Facebook admits the Messenger app is cluttered, vows to clean it up

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Things could get much simpler this year

Facebook has been loading more and more features into Messenger, so much so that there are probably a few Messenger tricks you didn't even know about. 

But, feature creep can be a real problem, especially for a tool with one simple goal: allowing people to communicate. Fortunately, Facebook should be scaling things back a bit this year.

Facebook's head of Messenger, David Marcus, wrote a post discussing the app and its future. In it, he admits that with so many features added in a short time span, Messenger has gotten a bit cluttered.

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.

David Marcus, head of Facebook Messenger

This doesn't mean that Facebook is going to start taking away features that it has added. Instead, the focus on streamlining will likely mean making it easier to do whatever it is you want on Messenger, cutting out extra steps.

Marcus's post expressed extra emphasis on visual messaging with video (especially with augmented reality), images, GIFs and stickers, so some of that streamlining is bound to show up in connection with these features.

Let's just hope all the streamlining isn't to make room for more ads in Messenger.

Mark Knapp
Mark Knapp

Over the last several years, Mark has been tasked as a writer, an editor, and a manager, interacting with published content from all angles. He is intimately familiar with the editorial process from the inception of an article idea, through the iterative process, past publishing, and down the road into performance analysis.