Forget Messenger: Facebook might add video calls back to its main app

About 10 years ago, Facebook launched a dedicated Messenger app. A few years later, it officially removed messaging and voice and video calls from its main app. Now, Bloomberg said Facebook is considering adding voice and video calls back to its main app in several countries, including the US.

Voice and video calls are two core Messenger features. These Messenger features are also available in other Facebook products, such as Portal video cameras and Oculus virtual reality headsets. If you're wondering whether other Messenger will come to Facebook, Messenger’s director of product management told Bloomberg that “you’re going to start to see quite a bit more of this over time".

The company has not shared how many users will be able to test voice and video calls in Facebook, or what will happen to the Messenger app, but it has told the media that users should continue using Messenger for a more fully-featured experience that includes messaging, audio, and video calling.

We suspect Facebook is considering this move as a way to make users interact with the Facebook app. There are probably plenty of people out there who use Messenger to communicate with their friends and loved ones, but at the same time, they might not even have the Facebook app installed.

There's also the question of: Will this cannibalise the Messenger app? And let's also not forget this change would integrate Messenger deeper into Facebook, not unlike how Facebook unified Instagram and Facebook direct messaging, making it harder to split all those apps up. Perhaps that's the point.

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