Facebook on Monday introduced a faster, smaller, more streamlined Messenger with a focus on people first, ditching the Discover tab altogether. The company boasts an app that loads twice as fast and has a quarter of the previous file size. According to Zuckerberg himself, the update will begin rolling out immediately.
What it looks like now: What you’ll notice first is the simplification of the tabs at the bottom of the screen. Already reduced to three tabs in an October 2018 update, this new update removes the Discover tab altogether, putting the focus on People and Chats. The former shows your contacts’ stories, while the latter is the same basic chat list you’ve been using before.
The big picture: While it may seem like a small change, the streamlining of the Messenger app could also be seen as another step toward putting people at the center as Facebook tries to undo the damage of the Cambridge Analytica debacle and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
As TechCrunch points out, it could also be a signal that Facebook is done trying to cram all of its new technologies, including AI, into a single product and is focusing solely on what a messaging app does best (while still trying to promote Stories, for some reason).