Last November, Mozilla announced that it had worked with Facebook to launch a first preview of its Social API for Firefox by integrating Facebook Messenger into Firefox 17. The Social API allows social networks, blog networks or news sites to easily add persistent social sidebars, toolbar notifications and chat features to the browser, no matter which site a user is looking at. At the time, Mozilla wasn’t quite ready to announce any additional partners for this API. But today the organization announced that it will soon expand this effort with additional services in Firefox Nightly, including Japanese social network Mixi, Microsoft’s MSN Now, new site, CliqZ and the Chinese microblogging service Weibo.

“We are really excited about the possibilities that Social API brings to the future of browsing, including ways to integrate even more social providers, e-mail, finance, news and other applications and services into your Firefox experience,” Mozilla writes in today’s announcement.

When Mozilla launched the Facebook Messenger integration, Mozilla’s VP of Firefox Engineering Jonathan Nightingale told me that the organization wanted to see how it could marry the trend toward more social experiences on the web with the browser. Firefox’s App Tabs were a first attempt to solve this, but, as Nightingale told me, “people still had to work around the limitations of browsers because they were treating social just like any other sites.”

The current Facebook Messenger integration is pretty straightforward and adds a set of Messenger buttons to the toolbar and pops up a sidebar to start chats (see image above). Last November, the Firefox team wasn’t sure how to integrate more than one service yet, but that obviously wasn’t an issue at the time, given that only Facebook Messenger was integrated in the service so far. It’s not clear how the Firefox team has solved this issue, but we’ll surely see the solution once these new providers go live in one of the next Firefox Nightly releases.

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The first world might use just a handful of handsets, but the key to Facebook’s growth is emerging markets fragmented across over 7,000 smart and dumb phones. To help it bug test for all these, Facebook keeps an office “library” of mobile devices, product manager Peter Deng revealed. So what’s the team testing now? A version of Messenger for feature phones that doesn’t require a Facebook account.

Until today, all of Facebook’s products required an email address for sign up. But there are tons of people who don’t have smartphones or email addresses in emerging markets. These places like India and Brazil are Facebook’s growth targets where it has low penetration, but high signup rates and plenty of people left to serve. For example, India has a population of over 1 billion but Facebook has just 65 million users there.

Now it’s rolling out a version of Facebook Messenger that doesn’t require an email address or Facebook account to sign up. You only need to enter your full name and phone number to signup. This opens it up to a huge new market. Non-Facebook Messenger could let people see the value of Facebook and then convince them to acquire an email address if they don’t have one and then set up an account.

Currently, non-Facebook Messenger is only for Android, but that’s where the office library of mobile phones comes in. Today at Le Web, Deng revealed that a version for feature phones is in development. To cram any approximation of the group chat, photo sharing, geolocation, and other capabilities of Messenger into a feature phone, it will have to do some serious testing. If it releases a buggy product, it could leave a sour taste in the mouth of people who might be trying Facebook for the first time.

Facebook engineers can take obscure mobile devices from the library, and run their alpha builds on them to check for compatibility. Small developers often complain about mobile fragmentation and the myriad of Android and feature phones in particular. Thanks to Facebook’s size, it doesn’t have to ship with its fingers crossed. It knows its app will work in the most remote corners of the planet.

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Mozilla just launched the latest stable version of Firefox. This release introduces Firefox’s new Social API with a preview of the first social integration with Facebook Messenger for Firefox. This was previously only available in the Firefox beta channel. The Social API allows social services like Facebook, Twitter, blog networks or even news sites to easily add persistent social sidebars, toolbar notifications and chats to the browser, no matter which site a user is currently looking at.

As Mozilla’s VP of Firefox Engineering Jonathan Nightingale stressed when I talked to him and Firefox Engineering manager Gavin Sharp about this release earlier this month, it’s important to note that even though this first release includes the Facebook Messenger integration, the Social API as a whole is open for all and there is nothing Facebook-specific about it.

Other services that could benefit from these persistent sidebars are email, groupware services, news sites and, of course, other social networks). While Mozilla isn’t able to announce any other partnerships yet, the organization is talking to some of the usual suspects (which I take to mean the likes of Twitter) about upcoming integrations.

