Screenshots of the soon-to-be status quo Android Messenger app from Facebook.
Facebook is providing smartphone users yet another way to escape the limits of text-messaging plans. With the new Messenger app, Android users will be able to register, sync contacts, and message friends using their phone number as an identifier. The service is a bold step into the territory of services like iMessage and Android's WhatsApp that take messaging beyond SMS.
The new app ties loosely into the recent rumors that Facebook is angling to acquire WhatsApp, the multi-platform messaging app that has gained traction across both Android and iOS. WhatsApp denies that the relationship is developing, but the internal production at Facebook of the new Messenger features may have been what sparked the whisperings.
According to Facebook, users who sign up with a phone number will be able to message, start group conversations, and share photos with the app. A Facebook representative told Ars that users must be signed up with Messenger or Facebook to receive messages sent from one of these new Messenger accounts—hence, this change is really Facebook using your phone number as a proxy for identifying you and your friends within each others’ address books. Once that’s done, you’re using data, rather than SMS, to reach each other.
Giving Facebook your name and number is still creating a type of Facebook account; you’re just entering the system with a different set of criteria. Facebook says that an update to the Android version of the app is available today, but users won’t be able to create accounts with just their phone numbers for a few weeks yet.
Facebook’s latest revision of its Data Use Policy, which is currently up for a sitewide vote, includes a new provision that allows users to “register using other information, like [their] telephone number.”
