Facebook Announces Major Changes To Messenger App
By KYW social media editor Melony Roy
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - It's day two of Facebook's annual developers conference, and the social networking giant has already announced Messenger is becoming a massive communications hub where users will be able to do much more than chat with others on the service.
During Facebook's annual F-8 conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced developers can now add a Messenger button to third-party apps:
"As messenger has grown, we think that this service has the potential to help people express themselves in new ways, to connect hundreds of millions of new people, and to become a really important communications tool for the world."
ESPN and The Weather Channel are among the 40 apps that now support Facebook Messenger.
Zuckerberg also introduced a feature called "Messenger Business" which will let users communicate directly with merchants, make reservations and check shipping information.
"Helping people communicate more naturally with businesses I think is going to improve almost every person's life because its something everyone does," he says.
The news comes just a little over a week after the network rolled out a peer-to-peer payments feature for Messenger.