Facebook opens Messenger to third-party apps

Facebook Messenger will be opened up to third-party developers, marking its four-year journey from a “lightweight” app into a comprehensive “platform”.

Opening up the tool will allow third-party developers to add functions of their own within the app.

More than 40 add-on apps have already been developed.

Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the move at his firm’s F8 developers conference in San Francisco, saying that allowing other social networks and services to directly post to it would make “conversations better”.

Zuckerberg also revealed plans to launch a ‘Business on Messenger’ extension  – a way for the public to interact with companies.

The apps expansion follows Facebook’s move to allow US-based users to send money to and from friends via Messenger.

However, some feel that opening Messenger up to third-party’s could crowd the service.

“There’s a potential risk that they are going to overload Messenger with too many functions and none of them become that important – it really depends on how extensive they get with the features that they add over time,” said Brian Blau from the Gartner tech consultancy.

“We have seen something like that happen with Facebook’s Timeline, where you have all these different people competing for your attention.

“So, Facebook won’t want to over-bloat, but it could enable all kinds of interesting scenarios where you can integrate messaging with other apps and services.”