Facebook's new Messenger app now lets you sign up with only a phone number, sidestepping the need for a full Facebook account. The docs are a bit sparse for those who want to be informed before signing up, so...If I sign up for a messenger-only account with a phone number:How am I discoverable by users with full Facebook accounts? (I.e. will they need my phone number to find me, or can they look me up by name in the global graph search and see my picture?)And how can I discover other contacts on the Messenger app to start chatting with them? (I.e. will the contact search bar search only contacts whose phone numbers I know, or will it search the global Facebook graph too - including Facebook users without phone numbers?)This seems an obvious enough thing to be in the messenger.com docs, but astonishingly this does not yet seem to be there
How discoverable is a phone-number-only Messenger user by full Facebook users (and vice versa)?
facebook;facebook chat
After giving it a go myself, I'm doing an 'answer my own question' for the benefit of anyone else wondering the same.1. Other people finding youStill working this out. Will update the answer as I go.2. You finding other peopleAdd phone number method: The primary mechanism to add a new contact is to enter the phone number associated with a full Facebook user's account.Graph search method: as a phone-number-only user I can search by name for people whose numbers I don't have yet. Other extended attributes such as stated home town can be used to search for full Facebook users - Joe Bloggs Someplace seems to filter the suggestions more than Joe Bloggs does, but not always reliably.Side note: Continuous phone book sync would (I presume) automatically do the lookup for people I already have numbers for, but I didn't enable it. Source: Messenger for iOS (UK)