In April, 2014, Facebook announced that they’d be killing the messaging feature within the stock Facebook application for users in Europe. Apparently, that went so well that Facebook has given the green light to do the same thing to users everywhere.

According to a report published by TechCrunch, Facebook has formally announced that, over the next few days, the social networking company will kill off the messaging feature within their stock Facebook application, and inform users that if they want to communicate with other Facebook users, they’ll need to download the standalone Messenger application that is available in the App Store.

As put by Facebook, in their official statement:

“In the next few days, we’re continuing to notify more people that if they want to send and receive Facebook messages, they’ll need to download the Messenger app. As we’ve said, our goal is to focus development efforts on making Messenger the best mobile messaging experience possible and avoid the confusion of having separate Facebook mobile messaging experiences. Messenger is used by more than 200 million people every month, and we’ll keep working to make it an even more engaging way to connect with people.“

Facebook’s test in Europe, with its positive results, doesn’t mean the transition will go over well with others across the world. The stock Facebook app allowed for the use of Chat Heads, which allowed users to keep up with their chats while doing other things on their mobile device, thanks to the floating heads and instant chat boxes that would pop up when needed, or when a conversation was started.

There’s no mention of whether or not this change will affect the messaging feature tied into Facebook’s Paper app, but with the focus on Messenger, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise to see that application also suffer the cut at some point, if not at the same time.

Recently, Apple finally brought Facebook Messenger to the iPad as a free app. That move now makes perfect sense, as many people were using the Facebook app for iPad to communicate on their tablet.

How do you feel about this change?