Will Messenger become a golden egg for Facebook?

Facebook is now a family, Mark Zuckerberg said at the new F8 Developer exhibition. And his idea is not a family between employees, instead he is referring to the applications that the company owns. Currently the Facebook app is still being used the most, but in parallel, the company has bought or developed many other app networks such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Groups. This is the family Zuckerberg talked about, and among the family's "children", Messenger is something that can help Facebook earn more money in the future - through cooperation with businesses and Open for third-party app integration.

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Business on Messenger - a new e-commerce platform?

At the F8 conference, Facebook announced that it is preparing to deploy Messenger to a number of retail chain stores so that businesses communicate with customers in a more convenient way than ever before. Companies can integrate Messenger into their website, allowing customers to view transaction details and even support shopping by just a few chat lines with store employees. It also allows users to see how their delivery status is, where the goods go, and of course, having remote customer support. In short: Messenger has now become an e-commerce platform.

Analyst Brian Nichols of Seeking Alpha commented that Messenger for Business has tremendous potential. At the present time, Facebook has just shook hands with Everland and zulily retail chains in the US and they will start bringing Messenger for Business into operation in the next few weeks. Although Facebook has yet to " lure " big names like Walmart, Best Buy or Kohl's to use Messenger services, if the company does it, the sales of these retailers will increase rapidly. The number of users up to 600 million existing Messenger will also be an important motivation for the company to attract more businesses to them.

But we still don't really know how Facebook will make money from Messenger for Business. Will the company charge businesses on a fixed amount agreed between the two parties? Maybe, but there is still another possibility, which is charging on transactions. Every time a user purchases or makes a transaction through Messenger with the business, Facebook takes a few percent of the total amount. Don't forget that Facebook has recently implemented money transfers between one person and the company can expand it to apply for purchases via Messenger. The company also recruited David Marcus, a former PayPal senior to work for him. This obviously suggests that Facebook is planning something to do with online payments.

Collection of fees on the transaction will also help the company to keep the customer experience at a higher level than attaching ads or sending advertising messages in Messenger. Do you want your chat with girlfriends who are bothered by crazy ads? Or do you want some strange advertisement in your inbox? Probably not. Previously Facebook also worked in long-term invitations without direct ads in News Feed, the reason was because the CEO of the company wanted to make sure the experience and customer satisfaction were always high.

Looking further, Messenger is likely to become an online payment tool similar to what PayPal or Western Union are doing. In the last quarter, Western Union collected $ 1.1 billion in revenue from transfers between end users, while PayPal earned $ 2.2 billion . Assuming that Facebook jumps into this market, it is likely that the company will charge a lower transaction fee than its two competitors ( especially after the free period ). But that does not mean that Facebook revenue will be low, because the current number of Messenger users is much larger than Western Union or PayPal, if combined with WhatsApp, that number is huge.

Messenger Platform - a Facebook experiment

Since Facebook separated Messenger into a separate application last year, it has gradually updated and improved its messaging platform to become an increasingly powerful tool. And of course, it not only supports chat but also integrates the ability to send voice, image, video, even in some countries Facebook also allows Messenger users to call each other without a good penny, and recently implemented a free deposit system. This direction of Facebook is quite similar to what LINE, Viber are deploying, and in Vietnam we have Zalo also expanding in the same direction.

And Messenger doesn't just stop being an app. Also within the F8 event, Facebook has turned it into a platform for third-party applications to integrate to improve content delivery. There are currently 47 apps that are compatible with what Facebook calls " Messenger Platform " and promises that this ecosystem will continue to expand in the near future.

A year ago, analyst Ben Thompson forecasted the future of Facebook and its messaging application, and most of the forecasts came true in the F8 conference. Thompson gave an example that e-commerce company Rakuten spent $ 900 million to buy Viber, also a global messaging platform, but something hasn't been as popular as Facebook. Thompson considers messaging applications like this to be the future of email, and they can absolutely be used as advertising tools to reach customers in a more personalized space. Now that you see, Viber has become a marketing channel that many companies have been eyeing.

LINE , a popular messaging platform in Japan as well as many Asian countries, also contributes to creating more close relationships between businesses and customers through chat. With your consent, LINE will send you advertising news, in return you can download certain stickers for free. Now that company can provide you with more promotional information without worrying about being dropped into a spam mailbox like email. Even LINE is looking to test sales solutions through her app.

Going back to Messenger, by extending it to third-party apps to integrate, Facebook is looking to increase the user experience and attract new people, while helping developers add users to their apps. they. But it is not clear how the company will make money from this feature? Is Facebook following the path of LINE or Viber? After today's presentation, The Verge reporter sat down with Facebook product manager Chris Cox to ask about it. Cox describes that the Messenger Platform is now considered by the company as an experiment to know how well the platform is developing, to see what people really need and what people want. Cox added: " You will learn a lot when you see people use it ."

If Facebook's plan runs well, we can expect Facebook's other messaging services to grow in the same direction as Messenger. Does WhatsApp become a platform? Cox commented: " I think the WhatsApp group will learn from what's going on ", and then maybe they will decide " what to integrate. We just started with an ecosystem to learn. ask only ".

In the end, Facebook is currently only at the beginning of a long journey to make money from Messenger. It is true that Messenger is now a free service but surely Facebook is burning a lot of intent with it, and it will collect money either from users or retailers through e-commerce transactions. takes place on your chat platform. And the day Messenger gets billions of dollars for Facebook may not be too far away, then Messenger can be considered a golden egg that Zuckerberg has been cultivating for a long time.