New Delhi: Facebook has brought a new feature to its Messenger service for mobile that brings back the 'away' status option to let your friends know what were you doing when you were away from the device for a while.
The feature, is a kind of away message that a user can post in the sidebar of the Messenger app for iOS and Android. With this feature, currently rolled out in Taiwan and Australia, users will be able to see short away status messages under their friends' names.
A report on The Verge notes that these short away status messages could also be accompanied with a little picture icon. These status messages, however, do not show in the News Feed or on your profile but only in the sidebar and expire in 12 hours or when you post another away status message.
These messages will be visible to all your friends by default, but you can tweak the privacy settings are required. Your old statuses will be saved by Facebook which will be visible only to you, much like the WhatsApp status messages that show up in a list.
Sue Young, a Facebook product manager, says the idea behind the sidebar status is that "small things would make people feel connected in a big way. Now when I visit the sidebar, I can get an instant pulse of what all my friends are doing."
By default, the sidebar, which you bring up by swiping right in the Messenger app, shows the friends whom you most frequently message. The new feature will be most prominently visible to those friends. You can also pin your favourites to the top and scroll down to see other friends' updates.
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