Facebook today began prompting Facebook Messenger for Windows users with a message saying the app is shutting down next week. Without much of an explanation, the company plans to kill off Windows support for Facebook Messenger on March 3.
“We’re sorry, but we can no longer support Facebook Messenger for Windows, and it will stop working on March 3, 2014,” the message states at the top of the application. “We really appreciate you using Messenger to reach your friends, and we want to make sure you know that you can keep chatting and view all your messages on http://www.facebook.com. Learn more.”
The “Learn more” link unfortunately takes the user to a generic Messages page on Facebook’s Help Center. The only section relevant to Facebook Messenger for Windows is for uninstalling it.
The Facebook Messenger for Windows installer is nowhere to be found on the official site. The page specifically says the app is available for Android and iOS, but not Windows:
The news comes less than three days after Microsoft announced Facebook Messenger for Windows Phone would arrive in just a few weeks. “We’ve been working with Facebook testing out their implementation for a while,” Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and manager of Windows Phone, was quoted by Techcrunch as saying during a press conference at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona. “It’s looking good and we will have it for our customers soon.”
It seems Microsoft can only keep Facebook in one of its platforms at a time. The company is of course attempting to merge the Windows and Windows Phone stores, but that’s still a long way off.
Facebook Messenger for Windows was released in March 2012, following a limited beta test in November 2011. An OS X version has been long expected, but that seems even less likely now.
We have contacted Facebook for more information about this decision. We will update this post if we hear back.
Update: “I can confirm that we are notifying people who use Facebook Messenger for Windows that it will no longer be available as of March 3,” a Facebook spokesperson told TNW. The chat client was available for just under two years.
Update on February 27: Facebook Messenger for Firefox is also shutting down on March 3.
Top Image Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/GettyImages
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