Facebook Messenger to need Facebook account signing up

Facebook Messenger is probably one of the most popular messaging apps right up there with WhatsApp which is also owned by Facebook. Until now Facebook Messengers allowed users to sign up and start using the messaging app using only their phone numbers and a Facebook account wasn’t needed to just use messaging app. However, Facebook Messenger will now need a Facebook account to sign up in order to use it.

This was first reported by VentureBeat that Facebook is now ending the support to sign up for Facebook Messenger using just your phone number and will simply opt the users to make an account on the social media site to use the messaging app.

Facebook made a statement to VentureBeat confirming this:

If you’re new to Messenger, you’ll notice that you need a Facebook account to chat with friends and close connections. We found that the vast majority of people who use Messenger already log in through Facebook and we want to simplify the process. If you already use Messenger without a Facebook account, no need to do anything.

According to Facebook the majority of people who already used Facebook Messenger had a Facebook account and they just want to simply the process. According to their statement only new users will be affected from the change and those who are already using the messaging service having signed up through their phone numbers don’t need to do anything about it.

Facebook also reportedly plans to integrate the messaging services throughout its messaging apps and integrate them into one end-to-end encrypted unified service but that seems to be a difficult task at hand.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of Facebook has said that Facebook has a plan to integrate these services. He also made a blog post regarding the matter:

People should be able to use any of our apps to reach their friends, and they should be able to communicate across networks easily and securely,
We plan to start by making it possible for you to send messages to your contacts using any of our services, and then to extend that interoperability to SMS too.

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