As for the reasoning behind the Social API, Nightingale argued that today’s social web presents new challenges for browser developers. While users on the ‘normal’ web generally interact with a tab and close it, he said, users regularly revisit their social sites. Mozilla tried to solve this problem by adding app tabs to Firefox, “but people still had to work around the limitations of browsers because they were treating social just like any other sites.” Social sites, however, need to be treated different from other sites, Mozilla believes, and that’s where the work on the Social API comes in.

For users, the integration is pretty straightforward and can, of course, always be turned off again. Just head over to the Facebook Messenger for Firefox page after you have updated to the latest version of Firefox and look for the green ‘Turn On’ button. Once enabled, you will get to see the new social sidebar with your Facebook chat and updates, comments and photo tags. Firefox will now also show a few new Facebook Messenger buttons in its toolbar.

One thing the team hasn’t solved yet, and Nightingale and Sharp were quite open about this, is how to integrate a number of different services simultaneously. It’s pretty easy to imagine a scenario where you want to use both an email and a social network sidebar at the same time. That’s not currently an option, but the team is actively looking for solutions.

Mozilla isn’t currently pursuing any efforts to turn the Social API into an official standard. As Nightingale noted in our discussion, though, it is an open protocol and other vendors are free to implement it. He also acknowledged, though, that it’s likely that some developers won’t be interested in this, as they will want to protect their own social networks and other services (while he didn’t say so explicitly, chances are he was referring to Google here).

Goodbye Leopard

One other thing worth noting about this latest version of Firefox: support for Mac OS 10.5 Leopard has now ended. If you are still using Leopard (and more than 10 percent of Mac users still are), you will either have to stick to the older version or switch to another browser.

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How does Facebook know what features are good enough for its main smartphone apps? It tests them on the power users of its standalone apps Camera and Messenger. If the guinea pigs dig a new gesture or option, it gets called up to the big leagues — the 100 million+ user Facebook for iOS and Android apps.

Facebook explained in a blog post on mobile app design:

“Apps like Messenger and Camera let us push the envelope with specific features and allow us to get feedback from specific audiences like photo experts and hard core messaging users. The highly engaged users of these apps are a great proving ground for next-generation features that are refined and tweaked in the standalone apps before potentially making a debut in the core app.”

The latest features to get bumped up to the main stage were photo filters and multi-shot uploads from Facebook Camera, and swipe left to the see the buddy list from Facebook Messenger. Those both got added to the main Facebook for iOS app this week and are already in the Android version.

Some standalone app features would conflict with the primary app navigation schemes, though. So swipe down to reveal previously shot photos is staying in Facebook Camera, otherwise it would override the swipe down to refresh news feed gesture in the core apps.

Facebook also used the “Under the Hood: Integrating standalone mobile app features into Facebook for iOS” post to try to stress how it’s becoming a mobile-focused company. Rather than having a “mobile” team port desktop features to the small screen, each product team is now responsible for writing their own mobile code. In fact, if they don’t spec out mobile first in their product review sessions, they’ll get sent back to the drawing board, as Facebook VP Vaughn Smith stressed in his talk at the Global Mobile Internet Conference.

That’s going to be crucial going forward, because desktop products might be getting a lot less use in a few years. If features are designed to work on desktop and get shoehorned into mobile, they’ll need to be completely redesigned soon.

And just because Facebook doesn’t have standalone desktop apps where it can experiment with new features, it has something better. At any time, Facebook is using a system called Gatekeeper to serve dozens or hundreds of different versions of the site to different users at the same time. That means it could “battle-test” a new design to people spending over an hour a day, roll it out to everyone if the testers love it, or banish it to Facebook’s massive graveyard of failed features.

On that note, if you ever see some strange new Facebook feature or design, take a screenshot and send it to tips@techcrunch.com. We’ll add a link to a website of your choice if we use your tip. You are my eyes and ears, people.

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Facebook just launched a new version of its Messenger app for iOS. Messenger, the company’s stand-alone chat app, got a bit of a user interface refresh with this update, as well as a speed boost and official support for iOS 6 and the iPhone 5′s larger display. Today’s update comes just a bit more than a week after Facebook also launched an update to its Messenger app for Android and, for the most part, this update brings the iOS app’s design on par with the Android app.

