Facebook, Messenger, Instagram & WhatsApp - The Next Chapter

Each year Facebook have their own developer conference named F8, a time to address their development community (and the press) on the services, direction and opportunities ahead for Facebook and it’s owned properties. There’s lots going on here but what’s really of interest is the changes ahead that impact business. This year, was huge... This years keynote delivered by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, not only heavily references the new approach to privacy being embedded at Facebook (topic for another time), but introduced the next chapter in Facebook; the new direction that Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp are taking as Facebook evolves to remain on top.

A New Chapter

There’s been plenty change at Facebook over the years, non so big at F8 2019. With privacy concerns plaguing the company and new negative fallouts happening regularly, it was clear the company needed to make a change. Social media is not just about it’s users, it seriously BIG business and remaining relevant and trustworthy is important. Over the last few years, Facebook and Instagram has been a huge opportunity for businesses prepared to invest. Over time the gap between those businesses winning on Social Media and not has gotten wider and wider with some businesses complaining that their reach was gone and others embracing ad platforms and quality, engaging content to reach prospects and audiences like never before. But user behaviour has been changing. With the growth of messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, users were engaging elsewhere and not on their social media timelines. THIS is where Facebook have pointed their sights, pointing the company and all of their social media properties towards the next chapter of user interaction and engagement on social media and online.

Let’s Talk Business

Whilst the big statements and coverage at F8 was around changes to design and features of Facebook and Messenger, it was clear to me that Facebook have aligned their properties very carefully and in a way that very much supports business. For simplicity, let’s split this into three pillars:

Wide Community
Close Circles
Business Engagement

In order to build a success social media platform, you have to support these three principles. Facebook has always done this in one way or another on the services but their announcements at F8 change everything. Instead of covering these areas as appropriately as possible within each service, they are updating how each service operates to better focus and fit like never before. To put it in a way that’s easier to follow, let’s take those three pillars in a different way...

Wide Community – Facebook
Close Circle – Messenger
Business Engagement – WhatsApp

THIS is what I was hearing during Mark’s F8 Keynote and I haven’t been more excited by this since Facebook introduced the Ad platform. This seriously is a new chapter for Facebook, and also for business!