Mark Zuckerberg Explains Why Mobile Users Were Forced To Download Messenger App, Calls It A ‘Short Term Painful Thing’

Facebook has become both the bane of productivity and a majestic portal of connectivity with the world. In a sense, it is a yin and yang of social networks that many cannot live without. Yet, when a change is made to advance the company toward the future, many users become irate as their comfort zone is broken down and new territory is discovered. A recent example is the introduction of the dreaded Facebook Messenger app. Normally changes are implemented without explanation, but CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg addressed the Facebook Messenger app in a recent Q&A session.

Being the leader of Facebook cannot be an easy job. Each time a change is implemented, an individual’s news feed can be inundated for weeks with posts that chastise the change and threaten to find another virtual landscape to share pictures of their cats, passive aggressive statuses, and the occasional plate of food. Many of the complaints revolve around the lack of input from the users or the inability to accept or deny the changes, often forgetting that the service they are using is completely free to them. Still, Mark Zuckerberg moves toward the future in a constant attempt to keep Facebook fresh and relevant to society’s constantly changing use cases. Hence, the Messenger app was born.

Mark Zuckerberg realizes that messaging, whether through text or another app, has become a major form of instant communication in the past few years, even bigger than speaking on the phone. He also realizes that Facebook has become an integral means of communication, as well. However, messaging and mobile Facebook were not meshing well together. So he took the leap and separated the two, according to Business Insider.

“Asking everyone in our community to install a new app is a big ask. I appreciate that that was work and required friction. We wanted to do this because we believe that this is a better experience. Messaging is becoming increasingly important. On mobile, each app can only focus on doing one thing well, we think.”

Mark went on to explain that a study showed more than 85 percent of the population is on Facebook, but 95 percent use some sort of messaging service, as a justification of the Messenger app’s creation. He realizes that “asking folks to install another app is a short term painful thing”, he told the Verge, but it is also a necessary step in Facebook’s evolution.

“Ten billion messages are sent per day, but in order to get to it you had to wait for the app to load and go to a separate tab. We saw that the top messaging apps people were using were their own app. These apps that are fast and just focused on messaging. You’re probably messaging people 15 times per day. Having to go into an app and take a bunch of steps to get to messaging is a lot of friction.”

Now the Messenger app has been out a while, are you hooked, or are you one of the few who have refused to download it?

[Photo Courtesy: Neo Win]