Meta is shutting down the standalone Messenger website

If you're still using Messenger on your PC, you won't be able to do so for much longer, as Meta is shutting it down.

Meta is shutting down its standalone Messenger website soon. This move comes a few months after the company also discontinued its desktop apps for Windows and Mac.

This change takes effect in April, when users will essentially be left without a way of accessing Messenger on PC. If you visit the Messenger website, you’ll be redirected to facebook.com/messages, which is part of the standard Facebook website. Meta is also informing users about the change via a notice on the Messenger website.

Once Meta retires the website, Messenger will only be available as an app for iOS and Android. Nothing inside Messenger will change, as all your conversations will remain available, just not on the web.

This is especially bad news for people who currently use Messenger without a Facebook account. They’ll have a choice to either reactivate their Facebook accounts or stick with the mobile app. To be fair, the Messages section of Facebook essentially provides the same experience as Messenger, but it requires an active Facebook account, at which point you might be better off using the standard website.

Meta hasn’t publicly disclosed what prompted this decision, as it only published a page on Facebook Help Centre about it. Reports around the web say it’s because the company wants to consolidate its services and streamline the number of platforms it manages. The decline in use probably contributed to it, as most users have already abandoned it for the mobile version.

Still, it’s hard to grasp that a website that’s essentially a wrapper for the Messenger service consumes a significant portion of Meta’s resources. So, the decision probably wasn’t of a financial nature, and simply means the company doesn’t want to bother with a dying website.

On a related note, as Meta retires the last iteration of Messenger available on PC, it introduces more features for WhatsApp web, including voice and video calls. So maybe now is the time to make a switch, if you’re used to primarily communicating with people on your PC. You won’t be leaving the Meta ecosystem anyway.