Open Messenger For Developers

Facebook Opens Messenger for App Developers

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, at the company’s annual developer conference.

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook changed how 1.4 billion people share their baby photos, major life events and goofy cat videos with friends. Now it wants to change their one-on-one conversations, too.

Just as Facebook turned its social network into a bigger platform for games and group conversations, the company wants to make its instant-messaging service, now 600 million users strong, into a similar system for communications of all kinds.

On Wednesday, Facebook told app makers at its annual developer conference that it was opening up access to its Messenger app, allowing developers to piggyback their own apps on top of Facebook chats. The company showed off nearly 50 apps for Messenger that were created under the program, including one that turns text messages into songs and another that allows a user to search for and send an animated GIF to express a mood.

“Until now, we have focused on improving Messenger by building all of these features ourselves,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, told developers.

Screen shot showing the new Messenger platform from Facebook, which allows apps to integrate with Facebook Messenger so people can express themselves with GIFs, photos, videos, and audio clips.

By opening the platform, he said, Facebook wants to tap the creativity of other app makers. “We’re really excited about what you all are able to do with these fast and simple tools we are rolling out,” he said.

But Facebook’s ambitions for messaging don’t stop there. Last week, the company added a payment button to Messenger that allows users to send money instantly to their friends, and most analysts expect the company to eventually expand it to purchases from businesses.

At the developer conference, Facebook said it would soon begin testing a system to allow businesses to use Messenger to offer personalized service to customers after a purchase is made. For example, a person might be able to use Messenger to change the color of a shirt in an order or see where a package is in the UPS delivery system.

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