Facebook’s Messenger is officially 10 years old, and the company is celebrating the occasion with a handful of new features and updates.
Vice president of messaging products Loredana Crisan said in a Newsroom post Wednesday, “This month, we’re thrilled to be celebrating Messenger’s 10th birthday with you. That’s 10 years of connecting more than 1 billion people around the world and helping people feel together even when apart. We’re grateful to everyone who’s joined us in creating 10 years of memories built from countless chat threads, late night video calls, sharing the latest meme GIFs and picking out the perfect emoji or sticker to capture the mood.”
Facebook says it has introduced 10 new features to celebrate the app turning 10 years old. Some of the new tools include poll games in which users ask their friends who is more likely to do a certain activity in a chat, a feature to share Facebook contacts in a chat and a way to get words to trigger an emoji.
Messenger also added other features to celebrate birthdays such as a soundmoji and new stickers and effects like virtual balloons that pop up when you give friends a cash gift.
The updates underscore just how much Messenger has changed in its first decade of existence. Originally launched in 2011, the app evolved from a basic chat app to one so bloated with features it’s been redesigned at least three times in the last two years. It’s been home to many of Facebook’s more ambitious — though not always successful — features over the years.
More recently, Facebook has been weaving Messenger more tightly into its other services by pushing users to link their Instagram DMs with their Messenger account. Facebook wants to bring this same kind of “cross-app communication” to WhatsApp as well, though the company hasn’t said much about how or when it could happen. Likewise, it’s still not clear when Messenger will turn on end-to-end encryption as a default setting.
Check out all the new features over at Facebook’s Newsroom.
