Facebook Messenger is becoming more and more like WhatsApp

Mark Zuckerberg's plans to integrate messaging on WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook is already seeing the light of the day. Facebook Messenger has added a new WhatsApp-style 'quote and reply' feature to desktop and mobile apps. Therefore, all Messenger users can now respond to a particular message as they do on WhatsApp. Here is everything we know about it:

How to quote and reply on Messenger

First things first, go to Play Store (Android) or App Store (iOS) and update your Messenger app to its most recent version. Now, go to a conversation and long-press the message you want to respond to. It will show a floating icon sort of button to reply.

Tap that reply button. It will create a message box for you where you can type your reply. Long-pressing the message also provides some more options like Copy, Forward and Remove. Apart from the text, you can also reply to individual emoji, videos, photos and GIFs.

Quote and reply feature is also live on messenger.com for desktop consumers. All you need to do is hover a particular message for the reply button to appear on your computer’s screen. This comes a year after Facebook promised to streamline and simplify Messenger.

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“Over the last two years, we built a lot of capabilities to find the features that continue to set us apart. A lot of them have found their product market fit; some haven’t. While we raced to build these new features, the app became too cluttered. Expect to see us invest in massively simplifying and streamlining Messenger this year,” Facebook’s David Marcus said in his last year’s blog post.

Of late, Facebook has been adding more WhatsApp-like features and capabilities to Messenger. Earlier, the company announced a feature to let users unsend unthoughtful messages. Users have a 10-minute window to unsend messages. Simply tap on the message and then hit ‘Remove,’ then ‘Remove for everyone.’

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that the company is planning to integrate Facebook’s whole suite of messaging apps including WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. Facebook Messenger service has at least 1.3 billion users. Both WhatsApp and Messenger have several features in common like ephemeral stories, delete messages and now quoted reply.

 Apparently, Facebook is trying to blur the line between these two products.