Facebook’s founder has finally explained why the firm forces users to run a separate Messenger app.
Mark Zuckerberg talked through the thought process behind Messenger during a live Q&A session yesterday, saying the app offers a ‘better experience.’
“Asking everyone in our community to install a new app is a big ask,” said the CEO. “On mobile, each app can only focus on doing one thing well, we think.”
Zuckerberg went on to describe how Facebook’s primary purpose is the News Feed, which stifled messaging’s growing popularity.
“Messaging was this behaviour people were doing more and more,” Zuckerberg explained. “10 billion messages are sent per day, but in order to get to it you had to wait for the app to load and go to separate tab.”
The Harvard drop-out then compared the service to other apps that focus purely on messaging, describing Facebook’s previous messaging process as ‘a lot of friction.”
“Messaging is one of the few things people do more than social networking. In some countires 85 per cent of people are on Facebook, but 95 per cent of people use SMS or messaging.”
He then answered why the app became a mandatory install, rather than an opt-in roll-out, saying: “The reason is that we’re trying to do is build a service that’s good for everyone.”
“Because Messenger is faster and more focused, if you’re using it, you respond to messages faster, we’ve found,” he said.
“If your friends are slower to respond, we might not have been able to meet up.”
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