Facebook has introduced a new app called "Hello," and it is an app built by the team behind the Messenger app.
The app is essentially a dialer for Android, allowing users to block numbers and see who is calling them, even if they don't have the number saved in their phone.
"Billions of calls are made everyday on mobile phones and people often have very little information about who's calling them," said Facebook in a blog post. "Today we are starting to test Hello, a new app built by the Messenger team. Hello connects with Facebook so you can see who's calling, block unwanted calls and search for people and places."
Hello is basically aimed at modernizing the phone call, a method of communication that is fast becoming obsolete. In the process of doing this, it puts Facebook at the center of the phone call experience, drawing from Facebook's database for caller ID information. Of course, Facebook will only display information of a user's friends or any information that is shared publically.
Not only that, but the platform gives another opportunity for Facebook to promote its Wi-Fi calling feature in Messenger, which will, of course, be accessible from the Hello app.
Considering the fact that over one billion phone calls are still made by Americans every day, it makes sense that Facebook wants to get into the market. Despite this, there are a number of dialer replacement apps available for users, however, most are fine with simply using the default dialer app on Android. Even Google's own Hangouts Dialer has less than five million downloads, which is rather surprising considering it comes from Google.
Facebook has been trying to enter the mobile market more substantially for a few years now. The company launched "Home" in 2013 to much fanfare, but the Android Launcher was not adopted by nearly as many people as Facebook would have liked. Shortly afterward, Facebook stopped allowing users to use Messenger from within the Facebook app, essentially forcing users to download a new app on their phone. The reason for this recently became clear when Facebook launched Messenger as a platform, allowing developers to create and release apps for Messenger.
An important part of the app is that it can easily be installed on any phone, so for those who regularly change phones or have multiple phones for different purposes, family and friends will still know who the user is when they call.
