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Facebook announces ‘Messenger Platform’ with more than 40 apps
On Wednesday, March 25, at the F8 conference, Facebook showcased what it’s calling “Messenger Platform.” As the name suggests, Messenger is now being viewed as a platform that third-party developers can access and expand on. As a result, Messenger Platform was showcased with over 40 apps to get things going, all of which are designed to help users express themselves in new, and bold ways.
“We’ve been building Messenger as a way to express yourselves in more than just text,” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, said during the opening keynote in San Francisco.
Now, Facebook Messenger users will be able to tell their friends and family members how they feel with videos, audio clips, and even fully animated GIFs right within their conversation threads. As Facebook showed off, the GIFs are fully supported and seem to be handled quite well within the thread, loading quickly and not slowing down the scrolling at all.
Users will be able to discover and install new apps from within Messenger as well. There’s a Composer, which will show a lit of available apps for Messenger Platform. Or, users can simply install an app that was used by one of their contacts to send them a message. The latter works as an invite system, of sorts.
Facebook has setup a website for developers to get started.