Facebook has just added multiple account support on its Android app for Messenger. While it might sound like something very useful at first – I mean, who uses more than one account to message friends, right? – however, it is a very interesting add-on for community managers who are also using Messenger for customer service. Or for people who are sharing a device. Reading your messages from the family iPad for example.
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When Facebook announced it was going to transform Messenger into a business tool, the user experience wasn’t really part of the plan: you would have to log out to switch, and oftentimes, it could get worse, as you might’ve even had to uninstall the app in order to switch!
Now, Messenger on Android has a new section called “Accounts” which allows you to add other accounts to the app, so you can switch from one to the other, very easily.
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Each account can also be separately password-protected so only the account-owner can read messages and respond. The other people accessing the device would still see notifications, but would not be able to access the content. This is very useful if you are sharing a device.
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A Facebook Messenger spokesperson confirmed:
[quote]Millions of people share phones with their family and friends. Until now, there hasn’t been an easy way for people to access their individual Messenger accounts from shared devices. To address this, we’ve launched a feature on Android to enable multiple people to log in and use Messenger from a single phone.[/quote]
The feature is already available to all users worldwide, but only on Android phones at the moment.