The Death of the Sidekick App: Why Meta is Eating Messenger to Win the 2026 Social Wars
Take a look at your home screen. If you’re like the average user in 2026, it’s a graveyard of icons you haven’t touched in months. We’ve reached the "App Bloat" breaking point. Ten years ago, the tech giants told us that "unbundling" was the future that every service needed its own dedicated, lightweight application. Mark Zuckerberg was the chief architect of this philosophy. In 2014, he famously forced millions of us to download Messenger as a separate entity, effectively splitting the Facebook experience in two. It was a move designed to dominate the "private messaging" space. But the 2020s haven't been kind to the unbundled model. As we move deeper into 2026, Meta is quietly reversing course, swallowing Messenger back into the main Facebook interface. This isn't a retreat; it’s a brutal, strategic pivot. The "Sidekick App" is dead, and its execution is the only way Meta can survive the next decade of social warfare. From Bloat to Effic...