The conversation view, for example, now uses chat bubbles, which make the app look more like a text messaging app like Apple’s own iMessage. The previous version, as our own Sarah Perez pointed out when she reviewed the Android update, looked more like your email inbox.

In addition, the iOS app now brings up a list of all of your friends who are currently online when you swipe to the left. From there, you can now also easily pin those friends you talk to the most to the top of your Favorites list.

One feature that’s missing from the iOS app, though, is the ability to text with your contacts from within Messenger. It’s worth noting, however, that only a few Android devices currently support this feature.

Here is the full changelog:

What’s New in Version 2.0

- Swipe left anywhere in the app to quickly see who’s available and send a message
- Add friends you message most to the top of your Favorites
- New design for conversations
- Improved speed and reliability
- Support for iOS 6 and iPhone 5
- Bug fixes

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Facebook has released an update to its Android app today that should give users of the social network on Android devices a more integrated and instant experience — and takes Facebook another step closer to making its mobile app experience more like the one people have when using the social network on the web.

Specifically, the new version lets users share photos and messages direct from the home screen of their devices, and it includes several features that had been in the standalone Messenger app.

Facebook for Android 1.9, according to a blog post from Facebook software engineer Frank Qixing Du, also integrates several features that had been in Facebook’s separate Messenger app. These include the ability to see when your friends are online or on their mobile devices; the ability to add people to a group conversation; and a more intelligent contact list, sorting it by the people you interact with most.

After updating the app, camera shortcuts and messaging shortcuts will also appear in your Android app tray, as shortcuts separate from the Facebook app itself:

As before, you will also be able to upload photos, track what your friends are uploading and writing, and look up the phone numbers of your contacts.

So far, the reviews in the Google Play app store have been mixed. On the minus side, several are pointing out that there is now some confusion between Facebook’s Camera and Messenger apps, and those that users would have already had — the native Android apps. Also these new additions take up extra space for now. On the plus side, there’s strong praise for the new design and better Messenger integration.

Check out the reviews and the app itself in Google Play.

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The test group for “Facebook Messenger for Windows” just got a whole lot bigger. Israeli blog TechIT has leaked a Facebook CDN download link for the desktop chat client Facebook began testing with a small number of users last month. The client includes notifications and the Ticker which link back to Facebook.com, and therefore could drive engagement with the website. Messenger could also pull market share away from other desktop chat clients like AOL Instant Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.

The client will help Facebook in two core ways:

• Persistent access to Chat will increase engagement of the primary user, and also draw their friends to spend more time on Facebook
• Persistent access to notifications, messages, and friend requests that launch Facebook.com may lead to more return visits than users haphazardly stopping by the website to check for these alerts

I just tested the Facebook Messenger for Windows client version 2.0.4373. It’s snappy and functions intuitively. It can float or easily be snapped to the desktop’s sidebar. Similar to the standalone mobile Messenger apps Facebook released this summer, frequently contacted friends automatically move into a favorites section above the complete list of friends who are online. My only gripe is that the log out button is relatively hard to find.

AIM and Windows Live Messenger should be worried. Sorting through a buddy list of cryptic screen names can’t match the user experience of an authenticated identity chat client. Facebook’s client also delivers messages to whatever device a recipient is currently using. That means even if a recipient isn’t currently logged in, they’ll easily be able to access their messages. AIM and Live Messenger will still be useful for staying in contact with internet pals who aren’t your real friends, but Messenger for Windows seriously reduces the unique value of these services.

Facebook could potentially kill the download link to prevent the app from reaching more users before its official launch. So, if you want it, download it now. Even then, Facebook could release an update to the app and cease support for this leaked version. However, this would interrupt its test and force those it actually wanted to give access to to re-download.

There might be some unseen security or stability bugs that need to be fixed. Still, Facebook shouldn’t worry too much about this leak as product looks good. Instead, it should consider capitalizing on press of the leak by soft launching now.

