[koyote]

I see this as a good thing.

It will hopefully reduce the memory and processing the main Facebook app leaves and at the same time it will give everyone a great opportunity to ditch the Facebook messaging service in favour of the plethora of other messaging apps already installed on their devices.

I, for one, will stop using the Facebook messenger entirely on my phone.

[jfoster]

Will be interesting to see if they see this through. I might be missing something, but I don't see any business reason for them to do this. They will lose some users, and that seems a painful prospect for them. They value user bases so much that they paid $19B for Whatsapp.

Difficult to imagine them not reversing this decision at a later date.

[jaegerpicker]

Their purchase of whatsapp is exactly why they did this, IMO. I'd be very surprised if facebook messages doesn't become whatsapp and get completely tied into it. That's really the only way buying WhatsApp for $19B makes sense.

[thix0tr0pic]

I've actually done the opposite, ditching facebook exclusively for the messenger app. I've yet to see something adopted so universally by the people I talk to most.