Facebook Plans to Launch More Standalone Apps Like Messenger

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Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

By Seth Fiegerman2014-01-29 23:21:07 UTC

Facebook is planning to release more standalone apps like Facebook Messenger and Instagram, the company revealed during its fourth quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

"While the core business growth is going to come from the main app that exists," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the call, "you should also expect us to start building a few of these other things that we will focus on over time and develop into meaningful things like Messenger and Instagram are today."

Facebook launched the standalone Messenger app in 2011 and rolled out some big updates in the last quarter of 2013. On the call, Facebook CFO David Ebersman revealed that Messenger's users grew 70% in the three-month period.

"We've taken it out of the main app so it gets room to breathe," Zuckerberg said of the reason for turning Messenger into a standalone app. He noted there was room for "a lot" of different utilities in the future, and offered Facebook Groups as one possibility.

"We now have more than half a billion people using groups every month," he added. "It was sort of seen as a feature of the Facebook app rather than its own product."

The comments confirm a report from Ellis Hamburger at The Verge earlier this month that Facebook's 2014 roadmap will include "a number of slick, standalone apps designed for mobile." The report hinted at a much-rumored news reader app as well as the possibility of a calendar app.

By creating standalone apps for specific functions and use cases, Facebook may be more nimble in beating back newer competitors in the space. Then again, this strategy doesn't always work. Just look at what happened with Poke.

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