Sign up for Messenger even without a Facebook account

Not everyone who wants to use Messenger necessarily wants to be on Facebook as well. Apparently, this is one of the learnings that the social media giant has received, or so we assume, as they are now allowing non-Facebook users to sign up for the stand-alone messaging app, as long as they have a mobile number. Although this is now limited to just four countries, we can expect this to rollout in other countries as well, sooner rather than later.

If you don’t have a Messenger account yet, as soon as you download the app, you’ll see an option on the welcome screen saying “not on Facebook”, just below the “log in with Facebook option”. Now all you need to do is sign up with your name, phone number, and a photo. You can also do this option even if you have an FB account already, but would rather use a different account for messaging purposes. Of course, you’d lose all the “benefits” you have when linking your account to your Messenger, like having automatic access to your entire netwrok,

If you’ve been following the Messenger story, this really won’t come as a surprise, as Facebook had been introducing a lot of features there that was making it look like its competitors LINE, WhatsApp, Viber, etc. They opened up Messenger to developers to create apps, games, etc. They also introduced peer-to-peer payments for Messenger users as well. They even introduced location-sharing, borrowing a page from another messaging acquisition, WhatsApp.

You can download Messenger from the Google Play Store for free. If you already have it, but would like to use a different, non-Facebook account, just update the app to be able to do so. You will only be able to do so however if you live in the US, Canada, Peru, and Venezuela.

SOURCE: Facebook