FACEBOOK HAS UNVEILED its latest weapon in the bid to win utter dominance of your social life – a smartphone app that will double as a text messaging client.

The ‘Facebook Messenger‘ app for iPhone and Android – which will be released in the coming hours – aims to merge a user’s text message inbox with their Facebook inbox, which in itself already merges online chats with mail exchanges.

The app – which will exist separate to the Facebook apps for the smartphone platforms – says it can be used “to reach all of your friends — whether they’re on Facebook or in your phone contacts. All you have to do is type the person’s name.”

Announcing the new product on its corporate blog, Facebook said its goal would be to unite “texts, chats, emails and messages”. The app will access the phonebook on its user’s phone, as well as their Facebook Friends list, and allow users to send simultaneous text and chat messages to multiple recipients.

Messenger marks Facebook’s latest attempt at infusing itself in the social lives of some 650 million users.

The launch comes a month after HTC began selling a ‘Facebook phone’ which embeds the social networking service more deeply in the phone’s basic functions.