The Facebook Messenger has undergone a lot of changes since the past few months. For instance, the Messenger 4 had got rid of the clutter by going from nine tabs to just four and simplified the interface so it was easier to send a photo or begin a video call. The social giant had also introduced a dark mode, threaded replies and a ten-minute unsend window. During the F8 2019, the annual developer conference of Facebook, the company announced there would be even more changes coming to the Messenger in 2019.
The new features include a more light weight app, a watch party feature, a dedicated area for close friends and family, a desktop app and end-to-end encryption. One of the biggest change is that the Messenger will be faster and lighter than before. In order to emphasize, how much quicker the new Messenger app is, Facebook has given it an internal name as LightSpeed. The Messenger will supposedly launch in less than two seconds and is less than 30 MB that is around 70 MB less than the current iteration.
This is a far cry from the heavy bloated Messenger that was around just a year back. Another interesting feature is the dedicated area in the Messenger app for the close friends and family that will contain everything from Stories to private images and videos that you share with each other. For now it is unclear to what it will look like but it surely sounds a little similar to the Close Friends feature that already exists on the main Facebook app and also on the Instagram stories.
The video segment another potential area for the social network. The company says around 410 million people use video chat on Messenger every month and around two billion minutes per day is spent on watching video on Facebook. So it does makes sense that the social network will attempt to merge the two by introducing a watch party style feature on the Messenger.
Photo Credits: The Verge
