Facebook on Monday announced it's releasing a preview of a brand new children-focused Messenger app in the United States which parents can remotely monitor and manage using a set of appropriately designed parental controls.
Facebook's Messenger service has gained a new Apple Music chat extension for recommendations, song sharing and more. You don't need to be an Apple Music subscriber to listen to and share 30-second clips from any track you discover within the Messenger app.
Ads on Facebook's popular mobile chatting app, Messenger, are now available to advertisers globally, the company said today. Advertisers and brands will be able to add Messenger to their campaigns using existing tools and targeting options.
“A small percentage of people will begin to see ads in their Messenger Home tab towards the end of this month as we build ads inventory,” said Facebook. The social network will gradually extend Messenger ads to more people over the coming months.
Facebook company began injecting ads into people’s conversations on Messenger in the second quarter of 2016. Messenger lets brands send ads as messages to those who previously interacted with that company using the Messenger app.
Only folks who have voluntarily chatted with a business can be sent ads, for now.
https://messenger.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/video-1499474456-1.mp4
When you tap an ad in Messenger's Home tab, you'll be sent to the destination the advertiser chose during the ad's creation, which can be either their official website or a Messenger chat.
The suite of Messenger ads also include sponsored messages and click-to-Messenger ads.
Sponsored messages let business re-engage with people who have started a conversation with them while click-to-Messenger ads drive users to a conversation after they interact with the ad in Facebook, Instagram or Messenger.
As part of celebrating its two billion monthly active users milestone, Facebook on Monday unveiled new video chat features for its mobile Messenger app, such as the beautifully animated reactions, interactive filters, masks and effects. “Video chats with your friends and family in Messenger just got a whole lot more fun,” said the firm.
You can use these new video features in one-on-one video calls, as well as in your group video conversations. The new capabilities let you easily share your emotions during a video call with one of the five Facebook reactions, alter your appearance (how about making your friend laugh with a bear mask?) by taking advantage of the many built-in filters and much more.
I like how reactions animate onto the screen and then disappear.
Many reactions have different versions, depending on whether your face is on or off the screen. For instance, tap the love reaction when the camera is facing you, then tap it again when the camera is facing outward to see the difference.
A variety of in-call filters are now available to Messenger users, ranging from subtle lighting tweaks to color changes, like black and white, red or yellow. Each one has a live preview so you can test it on yourself before letting others see it. Many new masks are available for video calls, too, including some with hidden effects that react to your facial movements.
From the Facebook blog:
We have also added animated effects, like falling hearts and twinkling stars, to give your video chats expressive flair. Check out what happens when you wave your arm in front of the camera while using one of those effects! Unlike reactions, masks and effects stay on the screen for the duration of the video chat (or until you take them off or switch to another one).
One of the best new in-call video features is the screenshotting ability.
During an one-on-one or group video call with one or more friends, tap the camera icon at the bottom to take a screenshot of your time together and share it with other friends via Messenger Day or other social media accounts
The image of your video conversation will be saved to your iPhone's Camera roll. Plus, you can quickly send the screenshot to the person or group that you’re video chatting with.
Check out the new Messenger video features in Facebook's video embedded below.
Earlier today, Microsoft started rolling out a much redesigned Skype for iPhone with a Snapchat-like Stories feature, dubbed Highlights.
Moreover, Skype for iPhone now lets you talk to Cortana and other chat bots, as well as post message and in-call reactions by adding huge emoticons, live text and photos with drawings to an overlay that appears on top of the call.
Facebook Messenger is available free on App Store.
Facebook today kicked off its annual F8 conference for developers with a bunch of announcements, including game bots and turn-by-turn games on Messenger, plus a food-ordering feature via the company's M personal assistant. According to Facebook, Messenger users have played over 1.5 billion games in just the last 90 days.
Facebook at last year's F8 brought scannable profile codes to the mobile Messenger app, making it a cinch to add a person you've just met as your Messenger contact. At F8 2017 this week, the company is introducing parametric QR codes on the Messenger platform to help facilitate content discovery in the physical world.
Facebook’s annual developers conference, F8, is underway this week and the social networking firm just announced that its mobile Messenger app is gaining a new tab to help users find their recently used bots, nearby places and businesses to message. Titled Discover, the new tab has started to roll out to a few people in the US today ahead of wider availability.
Apple has offered an Apple Music API for some time now and Facebook leveraged it to integrate the service with Music Stories, a song-sharing feature available within its mainland iOS app. Soon, Apple Music will integrate with the Messenger platform, too (currently used by more than 1.2 billion people every month). At the F8 conference today, the social networking behemoth announced that Spotify integration will be available on Messenger at launch and Apple Music real soon.
Facebook announced this morning that sending or receiving money between groups of people is now supported on the Messenger service. The social networking company debuted peer-to-peer payments on Messenger in March 2015. The new group payments feature, currently limited to users in the United States, is available starting today on Messenger for Android and via the company's desktop app at messenger.com. Group mobile payments will be coming to Messenger for iPhone and iPad at a later stage.
Facebook Messenger users who try to set the app up on a new Apple Watch might find themselves plagued with problems loading the app. Similar problems affect Apple Watch users that aren't new, but rather have un-paired and reconfigured the device after troubleshooting problems with it.
There appears to be a significant bug in the Facebook Messenger app, and while the direct cause of the issue is unknown, there's a quick fix for getting your Facebook Messenger conversations to load properly on your Apple Watch, and we’ll show you how it's done it in this tutorial.
As part of today's rollout of Facebook's AI-powered personal assistant to all users in the United States, the social networking company mentioned that you should now start seeing a redesigned message compose interface within the mobile Messenger app. We first caught wind of this new iOS 10 Messages-style chat experience two months ago.
At the time, Facebook was still testing the redesign with a small percentage of users. The new way to compose messages is currently rolling out to Messenger users across the globe so check back in a few days if it's currently unavailable to you.
Facebook today announced that M, its AI-powered personal assistant in the mobile Messenger app, is now available to everyone in the United States with a new suggestions feature. Suggestions from M appear when it recognizes intent in a conversation. Initially, M will suggest about half a dozen actions, including getting a ride via Lyft or Uber, paying or requesting money, sending stickers and more. M is launching today to all iOS and Android users in the U.S. and will eventually roll out to other countries.