Open thread: have you installed Facebook Messenger on your phone?

Social network wants people to use separate app to check their inboxes on the go, but have you heeded its call?


Facebook has spent the past couple of months warning users of its smartphone apps that they’ll soon have to install the separate Facebook Messenger app to continue accessing their messages from friends on the social network.


Many users have already seen the Messages feature in their main Facebook app disabled: they can see that there’s something new in their inbox, but are prompted to install Messenger to actually read or respond to it.


This change is rolling out gradually, but with more than 1 billion people using Facebook from mobile devices every month, hundreds of millions will have already faced the decision of whether to install the separate app or not.


Messenger isn’t currently the only way to reach your Facebook inbox on your smartphone: you can log in to the social network from your mobile browser and access Messages as normal. For now, anyway. Even so, some people are making their discontent with the forced change known, with highly-negative app store reviews one of the most prominent methods.


At the time of writing, the latest version of Messenger has 1,386 one-star reviews on Apple’s App Store in the UK, and 15,787 on the US store, giving the app an overall rating of one-and-a-half and one star respectively.


What about you, though? If you use Facebook on your smartphone, were you already also using Messenger before the current changes, or have you installed it in recent weeks? What’s your experience of the app so far?


If you’re a Facebook user and have decided not to install Messenger, why not? Has this controversy changed your opinion of the social network? And have you switched to the mobile web version, or even uninstalled the main Facebook app, in protest?


And if you’re already a proud non-user of Facebook tempted to post a comment along the lines of “if they’re not paying for a product, you arethe product” can you expand on your views a little? Including how the Messenger controversy might reflect wider concerns about Facebook’s strategy.


Inbox us with your views, yeah? Oh, wait, no. Post a comment with your thoughts here instead.




The guardian.com