Another totally bizarre decision from Ancestry. The standard memo says 'they appreciate the need to store and organise messages' and then tell us the one aspect of their sites functionality which does just that is being deleted. They tell you your folders won't be deleted 'anytime soon.' however the new message experience is a radical transformation that appears not to have been on the beta test page (or at least the beta test page I looked at).
The new messages are more like 'instagram', or 'snap chat' - if you are a teenager you'll be impressed by the chat room look and feel, but if your are a serious researcher of family history, believing yourself to be on a serious research family history site you will find the new chatroom experience unusable !
The reality is the folders for time frames, places, cousins, branches whatever your system was, have now GONE. They don't show up - you have to down load them and 'won't be deleted anytime soon' promise mean by end of August, so about 5-weeks. If you are an irregular user and busy elsewhere in five weeks time you're in for one hell of a shock!
What Ancestry thought they were doing here is a total mystery - a message system without the ability of the user to store and organise message by their personal needs is quite frankly, not a message system at all. Check it out and make sure you like Ancestry support have your feedback !