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Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

developers.facebook.com

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Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#21

Post by maxerickson »

personlurking wrote: post #19
toomuchtodo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding me? I'm only 32, and I'd never consider texting a business. Call? Sure. Email? Sure. But texting? Seriously?

I had a banking problem a few years ago and stumbled across a Twitter account of a "super rep" for the (major) bank. I tweeted him, he tweeted back in 60 seconds with his email. I emailed him right away and we had quick-fire chat over email and he said "let me fix your problem and I'll email you when it's fixed". About 3 minutes later, he emailed me back. The quickness of it all, plus the short-style emails going bac…

To me the key parts of that interaction are that he was immediately available to you and empowered to fix your problem. If phone support picked up on the first ring and did something more than try to deflect, it would be fine too.

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#22

Post by toomuchtodo »

maxerickson wrote: post #21
personlurking wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a banking problem a few years ago and stumbled across a Twitter account of a "super rep" for the (major) bank. I tweeted him, he tweeted back in 60 seconds with his email. I emailed him right away and we had quick-fire chat over email and he said "let me fix your problem and I'll email you when it's fixed". About 3 minutes later, he emailed me back. The quickness of it all, plus the short-style emails going bac…

To me the key parts of that interaction are that he was immediately available to you and empowered to fix your problem. If phone support picked up on the first ring and did something more than try to deflect, it would be fine too.

Right! Is SMS communications with a business useful if its going into the same workflow as call center phone calls?

People aren't wanting for new communications methods. They want what they've always wanted: quick, useful support from someone empowered to provide that.

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#24

Post by sahara »

Kronopath wrote: post #4

Before anyone starts thinking this stuff is super-innovative and new, let me tell you what's really going on here: Facebook wants to make Messenger into a platform in the same way the big Asian chat apps are. Things like Weixin/WeChat or LINE. I mean, just look at the most recent additions to Messenger: - Stickers. These grew in popularity starting in Asian apps. [0] - Using Messenger for payments [1] and to send mon…

>All of these features were pioneered in Asia. They're either trying to bring the innovations westward in the hopes that they can build a similar platform, or they're defending against the possibility that foreign apps like this will expand and take over their marketshare.

There's likely a third aspect: Fb (& Snapchat, et al) framing/reframing their services to be more familiar/comfortable for East Asian users as the business case makes competing in those markets increasingly appealing/unavoidable.

As others have noted, the truth is probably some combination of all of the above (and then some).

I doubt anyone has any idea how these concepts will play outside Asia. Snapchat has been crowing for some time now about their intentions to become Tencent West, but their success to date hinges entirely on the core offering. Is anyone—aside from strippers[0]—using Snapcash, for instance?

There's definitely something fascinating about this sort of nested bundling (social recommendations within a ridesharing service within a maps app, etc.) but I don't know if there are strong indications that American/Western users want that. It seems to me that the logic is "500 million Chinese can't be wrong!"—maybe? But the West hasn't even seen one messaging platform to rule them all since AIM, lately there have been far more web/mobile unbundling success stories, and I'm not sure what would turn that tide.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/style/strippers-go-underco...

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#25

Post by com2kid »

Kronopath wrote: post #4

Before anyone starts thinking this stuff is super-innovative and new, let me tell you what's really going on here: Facebook wants to make Messenger into a platform in the same way the big Asian chat apps are. Things like Weixin/WeChat or LINE. I mean, just look at the most recent additions to Messenger: - Stickers. These grew in popularity starting in Asian apps. [0] - Using Messenger for payments [1] and to send mon…

Stickers have been around since Yahoo Instant Messenger in the early 2000s.

Official Accounts have also been in various IM programs. Meebo had a nifty implementation of this, but it has been done before.

Payments might be original, not sure. It is at least new to the US market.

Media Rich Sharing is also old hat, I recall YIM also having this to some extent. In the very least, they had games you could play with friends.

(Surprisingly enough, it appears ICQ never made a push into payments, which is odd since ICQ pretty much invented everything else about IM!)

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#26

Post by mcintyre1994 »

Hopefully they approach this with more tact than they have the news feed. Since I can't be bothered to help their algorithm find the tiny bit of signal left there and it clearly values sponsored crap more than anything I care about the value of it is below zero at this point for me.

