Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at Facebook’s F8 conference in San Francisco, which was attended by over 2,500 developers, that developers can now create and integrate their apps with Facebook’s Messenger Platform. Besides Messenger Platform, Zuckerberg reveled at the conference a variety of other new services and tools such as Messenger for Business, a Parse platform software development for Internet of Things (IoT), new ways on how to embed video into outside websites, etc.
Zuckerberg said that Messenger currently has around 600 million users and Messenger Platform, could be a very important platform for today’s developers. Many apps will be integrated with Messenger Platform, which can allow users to download apps directly from Messenger as well. Millions of people from all over the world have tried the platform and so far, their reactions are positive.
“People wondered why Facebook split Messenger out from the stand-alone Facebook app and now we know. Messenger is becoming an e-commerce and service platform, and it’s one that could end up being a powerful way for brands to turn one-time shoppers into engaged, lifelong customers,” said Gigya CEO Patrick Salyer in a statement.
This shift of Messenger from a single service used only for text messaging to being ‘a family of world-class apps’ that can help people from anywhere in the world share and connect in different ways is very important to app developers.
"We're building this family so we can offer unique, world-class experiences for all of the ways that people want to share," Zuckerberg said.
Messenger Platform is one of the key parts of Messenger Family. Zuckenberg said that this new platform has the potential to make people better connect, communicate and understand each other. Unlike in the past when only Facebook was the only platform that could develop Messenger and add new features to it, now any app developer can add features to Messenger Platform and integrate their own new apps to it.
“Opening Messenger as a platform for developers keeps Facebook users within its borders. The Messenger composer, which started as a text message editor, now includes apps for creating different types of audio and video media sent within the app. The company announced 40 apps built on the new Messenger platform. Some of the apps enhance audio, image, or video media. Others have commercial purposes,” according to an article by Steven Max Patterson.
Messenger Platform is expected to be a big competitor against various other messaging platform that exist nowadays like Snapchat and Line while Facebook itself will be competing against Apple and Google, two of the biggest companies in the world that are planning to launch their own Internet of Things devices soon.