Facebook just made an announcement about the Facebook Messenger App which has been kept pretty quiet, but I think it has a big long-term play for the social media giant...
Take a trip with me. Do you remember a time when email was exciting? When you would get an email, and you would read it, letter for letter, every email you got? Do you remember signing up to Groupon in the beginning? Yes! You can get an all-you-can-eat sushi experience at half the price. Amazing, subscribe me to that. And now, how many of you are still subscribed to Groupon? How many of us actually check the Groupon offers every day? Email has become a boring mess of work, spam and rubbish...
Now think of getting a ping on your cellphone -- it's a Facebook message. Do you jump and read it straight away? Yes, you do. It is like email used to be, and how Groupon special offer emails used to be. Exciting and a treat. This is a Facebook message so it must be important, right?
Two weeks ago, Facebook announced that you no longer need to have an active Facebook account to be able to use the Facebook messenger app. All of the same Messenger features, including payments and stickers, as well as voice and video calls, will be available to people using Messenger without Facebook. The main difference for non-Facebook users, of course, will be features that rely on your network of Facebook friends. Without a connection to a Facebook account, for example, the app will rely solely on your phone's contacts to find friends on the service. Non-Facebook users won't be able to access messages on the web either, those still live on Facebook.com for now.
A while ago I wrote a piece about how Facebook already has all our personal time online, but they now also want to get all our online business time.
So, why do I think this is so big? I think Facebook is making a long-term play here, to eventually make Facebook Messenger the new email. Facebook's long-term plan to become the mass communication tool online for all is starting to roll out. Don't forget Facebook also owns the world's largest messaging app, WhatsApp, giving Facebook the lead in the communication tool space again.
OK, get me straight here, I am not saying the email will disappear, it will just be marginalized and become more specific, just like direct mail and promotions are today.
I think if Facebook had their way, all our day-to-day communication, be it with our friends, our colleagues, our clients and even with companies, would all take place via Facebook messenger or WhatsApp.
The younger generations already do most activities on Facebook and WhatsApp, with email being a small part of the online experience. I say, watch this space, Facebook is making a move here.
*Also just to point out, I really like what Facebook is doing and think they are making some great changes and implementing some good ideas. I just think they need to up the PR and start telling the good stories about what they are doing.