Yesterday at F8 event, Facebook provided great news to Developers by launching Messenger Platform. Now developers can develop apps for Facebook Messenger, moreover businesses can create a separate channel on messenger to their clients to directly communicate with them for business purpose instead of using phone call or email!

With this Facebook has launched SDK for developers to build interactive application for Messenger. These apps can be discovered and installed directly from messenger without opening any separate app store or website. These apps can add variety of features to messenger including sharing of animated GIFs, pictures, emojis, stickers, videos or any other content. The user receiving this content also will get to know about app using which this contents generated.

Along with this facebook also launched messenger service for Businesses. The idea behind is to provide a separate support/sales channel to business on facebook messenger so instead of lengthy phone calls or series of emails one can simply communicate with businesses using asynchronous chat. There are varieties of ways this can be used like people can receive updates for their shipments or talk to tech support on messenger. This entire experience will be a single ongoing thread between a business and customer.

While these new features will increase engagement with facebook, it will also provide new opportunities to app developers and entrepreneurs to launch their creative ideas on new platform. Messenger platform provides innovative way to discover the apps, which makes it different than other platforms. As in all other existing platforms it has become quite tuff to find an app with your requirement due to indefinite number of crapy apps.

Overall this seems a great move by Facebook as by involving third party developers and opening a new channel for businesses, it is on the path of becoming a unified communication channel instead of just a chat app!