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Facebook Messenger vs Snapchat
March 09, 2025 | Author: Adam Levine
14★
Facebook Messenger is an instant messaging service and software application which provides text and voice communication. Available now for Android and iPhone.
3★
Snapchat is a photo messaging application. Using the application, users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a controlled list of recipients.
Facebook Messenger and Snapchat are both, at their core, rather enthusiastic about helping people communicate, which is something humans seem terribly keen on doing despite all evidence that it often leads to misunderstanding. Both let you send messages, pictures and videos, as if flinging small digital notes in bottles across the vast, stormy ocean of the internet. They also share a peculiar obsession with messages that disappear, which is presumably to cover up the sheer volume of nonsense people send each other at three in the morning. And, of course, they both allow users to apply augmented reality filters, which enable everyone to look like a dog, a rainbow-spewing unicorn or a disturbingly airbrushed version of themselves.
Facebook Messenger, born in 2011 under the all-seeing eye of Meta (née Facebook), is a platform for chatting with friends, relatives and the occasional scammer pretending to be a long-lost prince. Unlike its more eccentric cousin, it insists on linking itself to your Facebook account, ensuring that every conversation is just a step away from an existential crisis brought on by scrolling through your uncle’s latest conspiracy theory posts. Messenger also takes itself rather seriously, offering business integrations, customer service chatbots and the ability to send money—all of which serve to remind users that Facebook is not just a social network, but an inescapable part of modern civilization.
Snapchat, also born in 2011 but with a much shorter attention span, is the sort of app that seems to have been designed by someone who thought messaging should be more like a game of peekaboo. Messages vanish, conversations disintegrate and stories evaporate into the ether, all in the name of keeping things fresh, exciting and slightly anxiety-inducing. Unlike Messenger, it doesn’t much care for deep social integration—it just wants you to take ridiculous selfies, send them to your friends and then pretend they never happened. With its Bitmojis, AI filters and an entire subculture of streak-keeping devotees, Snapchat is less about communication and more about ensuring that people never, ever put their phones down.
See also: Top 10 Business Messaging platforms
Facebook Messenger, born in 2011 under the all-seeing eye of Meta (née Facebook), is a platform for chatting with friends, relatives and the occasional scammer pretending to be a long-lost prince. Unlike its more eccentric cousin, it insists on linking itself to your Facebook account, ensuring that every conversation is just a step away from an existential crisis brought on by scrolling through your uncle’s latest conspiracy theory posts. Messenger also takes itself rather seriously, offering business integrations, customer service chatbots and the ability to send money—all of which serve to remind users that Facebook is not just a social network, but an inescapable part of modern civilization.
Snapchat, also born in 2011 but with a much shorter attention span, is the sort of app that seems to have been designed by someone who thought messaging should be more like a game of peekaboo. Messages vanish, conversations disintegrate and stories evaporate into the ether, all in the name of keeping things fresh, exciting and slightly anxiety-inducing. Unlike Messenger, it doesn’t much care for deep social integration—it just wants you to take ridiculous selfies, send them to your friends and then pretend they never happened. With its Bitmojis, AI filters and an entire subculture of streak-keeping devotees, Snapchat is less about communication and more about ensuring that people never, ever put their phones down.
See also: Top 10 Business Messaging platforms
