Facebook and Twitter preview their Android 11 Conversations, Bubbles implementations

Abner Li | Jun 17 2020 - 3:03 pm PT

One big focus of Android 11 is making the mobile operating system more people-centric. Messaging is a big part of this and Google today detailed how Twitter and Facebook Messenger are working to implement new features like Bubbles in Android 11.

Twitter wants Direct Messages — given the “real people talking in real time bidirectional conversations” nature — to appear in the dedicated notification shade section.

We think these changes will make DM’s much easier to use and look forward to getting feedback from our users. The conversation space also fits the purpose of DMs and it is important that these messages are categorized in the right space.

Meanwhile, the social network is taking the opportunity to “clean up a bunch of technical debt” with its DM implementation. This will allow for auto-generated notification replies and other modern functionality.

Google also talked with the Facebook Messenger team about Bubbles as part of the 11 Weeks of Android series. The interface is nearly identical to a regular Messenger window in the full app.

Messenger’s early pioneering of the floating chat bubble, and the strong reception by users, helped lead to its native implementation in the framework.”

Facebook is eager to leverage the new Bubbles API from a technical perspective, and have their notifications rank higher:

Using this natively supported API allowed us to build more traditional, Activity-based Android UI that works well in Bubbles and full screen. This new Bubbles-based chat experience is much simpler and more maintainable than our SAW-based one.