After opening up access to Facebook Messenger to users in the Canada, the United States, Peru and Venezuala, without the need for a Facebook account in June, VP, Messaging Products David Marcus has announced that the feature has been expanded globally.
Anyone wanting to download and connect to Facebook Messenger, can now use all the Messenger features such as chat (including group chat), Photo Sharing, Voice and Video calling, stickers and more without a Facebook account. To sign in, all you need is a phone number. Once installed, users will be prompted for a phone number at the welcome screen after hitting the ‘Not on Facebook’ option, after which they can then add profile details including name and photo.
There’s still benefits of signing up for a Facebook account though, as Facebook points out, having a Facebook account means you can easily message all your Facebook friends and contacts and access their Facebook pages for them as well.
You can download Facebook Messenger from Google Play for free and try it out right now.
I’m not a big Facebook fan but use Messenger if I’m away from home on work trips. I was using Viber but I’m getting fed up of the spam and the messages about new stickers and all that crap so it looks like I’ll be using it more and more.
I don’t have a Facebook account at all, but this made me get messenger seeing as every man and his dog seem to use Facebook.