Lots of exciting updates are being discussed this year at Facebook’s 2017 developer’s conference (also known as F8). Of all the new products, Facebook Messenger 2.o is the most exciting. Especially for local businesses.
The New Yellow Pages
Facebook Messenger considers itself the default white pages. In many ways it’s true. If you want to find anybody, simply type their name in your Facebook Messenger app, and send them a message.
But Facebook has it’s eyes set bigger. The next act of Messenger is all about bringing business services into the fold. They have 65 million businesses on Facebook with 20 million of them actively responding to messages. The next step is to seamlessly connect users with businesses on Messenger.
They are calling this Messenger Platform 2.0.
And this is big news for real estate agents.
Facebook wants to make it effortless for people to find professional services within Messenger. When a Facebook user populates what they are looking for, Facebook wants to connect them immediately with the right service.
Imagine someone typing in Messenger “real estate agent” and your name appearing first.
Businesses that are early adopters will be able to meet new clients searching for their services.
They weren’t explicit on how this will work, but as we are all about starting conversations, we’re already looking into how we can help our clients and Facebook achieve this level of connection.
Their updates to Messenger don’t stop there.
Chat Extensions
Messenger is about to become much more 3 dimensional. Chat extensions will enable developers to open existing conversations to include more people and make interactions more natural.
This will make sharing within Messenger easier and more human. No more app switching.
Soon you will be able to reserve tables at Restaurants, order movies and more, right within the Messenger app.
Social Ordering
Not only that, when ordering food you will be able to invite other people into the conversation to pick their own meal. The transaction will all take place within Messenger. I could see this helping people coordinating family and friend dinners.
Music on Messenger
Turn on Spotify, search any song you want and share it however you want. Furthermore, Apple Music will be on the platform very soon as well.
Games
1.5 billion games on messenger have been played.
Now Facebook is introducing rich gaming to enable turn-by-turn games.
Conclusion
Facebook sees Messenger as a integral part of its strategy moving forward. They’ve made that clear. As a result Facebook development is moving surprising quickly. And for businesses this represents a real opportunity that didn’t exist even just last year.
David Marcus, Facebook Messenger Chief, says “I’m really excited to see how people interact with those new experiences that frankly weren’t possible until today.”
They are asking that people be patient with them as they role Messenger 2.0 capabilities out. Having been part of the original Facebook API release and the series of “updates” and transitions, it’s likely there will be some bumps ahead. That said, I believe that hard work and patience will pay off for businesses.
The future is bright for businesses and Facebook.
