Facebook Messenger wants to completely dissociate itself from Facebook

Written by

Facebook is a social network that everybody loves but few people differ with that because they introduce shortcuts that damns many users. Few days ago Facebook reported that it managed to tweak its algorithms to be more human-like hence Facebook facial recognition algorithm can identify you without looking at your face. In addition to that The New Moments App is amazing because it scans images for faces and matches them to your Facebook friends. You can then share the photos, which are grouped by occasion, directly with those people through the app. It’s a neat trick and a fun tool for sharing group photos. Facebook is currently stepping aside from Messenger allowing people without Facebook accounts sign up for the messaging service with just a phone number so one does not need a Facebook account to sign up for Messenger at all.

The move is surprising given that Messenger has enough users. It has 700 million signed on—and yet the company apparently thinks that’s not enough. Last year Facebook requested its users to install Facebook Messenger and instructed that it will not allow users to send or receive messages/chats via the normal Facebook  App.  Facebook and Messenger are two enormously popular experiences that have traditionally been symbiotic. If you want to reach your Facebook friends, Messenger is where you find them. It’s that same mutual reliance, though, that could at least in some small way limit Messenger’s potential growth, something in which Facebook is demonstrably invested.

Facebook apparently wants to expand Messenger’s audience by going after the people who don’t know about the social network. There are 1.44 billion people on Facebook but many more who have mobile phones. If Messenger has any hope of making money, it rests with a large and growing user base, and a developer community rallied around it. Facebook’s Messenger team has been trying to attack both sides of that equation.

Read: Control what happens on your facebook page after death

Though the social network itself has already tried appealing to app makers hoping they’d see the social network as a platform for games and other apps. Facebook Inc. used its recent F8 developer conference primarily to shine a spotlight on Messenger. The company unleashed many tools last March covering embedded videos, embedded posts, app linking and more.

For mobile app makers specifically, the announcements presented some obvious benefits: By letting people access their iOS or Android apps directly from within Messenger, they could drive attention and usage to them. Facebook’s Messenger chief, David Marcus, explained at F8 that he wants to give developers the “opportunity to build on these platforms”—not just once, he said, but often.

App integrations may ensure people stick with Facebook Messenger, as a single access point for playing games and sending videos, selfies, and even money to friends. The company may wonder if they’d even be willing to pay for that convenience—though the chances of Messenger subscriptions seem minimal. Facebook doesn’t charge people to use its apps, and it’s currently in the midst of making Messenger more accessible, not less.

If the company won’t charge users, then it may consider pointing its cash register in another direction: by charging developers. It has plenty of advertising experience that could come in handy there, though probably not for straight ads. Even Facebook likely knows that foisting ads in a messaging app would be a fast ticket to a user backlash. However, the advertising world’s pay-per-click model could play out for app downloads. And if Messenger enables paid app downloads or in-app purchases, it could grab a slice of that for itself too

Other chat apps make money in a host of ways. The Wall Street Journal notes that China’s WeChat app rakes in the revenue by taking a cut of transactions that happen through its app, everything from hailing taxis to purchasing apparel. According to the article, apps like WeChat and South Korea’s Line, which makes money by selling stickers, may give Marcus a reference point, but he thinks Facebook Messenger “needs to leapfrog what happened in Asia,” he said.

Facebook kicking out Facebook Messenger i think its a bad idea. More people have phone numbers than have Facebook accounts. More people text than write status updates. If your stated mission is to prepare for the “platforms of tomorrow,” as Mark Zuckerberg said when his company bought up Oculus last year, you don’t want to tether any one of them to Facebook, the platform of today.

Instagram has remained independent in the three years since Facebook acquired it, as have WhatsApp and Oculus. Messenger, in its ideal form, is its own social network. To require a log-in for another, distinct social network for access seems, when you put it that way, a little bit absurd. Facebook stresses that there are benefits to linking the two. “For those who have Facebook accounts, there are many benefits to using your Facebook credentials when signing up for Messenger,” explains Facebook engineer Louis Boval in a post outlining today’s change. “People can easily message with their Facebook friends and contacts, access their Facebook messages and take advantage of multi-device messaging across mobile devices, the web and tablets.

 

Article Categories:
TECHNOLOGY

Comments are closed.

Shares