Have you ever received a random Facebook message from someone and thought, "What? Who? How?" Receiving a message from someone you don't know well, or at all, can be a bit of an odd experience. How did they find you? What do they do/want? Well, Facebook Messenger is here to save the day, once again. "To make new connections less jarring, Facebook Messenger is introducing a new feature on Thursday that gives you bits of information about someone messaging you for the first time, whether the person is one of your Facebook friends or not. The Messenger team is rolling it out to iOS and Android users in the U.S., UK, France and India over the next few weeks.
Think of it almost like an icebreaker, or "a way to give you more context about new conversations in Messenger," a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable.
When someone messages you for the first time, Messenger plucks bits of information from their Facebook profile, like what their job is, which town or city they live in, and who your mutual friends are (if you have any), then displays that info above their first message, alongside their profile name and photo. It shows information Facebook thinks will prove most useful, while respecting both users' privacy settings. That's key, especially if you and the other person aren't actually friends on Facebook — in which case, only publicly available information on your profiles is used."