Facebook Wants To Replace The Phone Number With Your Name

Facebook wants you to forget phone numbers and replace them with Facebook Messenger.

The social network announced today that it will soon be possible to contact anyone among its 1.5 billion users with just a name.

“We truly want to make Messenger the place where you can find and privately connect with anyone you need to reach, but only be reached by the people you want to communicate with,” Facebook’s head of messaging David Marcus wrote in a Facebook post. “Now, the only thing you need to talk to virtually anyone in the world, is their name.”

To do that, Facebook is eliminating the “Other Folder,” the little-known tab within Facebook’s messaging on desktop that currently collects communication from people who you have never connected with. Instead, new messages from unfamiliar connections will be routed to a “Message Request” area. You can either accept or ignore new requests without the requestor knowing you’ve read their message.

Marcus explained further:

The rule is pretty simple: If you’re friends on Facebook, if you have each other’s contact info in your phone and have these synced, or if you have an existing open thread, the new messages from that sender will be routed to your inbox. Everything else will now be a message request, minus spam attempts that we will continue to ruthlessly combat.

While this may seem like a small change, it’s actually a foundational development. Look for more in the months to come as we continue to improve ways to find the people you want to communicate with. And as always, please let us know how we can make this better for you.