Facebook's massive change in Messenger to untie the messaging app from its social network by stating that users no longer need an account on Facebook to use the app could signal a future direction that would further separate Messenger from Facebook.
Facebook has dropped the requirement for Messenger users to link their Facebook account in the United States, Canada, Venezuela and Peru. Instead, users will be registering on Messenger using their name, their contact number and a picture of themselves.
Once users have signed up with the new way of registration, they can then pull the contacts from the device's phonebook as opposed to their Facebook friends list. All the usual Messenger features will still be accessible, even when chatting with non-Facebook users.
With the changes to Messenger, the service is now beginning to resemble WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired last year for an amount of almost $22 billion.
While Facebook has not said that it will be combining Messenger and WhatsApp, a combination will make sense to pull the 800 million monthly active users of WhatsApp and 700 million monthly active users of Messenger together into one messaging service. This would make the resulting service create a huge distance from its competitors such as WeChat, which only has 500 million monthly active users.
Facebook, however, has previously expressed views that Messenger and WhatsApp are complementary services, with WhatsApp relatively remaining as a simple messaging service. Combined, and assuming that there is no significant number of overlaps, the 1.5 billion users covered by Messenger and WhatsApp already makes up 20 percent of the population of the world.
However, whether Messenger combines with WhatsApp or not, Facebook is most possibly looking to further increase the user base of the messaging service by allowing non-Facebook users. The fact remains that there are more people with phone numbers than people with accounts on Facebook, and tying Messenger with Facebook accounts will just limit the potential growth of its user base.
With an even wide user base on Messenger, more developers can be attracted to work on the service, which would ultimately lead to even higher revenues for Facebook. Facebook has been adding a slew of features and apps to Messenger lately, expanding the service's capabilities to become an all-in-one solution for the communication needs of users. Such feature that have been added include the ability to embed videos, embed posts, link to apps, make video calls and even send money to friends.
