Facebook's group messaging app was launched just a little more than two months ago. Messaging using Facebook Messenger goes around mobile phone companies' text messaging service and is free. Messages can, however, be sent to people without a Facebook account using conventional mobile phone text message services. This week it received a significant upgrade to version 1.5. Facebook Messenger for iPhone and Android 1.5 gains presence features that lets you know who is on Facebook and who is mobile. [...]

Read More: Facebook Messenger Updated for Android & iPhone. BlackBerry Gets an App Too

Back in August we reported on Facebook's new standalone messenger app for iOS and Android, though the iOS version was available in the US and Canada only.But from today, Facebook users in the UK – all 30m of them – can also access the iOS app, which can be downloaded for free from the App Store.So what's the app all about? Well, if you’ve used Facebook’s normal mobile app then you'll no doubt have experienced the frustrations of accessing messages through the full app, so the Faceboo [...]

Read More: Facebook Messenger for iOS comes to the UK

A UK teenager has been charged with inciting riots after she used BlackBerry's Messenger (BBM) service to encourage friends to copy the scenes of violence that had sprung up elsewhere across the country.We reported earlier this week that RIM, the makers of BlackBerry smartphones, was engaging with police over the role its BBM service was playing in the London riots.And as the Telegraph reports today, an 18-year old woman from Clacton, in Essex, stands accused of intentionally encouraging or assi [...]

Read More: Teenage girl charged over inciting riots using BlackBerry Messenger

It was only a few hours ago that we got wind of Facebook's release of a standalone messaging product called Facebook Messenger for iOS and Android. The app focuses on doing messages and only messages, with the intention of being incredibly convenient instead of robust.If there's one missing feature, though, it's video chat integration. Given Facebook's recent moves with Skype to integrate video chat on the Facebook site, it would only seem to make sense that you could do video messaging and chat [...]

Read More: Facebook Messenger holds clues about planned mobile video chat