Facebook revamps its messenger service

Facebook revamps its messenger service:

Facebook has revamped its messenger service in an effort to incline people to more sophisticated messaging and make a shift from traditional mobile phone text messaging. 

With the new Facebook Messenger people need only a phone number, and no Facebook account. It is essentially an instant-messaging network, complete with separate apps to use the service. 

The feature is expected to be added to the iOS version of the app early in 2013. The change is historic as it is for the first time that the social network will be allowing non-Facebook members to access and use its apps.

Initially, the distribution of the Messenger app will be limited to Australia, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Venezuela. Interestingly the service has no ads and works on a wide array of feature phones and not just higher-end smartphones.

However Facebook isn't the first one to replace SMS. There are innumerable instant-messaging applications, including Microsoft's Windows Messenger, which is to be replaced with Skype, and Apple is working to extend SMS itself with iOS and OS X.