Social networking giant, Facebook, has announced that it is adding support for a key feature to its popular instant messaging app, Messenger. The app will now support sending and receiving SMS.
It may be 2016, but the good old plain text messages continues to survive, as a means of communication, for many a soul around the globe.
Why is Facebook adding SMS support for Messenger? Especially considering the fact that it owns two of the most popular IM apps out there. The first being Facebook Messenger obiously, and the second one is WhatsApp, which the social networking company acquired for a whopping $16 Billion, in 2014.
The logic behind the adding of SMS to Messenger is quite simple. While WhatsApp has replaced SMS in India, and some Countries in Europe, SMS still holds importance in the US. This is because American telecom companies offer their subscribers unlimited free SMS, but in India we are charged a hefty amount for a single SMS.
It goes without saying, that it is these demographics, that Facebook is targeting with its new Messenger feature. Facebook’s David Marcus announced the news on Twitter (ironical, isn’t it?).
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The SMS feature will be rolled out to all Messenger users by Friday, i.e. by June 17th.
