Facebook Launches Mobile Messaging App

Facebook Launches Mobile Messaging App

Facebook on Tuesday afternoon introduced an app for mobile phones that acts as a standalone group chat client for mobile operating systems. The app, now live for download, expands the chat features in Facebook's existing mobile app to include features like location-sharing, mobile photo-sharing, and -- most importantly -- instant messaging to friends or groups on Facebook. The app is already available for Android and Blackberry phones along with the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad (although the app is not yet optimized for the iPad's larger screen.)

Facebook purchased messaging firm Beluga back in March and it seems that several Beluga team members have had a hand in the app's creation. The timing of the release along with its features seems like a fairly direct response to Google+ and its huddles feature that also lets you instantly chat with friends. Facebook has repeatedly denied that the flurry of recent announcements from the social networking giant and the company's chat releases, like video calling in partnership with Skype, were a response to Google's new social network, but the parallels are hard to ignore. With Google+ growing to more than 25 million users in just a little over a month, it's hard to imagine that Facebook isn't at least a little threatened.

Google+ released an update to its own app earlier this week that brought increased functionality for the nascent social network's own chat services along with iPad compatibility.Beluga's application allows groups of friends to communicate in private using their smartphones. A user can create a so-called pods, to which friends can be invited.

Within a pod, users can send messages and share images and locations, according to Beluga's website. The free application is available for Apple's iPhone and Android-based smartphones.

For now, Beluga's application will continue to function as it does today. Existing accounts and data will not be lost, the company writes.

Recently, Facebook has stepped up its smartphone push. The company has, for example, worked with HTC and INQ on smartphones with tighter Facebook integration. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent a video message to HTC's news conference at the Mobile World Congress last month -- where it launched the Salsa and the ChaCha -- to say users can expect many more phones with much deeper integration with Facebook to arrive this year.Today, there are more than 200 million active users accessing Facebook via their mobile devices.

What Facebook's plans are for Beluga and its three founders -- all of whom have at one time worked at Google -- remains to be seen, but more details will be released in the coming weeks, according to Beluga.

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