Facebook is expected to clean up its Messenger application this year after it admitted that its design has become too cluttered. David Marcus, vice president of Messaging Products at Facebook, admitted that while the social media company was busy adding new features to the product, it had failed to restrain the clutter.
In a Facebook Note, David Marcus wrote:
“Over the last two years, we built a lot of capabilities to find the features that continue to set us apart. A lot of them have found their product market fit; some haven’t. While we raced to build these new features, the app became too cluttered. Expect to see us invest in massively simplifying and streamlining Messenger this year.”
Facebook isn’t looking to turn Messenger into a Messenger Lite type of product. Instead, Marcus says things are going to get “way more visual”. He said:
“I predict visual messaging will fully explode in 2018; people will expect a super fast and intuitive camera, video, images, GIFs, and stickers with almost every conversation. Even in the workplace where conversation can be more serious, we see people embracing emojis and video to help drive a point home … Not only will you see more from Messenger in visual messaging this year, but this is where the industry is heading, and we won’t be looking back.”
Facebook also believes that both customers and businesses want to more easily connect with each other over Facebook Messenger. Although no concrete actions were provided in the blog post, Marcus said we should see both global and small brands adopting the Messenger platform to push their products.