The next version of Facebook Messenger will be radically smaller
Facebook Messenger’s mobile app for iOS is about to shrink. The company said today that it is working on a new version of Messenger that will be fewer than 30MB (or about 20 percent the size of the current app). The new version of Messenger, which is expected to arrive later this year on iOS, was rewritten from the ground up, the company said. It should launch in two seconds or under, the company said. There are currently no plans to bring it to Android where Messenger Lite has been available since 2015.
The move represents Facebook’s latest step to return Messenger to its lightweight roots. After years of expanding into bots, payments, games, and areas, the app had become cluttered and slower to navigate than rivals like iMessage and...