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Facebook will finally let you access your inbox without the Messenger app
- Facebook is testing the ability to access your inbox without the Messenger app.
- This would mark a major U-turn after nine years.
Facebook first removed the ability to access your message inbox in the main Facebook app back in 2014. It would then go on to remove the inbox from the mobile site too in 2016. This was part of a ham-fisted attempt to get people to download the Messenger app instead.
Now, the company has issued a blog post where it confirms that they’re indeed bringing the message inbox back to the Facebook app.
“We are testing the ability for people to access their Messenger inbox within the Facebook app and you’ll see us expand this testing soon,” read an excerpt of the post.
The company isn’t doing this because it’s finally listening to consumers, though. Instead, the post suggests that this is part of a push for content discovery and sharing:
Another part of delivering the best experience to people using AI is to make it easier for people to share what they discover on Facebook via messaging, when, where and how it suits their needs, without needing to switch to another app.
Nevertheless, we hope this becomes a permanent feature, as making your inbox exclusive to the Messenger app felt like a cheap way to get people to download another Facebook app.
Facebook also used the blog post to assert that it “is not dead nor dying,” pointing to a milestone of two billion daily active users.