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Facebook Makes Messenger a Platform

Posted by samzenpus on from the stand-on-your-own-two-feet dept.

Steven Levy writes At Facebook's F8 developer conference, the ascension of the Messenger app was the major announcement. Messenger is no longer just a part of Facebook, but a standalone platform to conduct a wide variety of instant communications, not only with friends, but with businesses you may deal with as well. It will compete with other messaging services such as Snapchat, Line and even Facebook's own WhatsApp by offering a dizzying array of features, many of them fueled by the imagination and self-interest of thousands of outside software developers.

11 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. What guarantees of longevity? by Bronster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The core question with running on anybody else's platform, unless they are a regulated carrier somewhere which is required by a law to carry your traffic, is what happens when they change the rules?

    Would you be comfortable building your entire business on top of it? What if Facebook imposes new limits or rules that mean you can't use it any more.

    I had a conversation with a friend back in 2008-2009 some time over Facebook Messanger. We tried to find it last year. It rembered a chat we had in 2007, then nothing until 2010. It's not your own immutable copy the way that email is. Every new messaging platform claims it will kill email, but funnily enough they never do, because they don't offer what email offers - your own immutable copy and interoperability with everyone else. Email actually is the real distributed social network.

    1. Re:What guarantees of longevity? by TeknoHog · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Every new messaging platform claims it will kill email, but funnily enough they never do, because they don't offer what email offers - your own immutable copy and interoperability with everyone else. Email actually is the real distributed social network.

      I've never thought of Facebook messenger as anything more than a random web chat, a bolt-on feature of the whole antisocial media site. However, email isn't really a fair comparison, as it doesn't allow actual realtime chat. That's what IRC is for, and you get to keep your logs as you please on your own machine. I guess the same applies to any of the newer IM protocols, as long as it's an independent application you control.

      BTW, what would you guys suggest to wean non-technical friends off FB chat, given that IRC might be a little too much hassle with all the servers and keeping their computer on all the time?

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    2. Re:What guarantees of longevity? by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      BTW, what would you guys suggest to wean non-technical friends off FB chat,

      I don't know... we've gone backwards. We started out with competing and non-compatible IM clients - AIM being the biggest. For a while we were trending toward a bunch of competing but compatible IM clients. Then everyone abandoned IM for SMS. Now they are abandoning SMS for a bunch of competing non-compatible IM clients... just on the phone this time.

      I currently have WhatsApp installed for a single friend who insists on using it. It's pretty good - give that one a shot. Sometimes people invite me to a Google Hangout - and that also lets you talk or video chat for free. Viber is another one that works pretty well and gives you free calling. The desktop version does video. I have exactly one friend on that.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    3. Re:What guarantees of longevity? by Bronster · · Score: 2

      Honestly, I use FB's messaging interchangably with SMS. I don't expect to keep history of either of them. Anything I want to keep gets sent as email.

      IRC is great for work. I don't use it for random people though. All my choir and gym friends are on Facebook, and coordinate things through there. I'm not going to cut myself off from that.

    4. Re:What guarantees of longevity? by BESTouff · · Score: 2

      So you use WhatsApp, Hangout & Viber, depending on who calls you (ou who you wanna call). Chat is awful compared to mail. Almost no interoperability, no easy way to own your data.

  2. and so it goes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Already I've seen businesses where the only way to interact with them online is on Facebook. And many people do all online socialization using Facebook too, and don't use email at all.

    Whatever happened to the concept of an open internet? Protocols that anybody could write to? Where anyone could run their own server if they wanted?

    The internet doesn't route around censorship if it's all centralized and proprietary.

    1. Re:and so it goes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Facebook is the new AOL.

    2. Re:and so it goes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Already I've seen businesses where the only way to interact with them online is on Facebook.

      A lot of online comment sections use facebook too - if you're not a facebook member, you simply don't get to comment.

      It's a very strange way to do business. Stupid, even.

    3. Re:and so it goes by sycodon · · Score: 2

      You're being pretty hard on AOL aren't you?

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  3. Yet another platform? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We need a new icon, one that shows zuckerberg with a borg assimilation upgrade ala the Bill Gates one; Seriously.

    1. Re:Yet another platform? by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Why because he's added a VoIP service to the text messaging feature in Facebook.