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Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

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Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#221

Post by codeka »

wodenokoto wrote: post #136
codeka wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome has perfectly acceptable push notification support. I am an occasional user of Facebook Messenger, and using the mobile website was perfect: I don't care if notifications are delayed or even lost (I'll see the messages eventually anyway). But there's no way I'm going to install a separate app for something I use maybe once a week, tops. If it stops working from the mobile website, then I just wait until I'm ba…

> I don't care if notifications are delayed or even lost But I hope you can imagine why a chat team does care if a technology doesn't allow them to send timely and reliable notifications. It is often better to have no feature than a bad feature. I've never used the mobile web messenger, but if it is unreliable, only works in a few browsers, it makes sense to remove the product.

> But I hope you can imagine why a chat team does care if a technology doesn't allow them to send timely and reliable notifications.

Sure, that's why they have the app. But it's not a reason to completely turn off messaging from the website. Heck, they could even turn off chrome notifications completely and the website would still be completely functional.

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#223

Post by FreakyT »

asabil wrote: post #217
SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's less about solving problems and more about breaking out of that web browser sandbox to siphon up more of that juicy, juicy data.

Heard of messenger.com ?

Facebook blocks Messenger.com for mobile browser user agents; you need to spoof your UA if you want to use it on mobile. (Some of the Facebook app wrappers can do this for you.)

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#224

Post by aorth »

simonswords82 wrote: post #174
mrweasel wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a heavy Facebook user, so I may very well be wrong, but I think Facebook is slowly start to be less valuable in some respects. For instance businesses need to start evaluating if they really require a Facebook presence. The users that can reach you on Facebook are obnoxious, and expects 24/7 feedback. Unless you are a small niche business you're simply not able to build sufficient community around your Facebo…

The big companies have got a Facebook/Twitter etc presence because their competitors have one. It's almost certainly a pain in the ass for them because as you mention customers will use it as a public platform to beat the company with when they're pissed off. There was a period about 5 years ago when every company in the world thought they needed to have Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on. It was a seriou…

Indeed! Though one example of a big company who has (notoriously) zero presence on any social networks would be Apple.

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#225

Post by tombh »

FreakyT wrote: post #223
asabil wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heard of messenger.com ?

Facebook blocks Messenger.com for mobile browser user agents; you need to spoof your UA if you want to use it on mobile. (Some of the Facebook app wrappers can do this for you.)

Which ones? Tinfoil doesn't seem to at the moment.

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#227

Post by fwn »

FreakyT wrote: post #223
asabil wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heard of messenger.com ?

Facebook blocks Messenger.com for mobile browser user agents; you need to spoof your UA if you want to use it on mobile. (Some of the Facebook app wrappers can do this for you.)

If you spoof the UA, you can also use the main Facebook website on mobile. Messenger.com might be less cluttered though.

Btw: that works with mobile Firefox. (I originally used it instead of chrome, mostly because it supports ad blocking on unrooted devices.)

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#228

Post by nstj »

wrsh07 wrote: post #78
jds375 wrote: post #11

So rather than fixing the problems that result in users messaging via the mobile web app instead of the messenger app, they're just going to "solve" the problem by forcing users to use the messenger app? This is why Facebook as a company doesn't have high levels of consumer trust. This will bite them in the future. Once you lose that level of trust it is extremely difficult to gain back.

"Users were messaging via the web frontend, so we fixed the glitch."

It will just work itself out naturally.

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#229

Post by michel-slm »

FreakyT wrote: post #223
asabil wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heard of messenger.com ?

Facebook blocks Messenger.com for mobile browser user agents; you need to spoof your UA if you want to use it on mobile. (Some of the Facebook app wrappers can do this for you.)

Interesting, Asana does that too. And I would rather not use their app...

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#230

Post by oneloop »

It's really sad to me to see a bunch of intelligent people here being led like sheep by Facebook (no, this isn't a sheeple post, hear me out)

Virtually everyone here complains "Facebook does XYZ really bad but I still use them because all my friends are there".

I have a solution. Why don't you get all your friends off there? Pick a platform that you really like and start evangelising. The only reason why Facebook has as much power as it does is because of user lock-in, but that use lock-in is only strong because no one fights it actively.

Example. A while ago, WhatsApp didn't have a webapp. Telegram did. I prefer typing on my laptop instead of mobile if I can. Therefore, I started evangelising from WhatsApp to Telegram. Now all my friends are on Telegram. (They didn't leave WhatsApp, but now they use Telegram between them). (BTW, I kind of regret this now that WhatsApp has a webapp AND encryption by default, but that's another story).

So, stop complaining and do something about it.

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