Articles about Facebook Messenger

In the US, May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and Facebook is using this to raise awareness of the tools it offers for those in need of help. The social network says that it wants to help people connect with the help they need to promote good mental health and well-being.

The company is also expanding its suicide prevention tools -- something it has offered for a decade now -- by working with new partners. The latest addition to the fold is The Trevor Project to help offer support to LGBTQ youth, and Facebook also says that its overall arsenal of tools has been improved by advancements in technology.

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Facebook has been introducing games to its Messenger chat app for a while. It started with simple hidden gems like Chess, Basketball, and Soccer, and then added arcade games to the mix.

Today, the social networking giant begins to roll out Instant Games on Messenger globally, and for all users on both iOS and Android. But that’s not all.

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At Facebook's F8 conference yesterday, much of the attention was focused on virtual reality, augmented reality -- anything that breaks out of vanilla reality. But there were other things of arguably greater interest, and for music fans there was news of the Spotify bot for Facebook Messenger.

Facebook has been throwing a lot at bots recently, and it's little surprise that big names like Spotify are getting in on the action. For the music streaming service, the bot serves a dual purpose: giving useful functionality to Messenger users, while simultaneously pushing people into taking up a subscription.

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Promising to "make your Messenger experience more useful, seamless and delightful," Facebook has launched suggestions from M to everyone in the US. M is the social network's AI assistant, and iOS and Android users can now benefit from behavior-based suggestions for content and actions as the assistant analyses conversations.

What this means in practice is that M might notice that you are chatting with a friend about sending them some money for something. Rather than waiting until you meet them in person, M will spring into action and suggest that you might like to send the money through Messenger. Other possible suggestions relate to Uber and Lyft, stickers, polls and locations.

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Facebook is introducing a new feature to its Messenger app for iOS and Android that makes it possible to share your current location with contacts. It is also possible to share other static locations to enable you to point out places on a map.

With Facebook and location-sharing mentioned in the same sentence, there will be obvious concerns about privacy. To try to allay these fears, the current location is only shared for a maximum of an hour, and can be manually stopped at any time before the countdown reaches zero.

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Facebook is not shy about stealing features from other messaging tools, and it's usually Snapchat that is used as inspiration. With the latest update to Facebook Messenger, it's Slack that is being borrowed from.

Today Facebook Messenger gets two new features: Reactions and mentions. These work in very much the way you would expect, and Reactions make a successful transition from the Facebook newsfeed to Messenger after having made a brief appearance to a testing group recently.

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Top messaging services have evolved past their basic role, as the major players in this market look to differentiate their offerings from the rest of the crowd. Facebook, for instance, added a bot platform to Messenger last year to make it more relevant to businesses and consumers.

Through bots, businesses provide better customer service while consumers can more easily get in touch with service providers. The platform has quickly gained traction, with the latest addition to the fold being international money transfer service TransferWise.

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Messaging apps are not just about chatting these days. Every player that counts wants to bring something extra to the table to keep users hooked and attract new ones in the process. WhatsApp is no different, as it is now rolling out an updated status feature that lets users share more than just basic messages.

"We are excited to announce that, coinciding with WhatsApp's eight birthday on February 24, we are reinventing the status feature", says WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum. The update gives users the option to also share photos and videos.

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Facebook has started to roll out the Messenger.com interface as a replacement for the longstanding message inbox on the web. The latest design should feel much more familiar to folks who use the chat service on their smartphones, as it closely resembles the Android and iOS apps.

There is no official announcement yet, but you should start seeing the new interface soon on your account. It debuted nearly two years ago as a standalone website and alternative to the message inbox for folks who do not want to visit Facebook (or wish to create an account with the social network, for that matter).

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Facebook has been adding all sorts of features to its chat app recently, including classic arcade games, and a new camera with art and 3D effects.

Today, the social networking giant introduces the ability to video chat in groups, which it describes as the most requested Messenger feature ever.

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Facebook Messenger doesn’t just let you chat with friends, you can also use it to play games.

Today, the chat app introduces a faster, and easier to use camera that will let you spice up your conversations, and capture and share moments as they happen. There’s more to it than just that, though.

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Payments through Facebook Messenger have been available in the US for some time now, and they're about to make their way to Europe.

Facebook has just been granted a license for 'payment services' and 'e-money issuance' with the Central Bank of Ireland. As a member of the European Union, holding a license in Ireland means that Facebook will be able to offer its payment services in all of the EU member states.

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https://www.facebook.com/messenger/videos/1125491070903905/

You’ve been able to play basic games in Facebook Messenger for a while -- things like chess, soccer and basketball -- but from now you’ll be able to play classic arcade games too.

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Facebook, like Google, is all about the ads. Not content with filling newsfeeds with advertising, Facebook Messenger -- already something of a privacy nightmare -- is about to become home to 'sponsored messages'. Ads by another name.

The new ad formats follow on from newsfeed data designed to direct Facebook users to Messenger, and from there the idea is to drive brand awareness and increase sales. But as with other advertising on Facebook, ads are targeted, meaning there is more than a slight degree of concern when it comes to privacy.

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In an effort to make it easier for users to pay through its messaging service, Facebook has added PayPal as a new payment option in the Messenger app.

The deal between the two companies will allow customers to use PayPal when shopping through Facebook Messenger -- and they will even be able to use the service to pay for items purchased through merchants' chatbots. The online payment service had added that it will also be making it easier for users to link their PayPal account to their Facebook account.

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