Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) was recently accused of forcing its Messenger app on its users, and they justified it by saying that it was on demand from users, who did not want to go through the lengthy process of going to an app within an app. Now to make the standalone app popular among the users, Facebook is adding more features to it.
Big plans for Messenger
The Messenger app has more than 500 million monthly active users, and as informed by David Marcus, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s vice president of messaging products, at the Digital Life Design Conference in Munich, the company has an ambitious roadmap for the Messenger app in 2015.
As informed by the senior official on Monday, the company is working is voice-to-text transcription and tools for consumers to talk to businesses. The functionality of voice-to-text transcription is already being tested by Facebook as informed by Marcus, and it is based on machine-learning technology. People in Asia face difficulties while typing in some languages, and therefore Marcus expects the functionality to be popular there.
The system being developed by the social media giant will take time for improvement, and it will be rolled-out in several stages, and at different rates and different languages.
Facebook on monetizing Messenger
Marcus, who quit the PayPal unit of eBay to join Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), said the company is in no hurry to generate money from its Messenger app, but in the near future it will experiment with ways in which it can make the app generate money.
“We’ll try different things and hopefully we’ll find something that solves a real problem for people using the service and eventually for businesses on the other side,” he said.
Facebook is looking for inspiration from Asia on how make money from the messaging services. Marcus said that there are several messaging apps in Asia that sell content, and there are some in China that have whole ecosystems of commerce on the apps.
Apart from the main platform, the social networker owns three messaging systems; WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. According to Marcus, the company has no plans to integrate WhatsApp and Messenger as they both offer different capabilities. However, he did informed that Messenger would start making money WhatsApp.
