Facebook’s new Messenger platform could lead to a Messenger OS

You can read a German version of article here.

During the recent f8 conference Facebook announced the Messenger platform, consisting of Messenger for Business as well as a SDK for third party apps to integrate with Messenger.

This was pretty much expected. What surprised me more, at least initially, was the fact that apps cannot be installed directly within Messenger. Instead the idea is to let app developers create so called “companion apps” – existing (or new) mobile apps for iOS and Android that can be integrated with Messenger at some specific points during the interaction process. For the time being, only multimedia content such as photos, videos, GIFs and sound snippets can be published from third party apps into Messenger conversations.

With this decision, the Messenger platform differs from the Facebook platform launched back in 2007, which allowed users to add apps directly within facebook.com. This time, the apps that are supporting the Messenger platform are regular native iOS and Android apps and have to be downloaded by users from the App Store or Google Play Store. Continue Reading