Facebook is rolling out a revamped version of its chat app Messenger that simplifies its user interface. Messenger, which now has 1.3 billion users per month, previously had nine different tabs, while the new version has only three.
“This is a new foundation that will give us the ability to start building way faster, way better and way more powerful features,” Messenger Vice President Stan Chudnovsky said at a press event Tuesday.
Messenger also gained color gradients. It has been possible to change the static color of the chat for a while now. The gradient-colored chats will give conversations more character.
Facebook decided to throw a big breakfast press event with 30 reporters at its new downtown San Francisco office
The three new tabs are Chats, which includes conversations; People, which shows Stories and active contacts; and Discover, which includes both games and chats with businesses.
As per the Verge, Stan Chudnovsky said, “We’ve built a lot of capabilities over the years, but [Messenger] is not as simple as the app was when we first began our journey,” who took over Messenger earlier this year when Marcus went to run Facebook’s new blockchain division. “We had a decision to make here: we can continue to pile on, or we can build a new foundation that would really enable us to build simplicity and powerful features on top of something that’s new and something that goes back to its roots.”
When Facebook surveyed its users recently, 70 percent told the company that the most important quality of a good messaging app is its simplicity.
The three new tabs are Chats, which includes conversations; People, which shows Stories and active contacts; and Discover
While 10 billion conversations with businesses and 1.7 billion games sessions happen on Messenger each month, and both hold opportunities for monetization, they’re not the app’s purpose, so they got merged. And though 400 million people. Messenger’s Stories, a feature that both boosts time spent in the app and offers monetization potential, appear in two different tabs within the app.