Facebook Message Request Lets You Chat With Strangers

If you’re not someone who chats on Facebook often, you might not realize that there are two inboxes for your messages. One is a regular inbox where you can check messages from friends, and the other is an “Other” inbox where basically messages from people you don’t know end up.

This can be annoying since you don’t get notified meaning that people who are trying to connect with you are ignored (not on purpose). Facebook has recognized that predicament and has since launched a new feature for the Messenger app called Message Requests. Basically this feature will notify you when you have a message from someone you don’t know, as you can see in the screenshot above.

This is a pretty important development because prior to this, the Other folder was inaccessible by those using the Messenger app, making things even worse. Now Facebook has removed the Other folder and will be replacing it with Message Request, which can be read or ignored without the other person knowing about it.

According to Facebook’s David Marcus, “The rule is pretty simple: If you’re friends on Facebook, if you have each other’s contact info in your phone and have these synced, or if you have an existing open thread, the new messages from that sender will be routed to your inbox. Everything else will now be a message request, minus spam attempts that we will continue to ruthlessly combat.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Apps, Facebook, messenger