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Facebook today doubled down on its mobile efforts with a new mobile application that breaks out its messaging service into a single app.
Dubbed "Messenger," Facebook's making it available for both Apple's iOS as well as Google'sAndroid. Users can log-in with their Facebook credentials to get access to existing chats and message threads from Facebook for interacting with them on the go. Included is group messaging, along with a component that lets users share photos and their location.
"The Messenger app is an extension of Facebook messages, so all your conversations are in one place, including your texts, chats, emails and messages. Whether you're on your phone or on the web, you can see the full history of all your messages," said Lucy Zhang, Beluga co-founder and Facebook engineer in a post on Facebook's blog.
For all intents and purposes, the app is the same as Beluga, a group messaging app Facebook acquired back in March. In fact, the team that made Facebook Messenger is the same one that made that application, and the feature set reflects that. Nonetheless, this app is not replacing Beluga according to Facebook.
"Nothing is going to change for Beluga right now," a Facebook spokesperson told CNET. "The apps will remain separate. We're considering ways to possibly migrate Beluga messages over to Facebook Messenger, but have no specifics to announce at the moment."
The move to break out messaging is of special note given the murmurs of Facebook doing something similar for photo sharing. A report back in June from TechCrunch pulled together screens of just such an app that combined sharing elements akin to apps like Instagram, Color, Picplz and others while tapping into Facebook's photo servers. That differs substantially from Facebook's existing mobile strategy, which has been to pull the various site features together into one experience, similar to what's available for desktop users.
Facebook says the new app should be showing up in Apple's App Store and Google's Android Marketplace today. The company's also offering to send download links toiPhone and Android users on its Messenger home page.
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Dubbed "Messenger," Facebook's making it available for both Apple's iOS as well as Google'sAndroid. Users can log-in with their Facebook credentials to get access to existing chats and message threads from Facebook for interacting with them on the go. Included is group messaging, along with a component that lets users share photos and their location.
"The Messenger app is an extension of Facebook messages, so all your conversations are in one place, including your texts, chats, emails and messages. Whether you're on your phone or on the web, you can see the full history of all your messages," said Lucy Zhang, Beluga co-founder and Facebook engineer in a post on Facebook's blog.
For all intents and purposes, the app is the same as Beluga, a group messaging app Facebook acquired back in March. In fact, the team that made Facebook Messenger is the same one that made that application, and the feature set reflects that. Nonetheless, this app is not replacing Beluga according to Facebook.
"Nothing is going to change for Beluga right now," a Facebook spokesperson told CNET. "The apps will remain separate. We're considering ways to possibly migrate Beluga messages over to Facebook Messenger, but have no specifics to announce at the moment."
The move to break out messaging is of special note given the murmurs of Facebook doing something similar for photo sharing. A report back in June from TechCrunch pulled together screens of just such an app that combined sharing elements akin to apps like Instagram, Color, Picplz and others while tapping into Facebook's photo servers. That differs substantially from Facebook's existing mobile strategy, which has been to pull the various site features together into one experience, similar to what's available for desktop users.
Facebook says the new app should be showing up in Apple's App Store and Google's Android Marketplace today. The company's also offering to send download links toiPhone and Android users on its Messenger home page.
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