Facebook‘s Messenger recently started experimenting with chatting streaks, a feature that provides users with quick insights in regards to how consistently they’ve been talking with their friends, the company confirmed in a statement provided to Mashable, shortly after a number of people took online to report they started seeing the functionality go live. The test appears to have started on Wednesday but it’s currently unclear how many users it encompasses and whether it’s even available on Android, with initial reports only coming from owners of iOS-powered iPhones. The Menlo Park, California-based social media giant has yet to confirm that streaks are intended to be released on a global level at some point in the future and presumably still hasn’t decided on whether to bring them to all users.
The feature itself appears to be rather similar to a functionality already supported by Snapchat, which is true for many recent additions to Messenger and Facebook’s other mobile offerings. In essence, streaks are meant to motivate you to keep communicating with your friends by providing you with short info blurbs like “you’ve messaged with this person for at least five days in a row” and encouraging you to continue doing so in order not to lose your consecutive run. As such, the functionality could potentially boost Messenger’s user engagement rates and even if only a small percentage of people respond positively to it, it appears to be unobtrusive enough to not detract from the overall experience of the mobile app.
Being by far the most popular messaging service on the planet that’s on course to break 1.5 billion users next year, Messenger is constantly revised as Facebook continues its efforts to optimize its performance. The platform also started being monetized in a more aggressive manner in recent times as businesses were provided with opportunities to start messaging consumers directly and ads began being featured more prominently in all parts of the mobile app. Facebook also started putting a larger focus on the social aspects of Messenger over the course of the last several years, encouraging people to use the service to easily send ephemeral updates on their days to groups of friends.
Messenger is testing out streak counts… Streak counts really bug me. pic.twitter.com/leDRemkSR3
— case (@CaseSandberg) November 22, 2017