News Source: The Verge

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Facebook today began allowing a limited test group of users to download a new Facebook Messenger for Windows 7 desktop client. It provides access to Chat, the Ticker feed, and notifications. Facebook is looking to gauge interest in desktop access to these real-time features that could keep users engaged with the service all day without having to keep a browser window open. The client could become popular, considering that the Facebook-integrated Windows Live Messenger desktop client that lets you Chat with friends as well as third-party instant messaging contacts is the top app on the Facebook Platform with 18.2 million daily active users.

I’ve confirmed the client’s limited beta launch with Facebook, which pointed me to the new Help Center article with details and screenshots. The fraction of the total user base randomly selected to join the tester group are being notified via home page prompts. There is no public download link, and the client is only compatible with Windows 7, though it was developed entirely by Facebook and does not constitute a new partnership with Microsoft.

Facebook is pushing to get more users onto its Chat service. This summer, it released its standalone Messenger app for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry as new distribution points for Chat. Through Messenger, Facebook is challenging instant messaging, SMS and to some extent, email. However, none of the other Messenger clients include the Ticker, which displays links back to Facebook.com.

By combining Chat and Ticker, Facebook can hook users on its communication system that produces huge volumes of sustained attention, and then get them frequently returning to the site by clicking through Ticker and notification links. I’m awaiting a response from Facebook as to whether Sponsored Stories will also appear in the client, as these ads were integrated into the Facebook.com Ticker today. If they do, Ticker-integrated Messenger clients could become a revenue stream as well as an engagement draw.

By paring Facebook down to just its real-time elements, users may leave Messenger for Windows on throughout the day. This would expose them to desktop notifications about Facebook activity that could increase engagement with the site better than leaving a browser window open. If the Windows 7 version gains traction, clients for Mac and other operating systems could be on the way.

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Today Facebook released its Messenger standalone mobile messaging app for BlackBerry, and added several new features and languages to the existing iOS and Android versions. Users of all the versions of Facebook Messenger will now be able to see when a conversation partner is typing, view the online status of all their friends, and can quickly add their top friends to a new or ongoing thread. Many additional languages are also now supported for iOS and Android.

Now available in App World via Facebook’s About page, the BlackBerry version of the push notification and SMS app could become a competitor to RIM’s native BlackBerry Messenger service. With the feature additions Messenger now more closely approximates the web version of Facebook Chat, and surpasses the built-in Chat functionality of the primary Facebook mobile apps. Facebook Messenger can now better achieve its purpose of allowing low-friction, cross-platform instant messaging.

The initial release of Messenger in August gave users a way to communicate with Facebook friends and their phone contacts without having to decide what device or platform to route a message to. Friends without Facebook receive messages as SMS, those with the app receive push notifications, those online on the web version of Facebook receive Chats, and those offline receive Facebook Messages in their inbox.

However, users had to search for friends individually to determine their online status and add them to a conversation. There was no way to easily add friends they frequently Chatted with to a conversation. There was also no way to tell if someone else was typing a Message to you, leading people to cut each other off in mid-sentence. BlackBerry users couldn’t access the app and had to Chat using the primary Facebook app or SMS, leading some to stick to BBMing with their other BlackBerry-carrying friends.

Today’s update solves all these problems. When users go to start a conversation or add friends to an existing thread, they’ll first see a list of their closest friends and their online statuses — whether online on the web, on their mobile device, or offline. Below this, users see an alphabetical list of all their online friends, and can also search for offline friends. This means that if users just want to Chat but not with anyone in particular, they’ll see options of readily available friends, which could increase usage of the app.

In addition to new features, 22 new languages have been added to the Android versions, and 12 more have been added for iPhone. In September, Facebook also made the app available in the UK and Ireland.

According to AppData, the iOS and Android Messenger apps have been growing relatively steadily, but have still only reached 1-2% of the audience of the primary Facebook apps for those operating systems. Messenger for iOS has 530,000 daily active users and 1.9 million monthly active users compared to Facebook for iPhone’s 52.3 million DAU and 92.5 million MAU. Messenger for Android has 780,000 DAU and 1.6 million MAU compared to Facebook for Android’s 47.9 million DAU and 70.9 million MAU.

