Facebook Messenger platform's next target: games

We should have seen this coming a mile away. After all, it seems to be the trend with popular instant messengers these days anyway. Facebook is said to be now eying adding the power of games to its Messenger service, leveraging the nascent platform announced barely two months ago. But while the move may sound like a no-brainer in retrospect, Facebook's motivations might be somewhat different, driven instead by reports that its Messenger Platform as a whole is starting to become a slow-moving flop.

To be fair, that platform offered something that no other messaging service could. It allowed third party apps to integrate directly into Messenger, allowing users to take advantage of all the fun and whimsy that they offered without even having to step out of the Messenger app itself. While other messengers offered emojis and stickers, Facebook Messenger could offer memes, GIFs, and mustaches.

Strangely enough, it seems the idea didn't catch fire as Facebook had hoped. Users were slow to adopt and even slower to use. Part of the problem probably lies in discovery. Users just aren't really expecting to find apps hidden inside, presuming only stickers and emojis exist behind their virtual keyboards. And so Facebook is now said to be in talks with 3rd party developers to start adding games, which is something that users have actually come to expect nowadays.

It seems that Facebook is coming full circle then. The social networking giant has become both famous and infamous for its games, with some of the best known ones being born from there. While Facebook games on mobile are practically non–existent, they might see a return to fame, or at least attention, with Messenger. That is, of course, if Facebook really is taking this step, which isn't really that far from the step it already took with the third-party app Platform in the first place.

SOURCE: The Information