Facebook, Messenger & Instagram To Get Cross-App Notifications; Facebook Food Ordering Coming Soon
Facebook owned social networking site, Messenger and Instagram are possibly all coming together with the integration of notifications. This means that the notification center of these three applications is going to be clubbed into one.
You might be able to switch between apps as soon as you see a chat message from someone on Instagram. Just like notifications in Messenger, you might see a red bubble on the top right to tell you that you have received a notification on Instagram or Facebook.
For this to happen, you will need to have all the three apps to be installed on your smartphone. However, this feature wants to make sure you don’t miss any notification, which is something operating system manufacturers have already worked on.
“We are conducting a very small test to make it easier for people to discover and connect with the people and things they care about. We’re exploring ways to help people switch more easily between their Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram accounts,” said Facebook to TechCrunch.
A lot of people might not like it because it is more or less intrusion of one app into another. Also, it will take advantage of people’s anxiety to click the red bubble to go to the other app. As social media evolves, it becomes more and more harmful to users.
A pop-up will be seen at the bottom of the page, highlighting the notifications from these three apps specifically. Clicking on the app’s name will quickly take you to the notification in that app. Thankfully, WhatsApp has not been included in this notification chain.
Facebook Pilots ‘Food ordering’ in the US
A few Facebook users have been seeing a new option in their Facebook app called ‘Order Food’ that lets these users order food from partnering restaurants around from within the app itself.
The app has a blue hamburger logo next to it, and clicking on the option will let you place food pickup and delivery orders from restaurants using Delivery.com or Slice. The desktop site also has the option, but because the service is not yet available in India, you won’t be able to order food.
Just like food ordering apps, you can place an order, make payments and track it till delivery. Users can start order when they see the restaurant of their choice, browse through the menu like they do on Zomato and Delivery and just confirm the order. Since this feature is in the working phase, it may be a little unstable and might now allow you to order.
However, it sounds like a smart plan from Facebook to integrate food ordering on their platform. You don’t have to leave the social media app, you can keep browsing through it, order your food and wait till it reaches you.
It would be good to see Facebook integrating food ordering on other platforms like Messenger, to let you chat with the restaurants, and Instagram, to let you see the menu of these restaurants and prepare an order.
