Facebook Inc. announced Wednesday that it is disabling the capability to send and receive private messages on its smartphone application soon to increase the usability of its Messenger.
The social networking site began the initiative by notifying users in European countries, like France and England. In the notification, the company told recipients that, in a couple of weeks, the messaging feature will be disabled from their Facebook app and will need to install the Facebook Messenger app if they want to see their messages.
Facebook spokesperson Derick Mains wrote in the announcement that Facebook is working towards its goal to have the Messenger app installed to the smartphones of every user.
The Facebook Messenger app is faster than the messaging service of the Facebook application. It also allows users to make voice calls.
"We have built a fast and reliable messaging experience through Messenger and now it makes sense for us to focus all our energy and resources on that experience," Facebook told Reuters.
This move is seen as a way of the company to compete with the fast-growing instant messaging apps like Viber, Snapchat, and WeChat. However, some believe that it could have repercussions if Facebook users feel the change is heavy-handed.
In a post on Mashable titled 11 Reasons Why Pulling Messenger From Facebook Mobile Is a Terrible Idea, Lance Ulanoff cited reasons that could most probably reflect or mirror the users' thoughts and opinions of this change. The concerns include the presence of an additional application, inability to display two apps in one screen, switching apps is annoying, and this can hurt Facebook big time.
"If you insist on pulling chat out of Facebook Mobile, you will also suck the real-time nature out of the social platform for millions of users. You can't force people to install Facebook Messenger, so they may simply leave to find another platform with better real-time communications features," Ulanoff wrote in the post.
Facebook replied and explained that, the messenger was built to be an instant mobile communications platform. Additionally, they also found that users get replies 20 percent faster using Messenger compared to Facebook Mobile.