With BBM already ingrained in BlackBerry user behavior patterns, we expect Messenger for BlackBerry to achieve less than 1% of Facebook for BlackBerry’s 28.6 million DAU. Still, the ability to chat for free regardless of a friend’s device should be appealing to BBM users and could steal some of them away. Meanwhile, the new features should boost the DAU of the iOS and Android Messenger apps by making users more likely to choose them over the primary Facebook apps.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Facebook did a strange thing today: they released a mobile application separate from their main app. They’ve never done this before. But it’s genius. And it’s yet another long-term thorn in the side of SMS.

Facebook Messenger is a stand-alone app for iOS and Android. It essentially merges the Beluga product that Facebook acquired in February with their revamped Messages product. Now it makes sense why Facebook wanted to make it clear that the Beluga deal was for both talent and technology (Facebook almost always does just talent acquisition deals).

Shortly after the deal, Jason Kincaid and I talked about the ramifications of the acquisition on our OMG/JK show for TechCrunch TV (video below). We were both in agreement that while it would be out-of-character for Facebook to do so, they absolutely should release a new stand-alone messaging app. The reason? Speed and simplicity are key in the space. The Messages product inside of the current Facebook apps offered neither.

Now, with Messenger, Facebook is ready to roll into this space. Should competitors like GroupMe and Kik be worried? Maybe, but they’re iterating quickly and adding new features to try and stand out. They’ll have to do that a bit faster now as a player with 750 million built-in potential users just entered the space.

But the service that should be perhaps more worried about Messenger is the still-unlaunched iMessage. Announced by Apple at WWDC in June, iMessage is a new messaging platform that will be a part of the default SMS application in iOS 5. That gives it a huge leg up, obviously. But it’s also potentially going to be harder to use than Facebook’s new Messenger.

The reason is that iMessage, like FaceTime, relies on user email addresses to work (or phone number if they have an iPhone, but only if they have an iPhone). Developers with access to the iOS 5 beta that I’ve spoken with complain that they often run into problems trying to send iMessages because they have no idea what email address their friends’ accounts are tied to. This is the same problem that FaceTime has faced.

Apple does this because email addresses are also how they define identity for Apple ID. But plenty of people have multiple email addresses, and may use a strange one for their Apple ID. For example, I do. You can add other email addresses where people can find you in the settings of iOS, but most users are never going to do this. The system is not ideal.

Much more ideal is using your Facebook connections and actual name look-ups — which Messenger obviously does. Or, if the person you’re trying to reach doesn’t use Facebook, or you’re not connected, you can use a phone number to connect. Yes, you could also do this through iMessage, but whereas Messenger will likely use SMS to bring users into the app, iMessage SMS connections are more likely to continue as SMS communications. While there are some differences between an iMessage and an SMS, they basically look the same, and again, reside in the same app.

Facebook Messenger will also clearly handle group messaging better than iMessage. Whereas iMessage seems like system to circumvent SMS — and for good reason, SMS remains one of the biggest rip-offs out there — Messenger feels like something that goes well beyond it.

Code found today within Messenger by 9to5 Mac suggests that Facebook will soon add video chat capabilities to the app as well. This makes sense, given Facebook’s recent tie-up with Skype for such functionality.

There’s one other big reason why Messenger is likely to out-iMessage iMessage: cross-platform compatibility. iMessage will only work for iOS users. Facebook Messenger works on both iOS and Android devices. And there is one other massive place Messenger messages work: Facebook.com.

Using it today, it’s clear that this is the true power of Facebook Messenger. Someone messages me, and I get it sent to my phone and the message pops up in Facebook on the web, if I have it open. If I don’t, the message goes into my Messages area and I can access it later. It’s seamless.

This iOS/Android/Web compatibility is a big reason why Beluga was my favorite group messaging app. With Facebook.com now the web component of this system, things just got kicked up a notch.

One thing is more clear than ever before: between iMessages, Beluga, GroupMe, Kik, Google’s new Huddle feature of Google+, and now Facebook Messenger, SMS is under complete and utter assault. Yes, most of those service are compatible with SMS, but only so they can be parasitic off of it.

As a standard that works across all mobile devices, SMS isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But with the rise of tablets and the continued use of other computing devices, cross-device messaging is going to come into its own one way or another. And SMS, which is more or less a racket that has been run by the carriers for far too long, is not the way forward.

Good riddance.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch