Facebook Messenger is now a chat app contender

The messaging race is far from over and, though Facebook entered it comparatively late and branched out from social networking, many of the cards are still stacked in its favor. Following similar moves from its competitors, Facebook has unveiled its own  a photo-centric private messaging feature.

Image-based messaging is in vogue right now. Snapchat just raised a further $50 million to scale its rapidly-growing business, Twitter added support for photos to Direct Messages — the first update to its private messaging service for god-knows-how-long — and Facebook-owned Instagram unveiled Direct, a photo-centric private messaging feature, last week.