What’s New at Facebook?

Facebook Messenger is the most popular social messaging app… in some countries, at least. While Facebook Messenger dominates in the United States and Australia, it’s lagging behind competitors such as Whatsapp in other parts of the world, including in the United Kingdom and many other parts of Europe. The reason? Facebook is slowly but surely becoming more and more of a business-friendly platform, yet its existing messenger service lacks the necessary features it needs to meet business requirements.It’s estimated that there are around 40 million active businesses on Facebook Messenger today, but the current setup isn’t quite enough to make the system an all-in-one solution for B2B or B2C communications. To rectify this, Facebook has announced 5 upcoming changes to better meet the needs of its business users:

. Facebook Messenger Desktop App Facebook has confirmed plans to create a new desktop app for MacOS, and make improvements to its existing Windows app which never really took off the way Facebook hoped that it would. Director of Messenger Consumer Products Asha Sharma says that one of the reasons for bringing Messenger out of the browser is to create ‘more space’ for communicating. Group video calls and collaboration tools are said to be amongst the new app features, although exact features are yet to be confirmed. 2. Project Lightspeed Under ‘Project Lightspeed’, Facebook has completely redesigned its messaging system, building a new setup from scratch. The new version is designed to be quicker and ‘lighter’ than the previous one, taking 70MB less space to install and launching in under 2 seconds. This is one of the more complex of changes that Facebook has announced, and is designed to ensure businesses have access to the tools and information they need quickly and easily; an urgent requirement in a world dominated by ‘real time’. 3. Improved Privacy Facebook has announced that the new Messenger system will come with dedicated groups that allow users to safely and securely share information with only those that they want to share it with. From Facebook’s own description of the update, it appears this feature has been designed for social users who want to easily see relevant Messenger-shared content from family and friends, but the concept of improved privacy is a benefit that can certainly be extended over to the business world. 4. Messenger Watch Party Facebook plans to bring its Watch Party idea over into its messaging service, allowing users to share videos from the platform and watch together through Messenger, discussing and communicating in real time. Once again, this appears to have been primarily designed for social users, especially as Facebook mentions watching ‘favourite shows’ and ‘funny clips’, but this could prove to be one of the most valuable of collaboration tools that businesses could use to improve internal communications. 5. Facebook Messenger Appointments The Messenger appointments feature is the first of the F8 Developer Conference announcements to be introduced to Facebook users, and many businesses have already started to use this service. Quite simply, the foundations of the appointments feature is in automation, allowing customers to schedule bookings with businesses without having to pick up the phone or send an email. It’s about providing excellent customer service at any time, giving customers complete control over their bookings.