WOW. This could be iOS 3rd party keyboards done right. Awesome to see Giphy, Ultratext, and to.be Camera supporting this on launch.

Big day, which marks a big shift away from the focus being on the main social network and now being on Messenger. It seems to me like Messenger is the focus here on out and with this new platform I can see that it might get bigger than the core service ever was.

Interesting that in order to be a featured partner, an application must: - Make your app exclusively for Messenger. - Limit sharing actions to Messenger’s Send button and Save to Camera Roll. - Make any editing and composition tools lightweight. - Minimize the number of steps between opening and sending. - Use Messenger Send button whenever you initiate a send to Messenger. - See Brand Guidelines. This seems like a lot of control for an application developer to cede. Facebook will have to measure and demonstrate very high value in exchange for exclusive distribution rights. Source: https://developers.facebook.com/...

I deleted the Facebook app from my phone a few months ago, but kept Messenger. I don't use Messenger often (iMessage typically does the trick), but it comes in handy since Facebook is a much larger contacts manager than my phone. Really excited to see what people come up with.

This is big for Messenger and FB. The foundation's been set, and now it's time to build. Super underrated app. I wonder if this would've been much trickier if Messenger stayed within the FB app.

Great defensive move by FB to combat Line's planned US expansion. A lot of cool integrations already in place and so many more are possible. A little concerned with the third-party app discovery quickly becoming too convoluted and noisy (looks like it's there already IMO). As makers try to tap into the 600M FBM users, is FB going to have to create a secondary "app store" within FBM to organize all the integrations?

Very curious to see how this marketplace shapes up. Could this be as big as the App Store/Google Play? Bigger with the direct tie-in to businesses/customer support?

This is massive.. Especially if you have a socially viral product. As we're working on SexTech startup, We plan on using this to let users invite their friend/partner privately. Email is cumbersome. Twitter is public. This is where millennials spend their time now: Messenger, Line, Whatsapp and Wechat. Oh. And Whatsapp. Think they'll have cross platform integration at some point?

Messenger is a bridge to context and the ultimate goal of a remote control for the people, places and things around you.

Huge. Looking forward to the folks at FB opening this up to more content types than images, video and audio.

Plain old boring photo sharing is so last year! Share your photos with Puzzly to challenge your friends, and to make them work for your selfies. Integrated with FM https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/...

I think one of the most underrated pieces of this is the live chat for business opportunity. A major issue with live customer chat on web and mobile is that the user has to stay connected to your client to keep the conversation going. A lot users disconnect and you lose them, if it goes back to messenger it becomes asynchronous. Of course, this assume Facebook has enough user trust for a potential customer to verify their FB id.

It seems more like adding Messenger to existing apps than building apps truly on "top" of Messenger. It only allows existing iOS or Android apps to add Messenger as an extra feature, rather than, say, something like "Magic" which would operate entirely on the platform separate from any app.

This is HUGE. Facebook messenger has taken over email and texting for me in a lot of cases, and it looks like it's about to take over a lot more.

This has certainly changed my entire experience with Messenger. I used to use Whatsapp much more than Messenger to communicate with friends and family because it is simple and to the point. However, it's always been important to me to share rich content, and the messenger platform now enables us to do this very nicely. Furthermore, we will be getting top ranked apps to do this now. I hope that the recommendation engine of the apps is crowd-curated, based on our preferences and not placed through payments (SEM style) though, this will surely make the whole experience much much better. Nice one. Already downloaded: Giphy, Stickered and played with Mindie as well.

Everlane is already doing a great job with their Facebook Messenger bot. Instead of email notifications for the receipt and for shipment tracking, it is done through Messenger. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryan...

Businesses are already built on Instagram, Facebook groups and Facebook Events. Tight integration with messenger is the logical next step - 'your uber is arriving now', 'your package from Amazon is shipped', etc. etc.

Amazing. I would much rather build on Apple's platform instead of FB's.

All should definitely check getmonkey.io one of the new keyboards coming!

This is really excellent!