerns arose since the feature uses the same data collection policies as mainstream Facebook.[47]
In July 2020, Facebook added a new feature in Messenger that lets iOS users to use Apple's Face ID or Touch ID to lock their chats. The feature is called App Lock and is a part of several changes in Messenger regarding privacy and security.[48] The option to view only "Unread Threads" was removed from the inbox, requiring the account holder to scroll through the entire inbox to be certain every unread message has been seen.[49]
On October 13, 2020, the Messenger application introduced cross-app messaging with Instagram, which was launched in September 2021.[50] In addition to the integrated messaging, the application announced the introduction of a new logo, which should be an amalgamation of the Messenger and Instagram logo.[51]
Messenger,[11] also known as Facebook Messenger, is an American proprietary instant messaging service developed by Meta Platforms. Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008, the client application of Messenger is currently available on iOS and Android mobile platforms, Windows and macOS desktop platforms, through the Messenger.com web application, and on the standalone Facebook Portal hardware.
In January 2017, Facebook announced that it was testing showing advertisements in Messenger's home feed. At the time, the testing was limited to a "small number of users in Australia and Thailand", with the ad format being swipe-based carousel ads.[144][145][146] In July, the company announced that they were expanding the testing to a global audience. Stan Chudnovsky, head of Messenger, told VentureBeat that "We'll start slow ... When the average user can be sure to see them we truly don't know because we're just going to be very data-driven and user feedback-driven on making that decision".[147][148] Facebook told TechCrunch that the advertisements' placement in the inbox depends on factors such as thread count, phone screen size, and pixel density.[149] In a TechCrunch editorial by Devin Coldewey, he described the ads as "huge" in the space they occupy, "intolerable" in the way they appear in the user interface, and "irrelevant" due to the lack of context. Coldewey finished by writing "Advertising is how things get paid for on the internet, including TechCrunch, so I'm not an advocate of eliminating it or blocking it altogether. But bad advertising experiences can spoil a perfectly good app like (for the purposes of argument) Messenger. Messaging is a personal, purposeful use case and these ads are a bad way to monetize it."[150]