Facebook Gives Up On Desktop Apps: Kills Messenger For Windows and Firefox

An anonymous reader writes "Facebook today began prompting Facebook Messenger for Windows users as well as Facebook Messenger for Firefox users with a message saying the apps are shutting down next week. Without much of an explanation, the company plans to kill off both on March 3. It appears that Facebook is no longer interested in developing desktop apps. The Android and iOS versions are still alive and well." You can always connect to their IM service using a generic XMPP client like Pidgin (too bad Facebook doesn't federate).

WhatsApp

[raventrue]

It seems like this might have something to do with the acquisition of WhatsApp. Or possibly the timing is just convenient.

Re:WhatsApp

[krkhan]

WhatsApp is working on voice-calls and is aspiring to compete against Skype. Somewhere down the road a desktop client for WhatsApp is definitely in the works. At that time Facebook is most likely going to market WhatsApp pretty aggressively as the end-all-be-all messaging and communication platform.

So yes, definitely related.

Hey

[The Cat]

We spent NINETEEN BILLION DOLLARS on a chat program.

We spent the GDP of Macedonia on a chat program.

We're Facebook. We're a chat program company, and we spent the price of a brand new aircraft carrier on a chat program with enough left over to buy every man, woman and child in America a pizza with everything.

Short Facebook.