Messenger No Longer Requires A Facebook Account

Facebook is opening up the option to sign up for its chat app without an account on its social network. Users can sign up with just a first name, last name, and phone number, starting today in the US, Canada, Peru, and Venezuela before the feature comes elsewhere.

Facebook tested accountless signups for Messenger on Android in India and a three other countries in 2012 but ceased the test a few months later. But head of Messenger David Marcus tells “That time 2 years ago we were in the middle of the road. Now it’s a way to get to the last mile and the last few people who want to use Messenger who potentially didn’t want to use Facebook or couldn’t use Facebook.”

What’s new : 

A new “Not On Facebook?” button in the Messenger sign-up flow will let people upload their phone contacts. Facebook will then match them against Messenger users who’ve registered with those phone numbers to build a no-account user’s social graph. People will also be able to use a Facebook search function to find people they want to chat with but who might not have given Facebook their number.

The only and major difference for non-Facebook users will be features that rely on the network of Facebook friends. This simply means the Messenger app will rely solely on your phone’s contacts in order to find friends on the service.

What’s Next For Messenger?

Facebook has been working a bunch of new functionality for Messenger lately. It’s added friend-to-friend payments, new location sharing options, a dedicated web interface,VOIP video calling, and an app platform for sending images and sound clips to friends orplaying games. Messenger’s next big projects are rolling out its Messenger For Business system to more verticals, allowing online merchants to offer customer support through Messenger rather than slow phone calls or annoying emails. He also says that Messenger could do a better job of explaining its robust set of features and reminding people when to use them. Essentially, Facebook realized that not everyone wants a social network or News Feed, but everybody chats.

So far, it is unclear when Facebook Messenger will open its new sign-up option to more countries, but the move clearly indicates that the social network giant is increasingly moving forward to make the Messenger one of its own standalone platform.