At the beginning of May, Facebook held its annual F8 conference. This convention is where Facebook discusses the overall destiny of the platform and unveils its upcoming trends and features to developers, entrepreneurs, and different professionals. This year, Facebook announced several upgrades to its Messenger platform and new, advertising-centered features. These changes and additions to the messaging platform are crucial to look at, specifically on the subject of how they’ll impact our current advertising efforts.
Let’s see what’s coming to Facebook Messenger and how we can begin making ready and strategizing for these adjustments.
1. Messenger Desktop App
This is perhaps the least vital replacement, however, nonetheless well worth citing. Facebook is creating a laptop app for Messenger. The reason I don’t find this modification that be existence-changing for organizations is that you could already use Messenger on a laptop. Log in to Facebook and head over to your messages. However, Facebook did point out that one of the number one capabilities and dreams in the back of this computing device model of Messenger would be as a collaboration device. The laptop Messenger empowers groups to “have video calls, collaborate on tasks, or multitask even as chatting.” We ought to start seeing Messenger used more with teams to share thoughts and have weekly conferences.
2. Lighter, Faster, Leaner
Facebook is redesigning its Messenger app to be faster and much less strenuous on the device storage. They’ve labeled the task “LightSpeed,” and the aim is a Messenger app that launches in under 2 seconds and requires only 30MB to install. To reap this, they’ve “rebuilt from the floor upon an entirely new code base,” which means we’ll have a Messenger app. This is just extra optimized for these days’ want for immediate loading and immediacy.
While this can now longer directly affect advertising and marketing, we could see more people the usage of Messenger with this lighter, faster app. Not most effective because the rate could be extra aligned with what’s predicted these days, especially within the mobile environment, but also because it’s 70MB smaller than the old Messenger.
This makes it less difficult for humans with low storage on their devices to locate space to house the app. And offers an even greater motive for organizations to take a look at Messenger bots and funnels.
3. Close Friends Groups
One future function that might be troubling to companies is close to pals’ businesses. It’s unclear what the professional call for this selection will be. Still, the recognition is to help Facebook users have a “devoted area” to attach and percentage content with their closest pals and own family. Users had been capable of designating a close pal listing in the past or even seeing a feed of only content posted with the aid of individuals of this organization. The difference between this new characteristic is privacy.
Facebook needs its users to proportion content with close buddies without the fear that others will see or that it may be held in opposition to them in the future. Based on early screenshots, it appears that customers can create multiple corporations. This is every other distinction from the “Close Friends” function of the day before this, where users had most effective a single listing. Those companies feel like miles greater, more advantageous institutions that with a greater emphasis on the content over plain text communication.
It wasn’t clear whether businesses may be blanketed in those businesses, or maybe create their personal. I really hope so, especially the latter, because this has a lot of ability as an effective advertising channel. It could permit a commercial enterprise to talk with an organization of precise clients or audience phase right away.
Another way I see this being impactful is for organizations with a couple of savings places or branches. Groups might be created for every vicinity to allow these men or women branches to speak and proportion content with delay to their local clients.
While this is plausible, it would be a far greater seamless enjoy with this group function with region-unique Facebook pages. Plus, we wouldn’t need to war with the shortage of organic posts displaying in News Feeds. Alternatively, B2B marketers may want to use these groups as a handy, committed area while speaking with all involved parties at a prospective consumer’s enterprise.
4. Better Group Video Viewing
A communal video is a growing fashion. The proof is within the fulfillment of streaming structures like Twitch, with 15 million daily active users and YouTube’s thriving community.
Facebook also has its eyes on enhancing its users’ ability to engage with video content together. People have a preference to watch films and interact with the content creator and other viewers. We’ve first visible this happen itself on Facebook through stay streaming.
Then, closing July, Facebook created Watch Parties. This characteristic allowed corporations to host a Watch Party, wherein users view and chat about website-hosted films collectively and in real-time. These events create tons more engagement, as excessive as 8x the feedback than a regular video published to Facebook.
For Facebook, the logical next step for Watch Party and communal video looking is Messenger. According to Facebook, customers will “be able to seamlessly percentage a video from the Facebook app on Messenger and invite others to watch together whilst messaging or on a video chat.”
