Facebook Messenger may soon end up a platform

Facebook Messenger, like many apps of its kind, does one thing well; it sends and receives messages. There have been rumors of an Uber add-on, and you can now send money within Messenger, but the overarching goal is to send messages to others who use the app. By working in some of those extra features, it seems Facebook was either testing the waters of platform or stumbled upon it. Either way, a new rumor that Facebook will be turning Messenger into its own platform is interesting.

To say 'platform' is not to say Facebook is looking to turn Messenger into something your phone will boot into. Instead, it's a platform for messaging as well as add-on services.

The more easily drawn line is to Line itself, the app that took messaging and turned it into a money-making factory with add-on sticker packs and the like. Kik does similar things, and Facebook has their own stickers you can slap onto pics.

From a simple conversation, users coud end up doing just about anything via Messenger, so long as Facebook had the right partnerships. They could have a dedicated news line, or allow us to get updates on news we like via Messenger pings from sources we'd 'liked'.

The new Messenger-as-a-platform is believed to debut next week during Facebook's F8 conference, so we'll look for further details then.

Source: TechCrunch