Nono.MA

MAY 11, 2015

Facebook, Connecting People

Our world of all-time-connectivity was initiated when online messaging services like MSN Messenger and landline flat rates were offered to us.

We already had a need to be telling each other our stories, but we just could not do it — at least if you did not have unlimited money to be the whole day attached to a phone call.

Cell phones came in a bit better. The SMS anticipated what would later come into our smartphones, but the pay-as-you-send dynamic of the SMS technology made us count and compress every single word in a message and, a lot of times, it silenced messages which were not important enough to spend fifteen cents of euro.

But what happens today? After BlackBerry introduced BlackBerry Messenger on all of their devices, and tied that together with Internet data plans, the rage for unlimited started to arise. They had a pretty selective market, as only if you had a BB would you be able to interact with peers under the same condition. That worked for a while, but as everybody knows other companies were not liking that exclusiveness.

Today, teleporting ourselves forward into the present, we all know what happened. Many others tried to replace this functionality making it usable among different devices (also over the Internet). It was not Skype or iMessage (which had the same exclusiveness of BB Messenger) or Line or Telegram — the one that managed to rule was Whatsapp. And, today, after it was acquired by Facebook, their two instant messaging services are the most used all over the globe.

It wasn't devices (Nokia) but services (like WhatsApp) who ended up Connecting People.

APRIL 9, 2015

Facebook Launches Messenger For Web Browsers

Facebook just launched a web version of their chat client. Messenger, previously available on Facebook.com's chat and on mobile devices (such as iOS or Android), is now available through a clean domain: messenger.com.

I had been waiting for something like this since I joined Facebook. The fact that you can access through the web to Facebook chat without having to see all of your friends updates — plus tons of useless notifications — is really good news.

Facebook Messenger Landing Page

Funnily enough, the whole web application displays in pure iOS style. The entire user interface uses icons, colors, and layouts of Apple's mobile operative system.

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