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Already in 2018, Facebook announced a plan to simplify Messenger and focus on improving the messaging experience. According to Facebook, by racing to build new features in the past, the app became “too cluttered”.
From the beginning of this year, we can finally see numerous updates being in line with this goal.
Last week, Messenger revealed an updated layout, where Discovery Tab is being removed. Now, users will see only two tabs. ‘People’ and ‘Chat’, which eventually puts the attention to personal conversations rather than to connect with businesses.
Simpler, Faster, Smaller is Better!
Facebook’s focus on peer-to-peer communication has been presented further this week. They introduced Project LightSpeed. Its main aim was to rebuild the Messenger iOS app from the ground and make it Simpler, Faster and Smaller for its users.
As commented by Facebook: “People turn to messaging apps throughout the day to stay in touch with the people they care about so it’s important the app loads quickly and is simple to use.”
The significant updates in Messenger’s core code reflected in reducing it by 84% and making it much more lighter and simpler for engineers to innovate quicker and build better experiences.
They’ve also outlined that we should be able to see the first changes over the next few weeks.
What can we expect?
- The app should load twice as fast!
- It will be one-fourth its original size, which means it will download, update and upload much faster even to people with older app versions or poor internet connection.
- For a short period, some of the features won’t be available but should be brought back soon.
It’s not a secret that Facebook is planning the long-wished-for integration of Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. And thanks to Light Speed we are closer to it actually happening.
“It lays the foundation to fulfill our vision for private messaging and interoperability across apps, allowing us to scale our messaging experience in the future” as Facebook says.
This integration would open doors to totally new opportunities for digital marketers and customer service. It won’t only ease the communication with existing clients but give an immense possibility to reach a broad audience and segments more easily and quickly than ever before!
There’s a lot to be looking forward to this year and we can’t wait to update you with the next news from Facebook.
