Already the second most popular iOS app in the United States in 2015, Facebook Messenger for Android now allows users to make voice calls as well as send and receive text messages effortlessly.
The Messenger app is not only growing very rapidly to become a one-stop-shop for all communication requirements, including SMS, voice/ group/video calls, transportation, payment, bots and many more, more than 60 million businesses are conducted on the app every month, Facebook Wire reported.
Soon after Facebook held its F8 annual conference in San Francisco this month, the social network has been silently releasing latest features to its Messenger service that now allows the users to make voice calls as well as send and receive SMS text messages, which are usually transmitted through a carrier's cellular network.
Speaking at the F8 annual conference, Facebook Vice-President (Messaging Products) David Marcus said that currently, the company is experimenting these features on a few users, but they are yet to launch it fully. Presently, the updated version of Facebook Messenger is available in beta only for Android smartphones.
However, the beta version of Messenger is not available on iOS, as Apple does not permit third-party developers to modify or move Messages, the Cupertino tech titan's instant messaging app, which was earlier dubbed iMessage, Forbes reported.
The latest Facebook Messenger version, text messages impeccably appear in purple bubbles with only the first initial of the contact together with Facebook messages as well as their customary blue color bubbles with the photograph of the contact.
However, prior to sending a text message, the user will require selecting Facebook Messenger as the default SMS app -- a rather smooth process on Android right now. All that the user needs to do is click on "Change" tab on the notification window and he is ready to send messages.
While Facebook Messenger as well its sister app WhatsApp together transmit over 60 billion messages daily, which is thrice the number of SMS sent across the world every day, the latest move by the social network giant is considered to be one more clever means to attract wayward users to shift to Facebook.
Watch the top moments of Facebook F8 annual conference 2016 below:
