Facebook Kit Apple Watch app lets you send messages to one close contact

We are now living in times when connecting with friends, sometimes even family, has to happen virtually over the Internet. At the same time, we are also living in times when we have to be careful about the things we touch and put to our faces. In other words, smartphones are both tools for communication as well as health liabilities. Facebook's internal R&D team might have the answer and it involves an Apple Watch and a new experimental app called Kit.

Facebook already has a messaging service everyone knows and loves or loves to hate. Messenger even has an Apple Watch app already. So why create another one? Probably to have a more intimate and immediate experience sending messages with text, voice, or emoji to a chosen member of your family and friends.

Short for "Keep In Touch", Kit actually rides on Facebook Messenger's platform and uses the same contacts that you have. Curiously, you will need to scan a QR code on your Apple Watch to set it up before you can select a contact. Here is one way Kit significantly differs from Messenger: you can only select one contact at a time.

The idea is to allow Facebook users to keep in touch with a significant other or a BFF in the quickest and fastest way possible, without having to scroll through lists of messages or contacts. Most of all, it doesn't require you to hold your phone, which could be a source of concern for people who regularly go out during this pandemic.

The Kit Apple Watch app is the latest brainchild of the NPE Team, Facebook's internal R&D group. The team has put out quite a couple of experimental apps, most of which have disappeared from lack of traction. Riding on Messenger's coattail could give Kit an advantage but don't get too attached yet because it, too, might suddenly vanish.