Facebook has great plans for its Messenger app, aiming to leverage it as a powerful platform for businesses rather than just a messaging app.
The social networking company has been making significant efforts into improving its Messenger app to add more functionality, but it's apparently far from done. As it turns out, Facebook wants its Messenger to be far more than a simple app, it wants it to serve as a platform for businesses, a one-stop-shop for everything.
Speaking with Wired's David Rowan, Facebook director of platform partnerships Julien Codorniou said that Facebook is just getting started when it comes to Messenger.
"We are one percent finished, as we say at Facebook," said Codorniou. "One day, there will be companies built on Messenger, and we are at the beginning of that ecosystem."
According to the executive, Messenger will evolve to become an "app for everything."
More specifically, Facebook envisions a future where retailers will communicate with their clients on Messenger rather than their own sites, consumers will book their flights on Messenger rather than some other website, and so on. Messenger would serve as the go-to app to search for establishments, share their location, make reservations, send payments, order things and perform other such tasks, in addition to simply chatting with Facebook friends.
Meanwhile, Messenger executive David Marcus told Wired that the messaging app is at the "first baby steps in a series of millions of steps," further suggesting that Facebook has great ambitions for Messenger.
If Facebook's plan works out, consumers will need fewer apps to handle various tasks, as they'd be able to do most of them on Messenger. At the same time, if Messenger does become a one-stop-shop for everything, it will most likely gain significantly more users, to the detriment of other services and platforms. Facebook currently has 1.4 billion users and Messenger has 700 million users, which is a promising start if it's just one percent finished.
It remains to be seen whether Facebook will be able to achieve its ambitious goals, especially since there are plenty of other messaging apps on the market that are also looking to improve and adding more functionality through constant updates. For now, it's just the beginning.
