Major moves in the social space are being made this week; Twitter upped its character limit to 280 for all users and Tencent bought 12 percent more of Snap. But, the most interesting move was actually by Facebook, and it spans far beyond social.
On November 7, Facebook announced Customer Chat, a new Messenger plugin that lets businesses have conversations with customers on their own website. This move not only further strengthens Messenger as the top partner for brands to expand and serve their customer base through conversation, it also places Facebook head-to-head against B2B Silicon Valley darlings like Intercom, Drift and Salesforce.
What sets Messenger apart is its pivot from offering a no-frills chat functionality in 2008 into an end-to-end communications platform while acquiring 1.2 billion users along the way. As chatbots continue to become more elegant, personalization is quickly becoming the next main pillar of marketing. This is the perfect time for Facebook to transform Messenger into an immensely lucrative platform for businesses the same way it capitalized on the news feed to become the global leader in the digital advertising industry.
This is only the beginning of what will be a complete overhaul of the way marketers approach their digital strategies. The adoption of what is now both website and mobile integration for Messenger paves the way for Facebook to provide a platform that measures engagement and leads with pinpoint precision — similar to the current Facebook…
