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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

#41

Post by GCA10 »

mandeepj wrote: post #18
nashadelic wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innovative or not, that's not is going to determine the success of this. There has to be the ability to generate mass market adoption with innovation which Facebook is really good at.

The last success Facebook had seen was with their flagship product - Facebook website, rest they bought it (whatsapp, instagram). You know how it went with apps from facebook labs. I hope you remember how big of a disaster was Facebook phone. Although, I laud their efforts of keep trying and trying.

Ah, the voice of an older brother, taking time to criticize the little ones while urging them to try harder.

I can't explain why, but your commentary makes me smile. Keep it coming!

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#42

Post by com2kid »

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…

Yahoo tried monetization for their desktop products (IIRC they had some sort of animated stickers that cost money) but the payment story just wasn't there back then.

YIM really did try to monetize, they just failed.

I also remember MSN messenger trying to monetize VOIP ala Skype but failing. NAT has just been introduced and traversal techniques where half baked, so getting VOIP to work at all was mostly failure. Indeed the primary reason I used YIM was because its voice chat worked.

Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be a good history of what the various IM platforms offered over time, so finding references is hard. :(

BTW: Meebo rocked! I am still annoyed that I have no proper multi-protocol IM program. I've lost contact with people I had been in touch with for over a decade. :( Meebo was the first time I realized that Web Apps could be a Good Thing.

Unfortunately with Meebo's closure I also learned the down side of Web Apps.

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#43

Post by sgarg26 »

loceng wrote: post #29
sgarg26 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are right. Probably something like half the time that it took for them to do this before.

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#44

Post by lukestevens »

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…

Fast Company posted an excellent, in-depth piece on Line a month ago, and that's what immediately came to mind in light of this announcement: "How Japan's Line App Became A Culture-Changing, Revenue-Generating Phenomenon" http://www.fastcompany.com/3041578/most-innovative-companies...

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9074132

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#45

Post by delecti »

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.

I avoid making phone calls as much as possible. I think that's a growing trend.

If I can interact with a business solely through textual communication I will do so, even if it's significantly slower.

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#46

Post by IkmoIkmo »

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…

> I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of thing was the reason they split Messenger from the main Facebook app in the first place.

It was. Your entire post hit the nail on the head btw.

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#47

Post by jianshen »

com2kid wrote: post #42
jianshen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yahoo tried monetization for their desktop products (IIRC they had some sort of animated stickers that cost money) but the payment story just wasn't there back then. YIM really did try to monetize, they just failed. I also remember MSN messenger trying to monetize VOIP ala Skype but failing. NAT has just been introduced and traversal techniques where half baked, so getting VOIP to work at all was mostly failure. Inde…

Y! Messenger monetized branded themes. National advertisers would pay for the experiences, users got to pick from branded backgrounds and emoticons. Chris Szeto, then Y! Messenger head, pioneered this revenue model. It was quite lucrative but then WebIM became a thing (a la Meebo) and the market shifted away from Desktop downloads. FF a few more years and we see Mobile eat WebIMs lunch. The cycle continues...

Thanks for the kind words about Meebo! I miss it a lot as well, particularly the people. P)

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#48

Post by com2kid »

jianshen wrote: post #47
com2kid wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo tried monetization for their desktop products (IIRC they had some sort of animated stickers that cost money) but the payment story just wasn't there back then. YIM really did try to monetize, they just failed. I also remember MSN messenger trying to monetize VOIP ala Skype but failing. NAT has just been introduced and traversal techniques where half baked, so getting VOIP to work at all was mostly failure. Inde…

Y! Messenger monetized branded themes. National advertisers would pay for the experiences, users got to pick from branded backgrounds and emoticons. Chris Szeto, then Y! Messenger head, pioneered this revenue model. It was quite lucrative but then WebIM became a thing (a la Meebo) and the market shifted away from Desktop downloads. FF a few more years and we see Mobile eat WebIMs lunch. The cycle continues... Thanks…

Thank you for better knowing history! :)

Re: Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger

#50

Post by digisth »

BryanB55 wrote: post #39
digisth wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company I'm building right now has something similar to this as a major component of the service (feedback via text [SMS->email for the moment, but I'm also going to have it be visible in a web dashboard] ] is one of two methods I'm going to launch with.) I'm billing it as a "universal customer testimonial" service with a some added benefits. One of those benefits works like this: a business receives a message se…

I worked on creating a similar service for a few months in regards to helping businesses (SaaS companies specifically) capture testimonials. I ultimately decided not to pursue the idea after having conversations with potential customers. SMS was not going to be a feature in the initial version and we may have been targeting different niches but I would definitely recommend getting it in front of your target audience…

My starting market is definitely local businesses, though I do think there might be hope for online companies too (one idea for subsequent versions would be to have the ability to turn Twitter/FB/forum posts and linkable web comments into testimonials with just a couple of steps, rather than going through the whole copy post->go to your CMS->reformat it stuff. There will also be an embeddable testimonial board.)

I'm pretty far along with the initial version to demo it to them, so I should have it front of them fairly soon. Dealing with sub-par testimonials is something I thought about early - that's part of the reason everything requires approval by default. I'm hoping these businesses will post the great ones, appreciate, but maybe not post the so-so ones, and take seriously and act on the negative ones.

Ultimately, I'd like it to cohere from three things: a central place to aggregate reviews/testimonials from many sources, a customer feedback system, and a "reminder to review elsewhere" (to nudge the marginal reviewer to actually leave that Yelp review) service rather than just a feedback system like TalkBin or Talk To the Manager.

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