Why Meta gave its Messenger app a new Facebook-blue logo

Meta’s Messenger has a new logo set in Facebook blue.

The instant messaging app dropped the multicolor gradient used in its previous logo for a solid blue that matches the shade used by Meta’s flagship app. Some small, subtle refinements were also made to the lightning-bolt shape inside the Messenger logo’s word-bubble mark. Secondary versions of the logo appear in black or white.

“We often refine our designs to enhance the look and feel of our products,” a Meta spokesperson tells Fast Company. “In this spirit, you’ll find that we’ve updated the Messenger color palette.”

Online, some suggested the change was made because of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s comment that his company needed more “masculine energy,” or his hopes to get back to the feeling of “OG Facebook.” Regardless, the color change just so happens to be a delayed reflection of the app’s diminished cross-platform communications capabilities.

Messenger was originally known as Facebook Chat, but Facebook spun its instant messaging services into a stand-alone app in 2014. The light-to-dark-blue gradient of the Messenger logo when it launched matched the gradient of Facebook’s logo at the time. In 2020, Messenger rebranded to the multicolor gradient that it used up until last month.

The Messenger app’s colorful gradient went from blue to purple to orange and pink, colors that seemed to suggest a bridge from Facebook to Instagram; for a time, Messenger did allow users to chat across both platforms. That integration came as some speculated that Meta’s portfolio of apps were more tightly integrating to avoid being broken up. But by 2023, Meta killed Messenger’s cross-platform instant messaging capabilities. That change came just as Meta was arguing that certain European antitrust rules didn’t apply to Messenger because it was a Facebook feature instead of a stand-alone messaging app.

Though Meta eventually did announce last year it would acquiesce to the EU’s Digital Markets Act and open up Messenger as well as its other messaging app, WhatsApp, to third-party chats for users in the European Union, the new Messenger logo suggests the company is still set on linking Messenger to Facebook.

“Messenger is a messaging app from Facebook,” Messenger’s brand guide says. That connection is now made crystal clear with color.

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