In an effort to become more competitive with TikTok, Meta is attempting to shift Facebook away from an app where you keep up with friends and family to more of an entertainment and discovery platform. The post seeks to assure people that 'Facebook is not dead nor dying,' as it now has more than 2 billion users. Meta made the announcement in a bizarrely framed blog post about Facebook's focus areas for 2023. You might be able to send messages to Instagram users from the Facebook app too. In any case, having one fewer app to juggle on your phone is probably not a bad thing. It started pushing mobile web users toward the Messenger app in 2016. When Meta removed Messenger from the Facebook app in 2014, it said that 'our goal is to focus development efforts on making Messenger the best mobile messaging experience possible and avoid the confusion of having separate Facebook mobile messaging experiences.' It's unclear whether Meta has any plans to bring messaging back to the mobile browser version of Facebook. 'Ultimately, we want it to be easy and convenient for people to connect and share, whether in the Messenger app or directly within Facebook.'

'We are testing the ability for people to access their Messenger inbox within the Facebook app and you’ll see us expand this testing soon,' Facebook head Tom Alison wrote.

Almost nine years later, Meta is ready to bring them back together. It's been so long since Meta cut Messenger out of the Facebook mobile app that Windows Phone was still somewhat of a thing at the time.

Facebook with messenger