2017 was a good year for Facebook Messenger, as the social network’s own-brand messaging app grew to 1.3 billion monthly active users.
However, its boss David Marcus has admitted to one downside in his annual blog post predicting trends for the year ahead.
“Over the last two years, we built a lot of capabilities to find the features that continue to set us apart. A lot of them have found their product market fit; some haven’t,” he wrote.
“While we raced to build these new features, the app became too cluttered. Expect to see us invest in massively simplifying and streamlining Messenger this year.”
Expect hollering from marketers if that streamlining process affects their use of Messenger to reach customers and fans.
Marcus’ full post is worth a read though: among the trends for 2018 he identifies are even more ‘realtime’ communication features following strong growth for voice and video chats last year on Messenger; and that visual messaging will “fully explode” in 2018.
“People will expect a super fast and intuitive camera, video, images, GIFs, and stickers with almost every conversation. Even in the workplace where conversations can be more serious, we see people embracing emojis and video to help drive a point home,” he wrote.
“Not only will you see more from Messenger in visual messaging this year, but this is where the industry is heading, and we won’t be looking back.”
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