By now you have most likely seen that Facebook launched its Messenger App for iOS and Android. It’s exciting news in the mobile messaging industry in what’s starting to become a crowded space with applications like iMessage, Android Messaging, BBM, and Groupme. Facebook actually built its Messaging app using assets from its Beluga acquisition.

In no particular order, here’s how this announcement will ripple through the mobile marketing world:

B-to-C Messaging

Facebook has not yet given Business Pages the ability to send messages. So unless companies start creating individual Facebook personalities, we are not at the place where companies will use Facebook Messenger to communicate with their customers. As it’s built now, Facebook Messenger is solidly established as a peer-to-peer messaging play. Whether or not Facebook Messenger poses social listening opportunities for companies is yet to be determined.

Facebook Messenger and iMessage: 

Facebook’s new app poses a significant threat to Apple’s recently announced iMessage. By allowing people on both Android and iOS access to Facebook Messenger, Facebook hits home at one of iMessage’s most glaring deficiencies.

Apple’s iMessage will thus have to offer a better user interface and more intuitive capabilities in order to compete with the Facebook offering. Though not released yet, it does seem like iMessage will have one significant user experience advantage: whereas Facebook Messenger makes you leave the App to see SMS messages, iMessage will self contain SMS messages and iMessages in one inbox.

Facebook Messenger and SMS: 

Facebook Messenger can begin to chew up carrier revenue for SMS once smartphone penetration achieves appropriate scale and a sufficient number of people start choosing to use Facebook for messaging instead of SMS. Certainly a threat, but given that neither is the case right now, not in the immediate term.

Another hurdle for Facebook Messenger arises due to Facebook’s reliance on a short code to send peer-peer messages. For those who haven’t used the Facebook Messenger platform, composing a message is very similar to writing a text message with an iPhone. You click on new message and can enter the contacts you would like to add to the message. The obvious benefit that people have access to their phone’s address book and Facebook friend list and can message multiple people at the same time.

What’s slightly misleading is the way you actually contact people. If it’s a person who is in your phone’s address book but not on Facebook you send them an SMS. If it’s a person who is a contact on Facebook but not in your phonebook you send them a Facebook message. It’s only when someone is connected to both that the app gives you a choice. The reason that this is problematic is that any SMS you send to someone arrives from Facebook’s short code, instead of from a person’s phone number.

It seems fairly obvious that people will prefer receiving direct messages from their friends rather than from a short code so that they can call people back or store as a contact in their phone.

What Will The Carriers Do

The mobile marketing industry now casts its gaze directly at the carriers, who have been sitting on enormous SMS revenues for a decade now without much pivoting. Now that applications like Facebook Messenger and iMessage seem ready to start eating the carriers’ lunch, we’re more than likely going to see some sort of competitive response. What this will look like is up for speculation, but opening standards and increasing the flexibility and power of SMS seems necessary if SMS is going to retain its title as messaging king.

An App Glut

As the apps market keep growing and growing, and the amount of time people have continues to stay the same, apps are going to continue to grow increasingly more voracious when going after users’ attention spans. It seems to me that people (ie majority of people – we know some people love apps) will grow weary of toggling between so many different messaging apps (e.g. Facebook Messaging App, an Operating System Messaging App, a Group Messaging App, SMS, MMS, Email). Thus, an app that’s most user friendly has a significant leg up from a user perspective. From a business perspective, offering people options for how they want to consumer information (i.e. CRM) will be absolutely essential.

Other Misc. UI Things I noticed: 

• When you first open the Messenger app you enter your Facebook credentials and are immediately directed to a list of all the messages in your Facebook inbox. I have mixed feelings on this feature. As a non-heavy Facebook user, I rarely access my Facebook inbox unless I don’t have someone’s email address. Thus, I was slightly put off at having to stare at Messages I haven’t read in years. I would have preferred to decide whether or not I wanted Facebook to automatically populate the Messenger App with all of the messages I have used before.
• I like how you can access your messages from both a computer and your phone.
• The log-in screen is very simple and clean. A negative is that you cannot log-in with multiple accounts or store any user name and password for quick toggling between accounts.
• There are a ton of cool features and functionality including group messaging and location services that come with the benefit of using an App environment. I am sure there are other places that will dive into the nitty gritty details, but suffice it to say that the mapping capabilities will keep heavy Facebook users busy and engaged.