Facebook Launches Standalone Mobile Messenger App (And It’s Beluga)

Re:Facebook Launches Standalone Mobile Messenger App (And It... by covercash on Tuesday August 09, 2011 @06:58PM (#2865880)

Does anyone know if they sync your contacts to their server? I know the Facebook app on the iPhone has a button to sync them, but a messaging app that relies on your contact list seems like it might just make that assumption and automatically do it.

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Re:Facebook Launches Standalone Mobile Messenger App (And It... by bgertzfield on Wednesday August 10, 2011 @05:03PM (#2870177)

I'm an engineer on the Facebook Messenger team.

Quick answer: Messenger does not sync your contacts to the server.

Official answer to the inaccurate meme that's going around: https://www.facebook.com/facebook/posts/10150353502026729

You might wonder how we match up your Facebook friends with your contacts so you don't see duplicates in the list: with Messenger, instead of doing it on the server, matching and de-duplicating of Facebook friends and local address book contacts is all done on the client.

The only time Messenger will send a phone number from your local address book to the server is when you use Messenger to send an SMS message to:

1) A non-Facebook user, or

2) A Facebook user who doesn't have a mobile contact point already on the server

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