Well, the Euro 2016 and Copa America Centenario 2016 have officially started and Facebook is nothing if not trendy. The company has therefore updated its instant messaging (IM) mobile app Messenger with a hidden soccer-themed mini-game. It’s not anything particularly complex or impressive, but it’s a nice time waster and a conversation starter for those who are into juggling digital footballs around their phone screens. You can even see your Messenger friends’ high scores in the chat window but there are unfortunately no global or high scores leaderboards. How to start playing this silly creation? The same way you’d play the previously released basketball mini-game. Send the football emoji to one of your Messenger friends then just tap on it again once it appears in the chat window. If that doesn’t work, you probably haven’t updated your Messenger in a while. The app version which contains this hidden mini-game was released just yesterday June 15th. Some older devices may not support it, but if yours does, you should be able to update it straight away.
This is soccer-themed mini-game is the third such interactive Easter egg in Facebook Messenger. Earlier this year, the most popular social network on the planet updated its IM app with the aforementioned similarly hidden basketball game and Messenger users also got the ability to play chess against one another in February.
This fun little Easter egg is yet another one of Facebook’s attempts to diversify its IM platform and make people want to use it even when they aren’t interested in pure chatting. The company believes that these types of simple additions to Messenger make users more involved in the app itself. And involvement is obviously incredibly important to Facebook as that’s the simplest way to continue the crazy growth trend Messenger has been experiencing in recent years. In 2015, Facebook Messenger was the fastest-growing mobile app in the world by attracting 126 million of new users.
As for the sport itself, Facebook isn’t the only Internet company that’s been recently trying to please its soccer fans as Google has recently updated its Search and Google Now services in order to be able to provide information on Euro 2016 and Copa America 2016 in a quick and efficient manner.