Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attends a conference in France on May 2011.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, Inc. revealed a new feature of Facebook Messenger at the Facebook Developer Conference (F8) on Wednesday morning. The conference was at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.
Messenger is a free downloadable application that allows users to communicate with other users online. Users can send text messages, pictures, emoticons and voice recordings. Users can also determine the location of their online friends. It currently has over 500 million users worldwide.
Zuckerberg revealed at F8 on Monday that Messenger will launch an initiative that allows users to download third-party applications via Messenger. People do not have to exit Messenger to shop for apps. Businesses in the near future will be able to handle customer service relations via Facebook Messenger.
“We all have to agree that it’s pretty painful to interact with businesses right now,” David Marcus, head of messaging products at Facebook, said in an interview. “We’re bringing back the conversational nature of commerce.”
Other components of Messenger will include the ability to transform conversations into songs through a new app called Ditty. Users are allowed to choose from 26 different songs. Ten songs are free and the other sixteen songs can be purchased for less than a dollar.
New Facebook features like Ditty allow Messenger to compete with other widely known chatting apps such as Line, a Japanese mobile app that has over 300 million users and KakaoTalk, an app that is used by 93% of smartphone users in South Korea. Messenger will join the group of highly rate multi-platform communications app that allows users to share content and purchase items.
Last week, the company added a feature that allows people to transfer money to recipients while chatting on Messenger. The company may soon extend the money-sending capabilities from consumers to businesses. It competes with popular apps such as Venmo that also allows users to send money to friends.
