Messenger Gets a Makeover

Facebook Messenger Gets a Makeover ー Just in Time for Portal

By Carlo Versano

Facebook is unveiling a redesigned, simplified version of its Messenger app that recalls the basic chat service the social media giant released as standalone app in 2014.

Stan Chudnovsky, Facebook's ($FB) head and VP of Messenger, told Cheddar's Hope King that the purpose of the overhaul was to "go back to the roots" with a simple, easy-to-use interface that prioritizes chats between friends.


Over the past several years, Messenger bloated up with ancillary and confusing Facebook functionalities ー like games and live broadcasting ー that took it further away from its original task of providing easy communication for users while they were off the site.

But with over 1 billion monthly users doing everything from paying each other to playing games, the task of cutting features in favor of simplicity "was not an easy trade," Chudnovsky said.

Finally, his team was able to pare down the nine Messenger tabs into three ー Chats, People, and Discover.

By highlighting chats between users and a list of Facebook friends, including those also online, Messenger is placing a priority on private conversations over widely-broadcast posts, which puts it somewhat at odds with the core Facebook product.

"People are spending more and more time in 1 to 1 conversations," Chudnovsky said, noting that private communications between two people and small group chats has been among Facebook's fastest-growing segments.

"It's about the ability to spend a lot of time in conversations with people who you feel very close with."

Chudnovsky also highlighted a use case for Messenger that he fully admitted was unexpected, and which his team took care to implement in the redesign.

With tens of millions of businesses on Messenger, it has become a de facto way for customers to communicate with vendors about basic questions ー for example, what are your hours? ー to conducting longer customer-service inquiries. Being able to communicate with a store or restaurant over Messenger is "something that people prefer" to calling, according to Chudnovsky. The 10 billion monthly messages sent between businesses and customers would seem to reinforce this.

And because the app looks and works the same whether on an Android or iOS device, it holds an advantage over other proprietary messaging services, like Apple's ($APPL) iMessage.

"One of the beauties of Messenger is it works the same way across platforms," Chudnovsky said.

Of course, the Messenger revamp is also part of Facebook's long-term strategy of making the company an omnipresent, fully-integrated part of its users' lives. The recently-announced Portal smart-screen device will utilize Messenger, and the infrastructure Chudnovsky's team built, to make video calls via a roving, A.I.-powered cameras.