This month we’re celebrating Messenger’s 10th birthday! 🎂 We’re grateful to everyone who’s joined us in creating 10 years of memories built from countless chat threads, late night video calls, sharing the latest meme GIFs and picking out the perfect emoji or sticker to capture the mood.
We’ve pulled together a birthday bundle of 10 product features — many of which are starting to roll out today — that will help you create more memories with your friends and family and feel closer together.
Poll Your Friends with “Most Likely To” Games
Today, we’re introducing Poll Games on Messenger. You can now play “Most likely to” in polls to help you discover what your friends really think about topics like who is “most likely to give gifts on their own birthday? 🥳”, “most likely to fight zombies while everyone else runs away? 🧟♀️” and “most likely to miss their flight? ✈️”, or you can write your own prompt. To play a poll game in your group chat, tap Polls and select the “Most likely to” tab to pick a question and select the names of chat participants to be included as potential answers.
Birthday Cash Gifting Using Facebook Pay
In the US, we’re introducing a new way to receive cash gifts directly through Messenger. When a friend sends you a cash gift for your birthday, you’ll be notified on Messenger and Facebook with their gift message wrapped and accompanied by virtual balloons. Once you confirm your Facebook Pay details, the cash gift will be instantly deposited into your bank account. To send a birthday cash gift, go to the Facebook mobile app and tap the button that appears alongside your friend’s birthday posts in your Facebook News Feed or their profile.
Birthday Expression Tools
To amp up the celebratory mood, try out our new Birthday chat theme and our specially curated “Messenger is 10!” sticker pack. Fill the sky with purple and blue balloons with our Birthday Balloon 360 background and blow out birthday candles with our Birthday AR effect.
You can also send a catchy birthday song 🎂 Soundmoji and use a Message Effect to add a burst of confetti to your celebratory message or even wrap it up with a bow.
A New Way to Share Contacts
When it comes to celebrations, the more the merrier! We’re introducing a new way for you to easily share Facebook contacts with friends through Messenger. Simply select the contact you want to share, access the chat settings and tap Share Contact under the More Actions section.
Sneak Peek: Customize Your Conversations with Word Effects
We’re also excited to share a sneak peek of Word Effects, a new way to pair words with the emojis that have meaning to you and your friends. When used in your conversation, these words will trigger the selected emoji to fill your screen. You now have the perfect way to highlight inside jokes, relive your memories and add extra delight to your favorite phrases, like that song lyric stuck in your head or “Happy Birthday” (we suggest the 🎉 emoji). Word Effects will be coming to Messenger soon, so get excited for that update.
I’m honored to speak on behalf of the Messenger team to thank you for joining us on this journey. We’re eager to keep building features and experiences that we hope you’ll enjoy for the next 10 years and beyond.