Facebook Messenger is hugely popular and even manages to get people to use Facebook even when they don’t use the main features of the site. With everyone seemingly having a Facebook account, being able to instantly send messages between your friends is a big deal, and Facebook knows that.
Having launched a Facebook Messenger app for mobile devices that has people either lauding the thing or lamenting Facebook’s decision to break it out from the Facebook app itself, the social network has today gone one step further by making a Facebook Messenger Web app available. The Web app, living at messenger.com, uses your standard Facebook account as you would expect and will even sign you straight in if you’re already logged into facebook.com.
Once you’re in, the Web app itself will look instantly familiar to anyone that has used any form of messaging app, ever. A long list of conversations are shown on the left-hand side of the screen with the main content of the selected conversation filling the center of the page. If the option is selected, the right-hand pane is filled with information about whichever conversation is active, such as the participants involved and the option to mute notifications or leave the session completely are also found here. Once that pane is hidden, the content of the main panel stretches out to take its place.
All in all, there isn’t much here to surprise anyone. It’s Facebook Messenger but in a Web browser and not on the main Facebook site. It has the advantage of being lightweight and means you won’t be tempted to go fildding with Facebook itself when you should be sending a message and getting back out. So far, and in our testing, the Web app has worked perfectly and until the likes of WhatsApp follow suit with a proper desktop solution, Facebook Messenger may be the best solution we have when it comes to instant messaging.
For now, at least.
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