Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and perhaps your SMS app. That is about the three most used apps for communicating with our friends. Once upon a time, they were all three independent apps, today though, they are all basically Facebook. The first two you could easily guess because Facebook acquired WhatsApp in one of the most expensive acquisitions of an IM service so far, the third one is a curious case.
Facebook has decided to make the Facebook Messenger app as the hub of your text messages too. Just like Google did it with Hangouts, in exactly the same fashion Facebook is allowing you to integrate your SMS inbox with the Messenger. The text messages that you will receive will be in purple lead chat screen, while your conversations on Facebook messenger will be kept in blue allowing you to easily differentiate.
You will be able to go inside the Settings of the Messenger in order to make the Messenger app your default SMS app so that all your messages by default come to one inbox. Facebook has clarified that if you do decide to merge your inboxes, all the messages that go out will go out via your carrier and nothing will be routed through Facebook’s server so your security will never be at risk.
The feature is rolling out in phases for select few countries. At our time of checking, it was not available in India, but we are sure that it is not far away from being rolled out. When here, you will simply need to update the FB Messenger app on your Android phone.
Via: techcrunch