Messenger on the other hand is my most used mobile messaging service, almost everyone I regularly message is on there. It's useful and I actually care when I see a message - hopefully it'll stay that way.

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#27

Post by jianshen »

com2kid wrote: post #25
Kronopath wrote: post #4

Before anyone starts thinking this stuff is super-innovative and new, let me tell you what's really going on here: Facebook wants to make Messenger into a platform in the same way the big Asian chat apps are. Things like Weixin/WeChat or LINE. I mean, just look at the most recent additions to Messenger: - Stickers. These grew in popularity starting in Asian apps. [0] - Using Messenger for payments [1] and to send mon…

Stickers have been around since Yahoo Instant Messenger in the early 2000s. Official Accounts have also been in various IM programs. Meebo had a nifty implementation of this, but it has been done before. Payments might be original, not sure. It is at least new to the US market. Media Rich Sharing is also old hat, I recall YIM also having this to some extent. In the very least, they had games you could play with frien…

While I agree that all of these ideas have been thought of prior to the Asian chat apps, it's largely the similarity in execution that FB Messenger is taking compared to WeChat/ Line/KakaoTalk that the parent is talking about.

One important thing that the Asian messengers have executed better than the others is monetization of IM, something which has eluded Western messengers for a long time. To this day, FB still doesn't charge $$ for its stickers. Meanwhile, Line reported earnings of $600M+ and WeChat $900M+ from stickers/games/ads last year [1]. I think that's what has FB's attention.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/technology/personaltech/me...

Disclaimer: Former Meebo engineer

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#28

Post by loceng »

ilolu wrote: post #6

Now Facebook wants to track other things that were out of their control too. If businesses start using the messenger, then facebook will know about my buying habits and other information too. And how long will it take for Facebook to sell as Ads, the information back to businesses that helped them collect it.

How long then for FB to develop apps or acquire apps for the dominant use cases, and then squash out/limit the competing apps that integrated and helped build up the user behaviour to begin with? There's no way FB won't do this, that is part of their behaviour. How could they do this? They could all of a sudden require apps to use their payment, with whatever % taken that they please, and if you don't agree then they boot you and tell all of your users about their replacement app.

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#29

Post by loceng »

sgarg26 wrote: post #17
txu wrote: post #13

I got pretty excited about it, but I really can't trust Facebook as much as before. They practically took "graph" off of "open graph" by disabling third party's ability to list users' friends and invite them. I won't be surprised if later in the year some apps get banned from Facebook APIs because they touched Facebook's pie, which now covers pretty much everything. It's no accident half of the apps in the showcase a…

I think they will open up their ecosystem to let a apps grow really big organically. Then they will try to figure out a monetization strategy with the largest apps. App makers that do not play ball will probably get cut regardless of how big they are... There are good examples: Consider Zynga vs Lolapps when Facebook originally opened their API.

I posted this above - How long then for FB to develop apps or acquire apps for the dominant use cases, and then squash out/limit the competing apps that integrated and helped build up the user behaviour to begin with? There's no way FB won't do this, that is part of their behaviour. How could they do this? They could all of a sudden require apps to use their payment, with whatever % taken that they please, and if you don't agree then they boot you and tell all of your users about their replacement app.

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#30

Post by jsprogrammer »

jianshen wrote: post #27
com2kid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stickers have been around since Yahoo Instant Messenger in the early 2000s. Official Accounts have also been in various IM programs. Meebo had a nifty implementation of this, but it has been done before. Payments might be original, not sure. It is at least new to the US market. Media Rich Sharing is also old hat, I recall YIM also having this to some extent. In the very least, they had games you could play with frien…

While I agree that all of these ideas have been thought of prior to the Asian chat apps, it's largely the similarity in execution that FB Messenger is taking compared to WeChat/ Line/KakaoTalk that the parent is talking about. One important thing that the Asian messengers have executed better than the others is monetization of IM, something which has eluded Western messengers for a long time. To this day, FB still do…

Nothing says better instant messaging execution than monetization of colored pixels.
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