A lot of people use Facebook Messenger on an almost daily basis to communicate with friends and family members. About 1.3 billion people use the app on a monthly basis.
If you have used the regular Messenger app at any point in the last couple of years, you are well aware of the fact that it’s a bit of a nightmare. Between in-chat games, bots for Spotify and Uber, a Snapchat-like stories feature, and way more than we have time to get into, it has quickly become overstuffed and filled to the brim with feature after feature which tend to get in the way of basic conversations.
In a blog post talking about trends to look forward to in 2018, Marcus addressed this issue, saying:
“Over the last two years, we built a lot of capabilities to find the features that continue to set us apart. A lot of them have found their product market fit; some haven’t. While we raced to build these new features, the app became too cluttered. Expect to see us invest in massively simplifying and streamlining Messenger this year.”
The admission was part of a post which Marcus published highlighting goals for Facebook Messenger in 2018. Others mentioned in the post are fairly predictable: More video messaging and use of Messenger to connect businesses with customers are in store for the year ahead, as are some new features for group chat.
He said “Messenger group chats already have lots of features like the ability to react to an individual message, the option to mention someone, add and remove people seamlessly, customization tools — but we have more in store for you this year.”
The biggest change to the way Messenger works in recent years has been the introduction of the Messenger Platform for automated bots in April 2016. Since then, more than 200,000 third-party bots have been introduced, from personal finance bots to bots for games, marketing, and other purposes.
However, Facebook didn’t hint on what features will be staying and which ones will be removed from the app.
