Facebook, as is their overlord, all-conquering style, has been prodding people towards using its standalone Messenger app over the last few months, with the prod becoming a definite push when it recently started removing the ability for people to message friends via the Facebook mobile site.
However, along with the prod and the push, it's now trying out a dangle of a carrot, with the news that the company has launched SMS on Messenger.
It's an opt-in feature, and currently only works on Android. If you select it, your text messages will become part of your Messenger ecosystem, displaying in purple, with your Facebook messages remaining blue, meaning that it could potentially become your single inbox for messages. Although, of course, you may also use the even-more-popular WhatsApp, itself owned by Facebook, so you'll probably need to access that too.
Before you worry that Facebook is trying to access your texts in order to gather more juicy information to target you with stuff - it won't. At least, not yet. Your SMS content won't go anywhere near Facebook's servers - they'll continue to be delivered via your mobile network, they'll just be accessed via the Messenger app.
SMS in Messenger will support texting, photos, videos, audio, emoji and stickers - if you want to activate it on your phone, follow these steps:
-Head to the Settings on Messenger for Android
-Select 'SMS'
-Toggle on 'Default SMS app'
How long until they merge WhatsApp and Messenger then?...
[via The Daily Dot]
