Facebook Messenger on the web

Facebook today launched Facebook Messenger on the web. If this sounds confusing, that’s because it is: While Messenger is already available on the company’s main facebook.com website as Facebook Chat, the company is now offering a standalone app over at  messenger.com. In other words, Facebook wants a standalone Facebook Messenger browser experience (with desktop notifications) that is completely separate from the rest of the social network. Like the mobile version, the web app is meant to provide a way to chat with other Facebook users without the distractions of unrelated notifications, the News Feed, Timelines, Pages, photos, videos, and so on.

Facebook caught a lot of flak when it first split its messaging function off into a separate app last fall. Users complained then that the company was strong-arming them into downloading the new app. "Asking folks to install another app is a short term painful thing, but if we wanted to focus on serving this well, we had to build a dedicated and focused experience," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained in his defense during a Q&A last fall. But the company says it has no plans to cleave the core Facebook web platform in two, meaning that users will still have the option of messaging with Facebook's standard chat option or with the stripped down new service. A Facebook spokesperson said web Messenger is meant only as an additional option that's free of the distractions of the rest of the Facebook site. The new platform is part of a series of features and updates aimed at transforming Messenger into a communications hub where users can do much more than just chat with friends. Last month, Facebook rolled out a peer-to-peer payment service and opened it up for third-party developers to build content and services.