Huh... I have used messenger.com plenty.

* To share my account creds w/ a friend to help sift through many real estate leads we advertised on FB Marketplace.

* Working easily between FB ads and comms

* Linking things from my computer for a business-related group.

* Handling anything FB marketplace while in flow on my desktop.

Hopefully the replacement isn't worse

this move has really made me think about moving away from messenger, i hate the website version and only use desktop app outside of phone app

Previously posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47042390

It's funny to see this all go full circle. messenger.com was spun out of facebook.com to try to build a new platform. They promised interoperability with Instagram and WhatsApp accounts, although they never did a good enough job that you could just use one account across them.

Facebook really could have been the default online identity provider if they weren't such an abhorrently shitty company. In the early days, you wouldn't even ask for someone's number - you'd just chat on Facebook.

Why do you post a proxy article instead of linking directly to source? Why does the website ask for my location?

I think META like many other "service providers" don't yet realize, that it's becoming trivial to roll your own and all we need is a protocol. And arguably there are many. You can then use your existing social graph (anyone remembers this term? lol) to chat. Your mom and granddad won't roll their own, but publishing an open service that uses FB openID and API while delegating to the open protocol is really not that hard. Browser local storage may not be ideal, but it's a good placeholder until something better can be implemented.

I’m honestly incredibly surprised they would get rid of the desktop app just as desktop messaging apps have become their most important.

The future Meta AI would have seemingly fit rightly in there.

Didn't they kill the Mac desktop app last year?

$1.62bn market cap

Source, earlier: https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/804132271957789 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47042390)