Facebook Messenger vs Whatsapp: What is FB doing?

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Facebook is launching an update to Messenger - you don’t need an FB account to get Messenger - you can use your phone number only; like Whatsapp.

Story is here: http://recode.net/2015/06/24/you-no-longer-need-a-facebook-account-to-use-facebook-messenger/

What I find fascinating is what the implications of this are:

  1. Facebook Messenger has 700m users - making it one of the largest chat apps in the world. Combined with Whatsapp, the company now owns more chat users than anyone else. Why is FB expanding Messenger into what is Whatsapp territory?
  2. Will Messenger be the one with more features? Already, there’s code that can help you send money to Messenger contacts, install apps etc. Will Messenger be the feature-heavy one and Whatsapp the feature-lite one? Whatsapp has already replaced SMS for me. Maybe Whatsapp kills SMS and FBM is the new FB?
  3. Is FB becoming a conglomerate with different properties instead of one company with one key service?

Help!

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I’m just seeing this thread. To answer your third question, I will refer you to this fine piece by Ben Thompson that I read a year ago - The Social Conglomerate – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

Excerpt:

THE AGE OF CONGLOMERATES
This idea of conglomeration – ever larger companies, delivering ever more specialized and segmented products – isn’t limited to just Facebook. Google is arguably a machine-learning conglomerate with multiple products; Amazon a logistics conglomerate with multiple services; even Apple a personal computer conglomerate offering multiple products with different form factors and interaction models.

And, considering how computing power increases even as prices decrease, more specialized products that more perfectly fit different use cases is a natural result. So it is with Facebook-the-company: they are the social company, and no one can question their determination to offer a product that fits every use case, no matter the cost, and no matter the brand.

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I realize that this is an old thread that was just resurrected, but here are my views on the issue:

In March 2015, at Facebook’s F8 conference, they announced the “Messenger Platform”. The intention was to create a platform where not only individuals talk to other individuals, but where business and organizations can interact with their clients.

Among the features announced for the platform were things like friend-to-friend payment (as you noted), 3rd party developer integration, and ways for businesses to directly talk to customers for customer-service.

The reason FB is doing this is because it wants Messenger to compete with the large Asian communication apps, like WeChat, Baidu, Line, etc. In Asia, those apps aren’t used for just messaging. It’s used as an entire platform (social, commerce, finance and anything else they can add on). In China, people use WeChat to buy goods, pay for movie tickets, buy airline tickets, and a whole lot more.

Facebook wants to corner a similar market as WeChat has, but for the western world. They want to make Facebook Messenger the platform for both regular users and businesses.

On the other hand, when asked at F8 when WhatsApp would release simple APIs, co-founder Brian Acton said they want to keep the app as simple as possible and that they have no plans to put anything of the sort into WhatsApp “for the foreseeable future”.

Facebook will likely announce more news on the direction they are taking Messenger in April next year, but just think of WhatsApp as your simple, personal communicator and Messenger as the platform that will drive a huge part of Facebook’s future.

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Really good points @ugo and @xolubi. It’s also worth having a read of Ben Evans Messaging and mobile platforms. The plan is to go way more than just be a platform but instead to bypass Apple and Google so they reach users directly. A lot of long play things…

Rather than trying to turn Messenger itself into a development
environment, it’s opened it up to become a channel for anything else on
your phone and the web. This means that it’s addressing both the
platform thread and the viral apps thread outlined above, and that
rather than WeChat, it’s going after the iOS and Android notifications
pane

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That article from Ben shows there is a lot of long play things as you’ve mentioned.

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Meanwhile they said they wont start monetising it until they reach 1billion users. There you go! They are not planning to leave any cash on the table. They can do this by controlling and dictating the platform. Another permutation is they can actually learn from WeChat in the area of monetisation. More read on this