People no longer have to log-in to the Facebook app to get and send messages. Like with Facebook's web interface, people can see SMS text messages, chat messages, emails and Facebook messages all in one place.
For friends who are not on Facebook, the app will send them a text message, so people do not have to decide which is the best way to reach someone. If users share their location with friends in a group chat, they can see a screen with their friends on a map.
Facebook previously acquired start-up Beluga, a group messaging app in March. That team has worked on building out this app for Facebook.
It's an interesting move for Facebook, setting up a completely separate app just for messaging. It shows Facebook's emphasis on mobile and the company's increasing focus there. Facebook still doesn't have an iPad app, but it's widely expected.
One way to look at this is, is that people's Facebook contacts--what Facebook calls the "social graph"--are extremely valuable in and of itself, outside of all the other features of Facebook. Group messaging apps such as GroupMe, Gogii's TextPlus, Pinger's TextFree, WhatsApp, have grown quickly as a way for people to stay in touch with small or large groups of people on their mobile devices, with mostly free texting. To stay in the middle of all that communication, Facebook now has an app of its own.
Facebook is still very bad system. The facebook is not able to solve this problem is much worse.
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