Facebook Adds Business Angle to Messenger

Facebook’s F8 Conference kicked off this week, with several exciting announcements designed to help businesses connect with their consumers on a deeper level.

An update to Facebook’s Messenger platform, Businesses on Messenger will allow customers to communicate directly with companies in a single message thread.

In addition to providing immediate customer service support, this program gives customers the option to receive online orders/shipping information and push notifications when new products are available.

Another development was Facebook’s Analytics for Apps, a new marketing tool that allows app developers to see how their audience is interacting with their app, specifically in terms of engagement and conversion rates.

Using aggregated demographic reporting, this feature tracks customer activity throughout the purchasing process.

Companies can use this information to adjust current marketing plans in order to better reach their target audience.

Other announcements include enhanced plug-ins for embedded videos and comments, as well as support for spherical videos in the newsfeed.

Facebook is in the process of expanding LiveRail, the video ad platform, and will allow mobile publishers to manage a variety of ad types and improve audience targeting.

Parse will also include new tools to help programmers to build apps (like analytics, push notifications, and collecting crash data) — so developers only need to worry about building their apps.

Keep up with the latest news from the F8 Conference here.