Facebook may soon help you save face by letting you unsend an embarrassing message

Facebook could be on the verge to roll out a new feature to let users unsend that embarrassing message you must have sent to your friend or office colleague unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally). Social media consultant Matt Navarra tweeted about Facebook’s plan to introduce the feature. Navarra cited release notes for Messenger for iOS version 191.0.

Facebook Messenger’s delete message feature will let users unsend the incorrect message within 10 minutes of sending it. This way, users can easily retract a wrong message with typing error without having to apologise for sending it and running into an embarrassing situation.

However, this is not the first time we have heard about delete message feature for Messenger. Last month, an app researcher Jane Manchun Wong tweeted some screenshots suggesting that delete message feature for Messenger could be in works. Wong recently suggested that another Facebook product Instagram would introduce a support for the Hindi language.

Delete message feature is not new for Facebook products. Facebook-owned photo and video-sharing app Instagram has a similar feature. Interestingly enough, Instagram doesn’t have a time limit in order to delete a sent message, unlike WhatsApp.

Delete message feature seems to be gaining a momentum across instant messaging apps. Outside Facebook, Telegram also lets users unsend a message without any time restriction. Originally, WhatsApp allowed its users to delete a message within 7 minutes of sending it. That limit, however, has now been extended up to well over an hour.

Unlike Instagram and Telegram though, WhatsApp indicates if the message has been deleted. Now it remains to be seen how Facebook goes about implementing this feature on Messenger.