Facebook for Business

Facebook isn’t just about posting holiday pictures and videos or catching up with friends and family. It’s as popular with business networking circles as it’s with teens and youngsters. So after a slew of updates for youth, Facebook has launched a suite of tools designed to help Facebook users more easily communicate with businesses using Messenger.

Vice president of messaging products David Marcus said in a post-Thursday morning that Messenger now has more than 900 million monthly active users and that more than 1 billion messages are sent each month between Messenger users and businesses or pages.

As part of the new changes, businesses will now see their Facebook page usernames being more heavily promoted across the site, and they’ve been given two new ways for people to begin chatting with them - Messenger Links, which are short URLs, and scannable Messenger Codes.

Like a regular URL, you can share it anywhere online to direct people straight to a Messenger chat. They’re all formatted as m.me/yourusername,’ making you easily searchable to people outside your friends’ group. This should be of particular interest to business owners, who are now having more conversations with customers than ever using Facebook’s platform.

Then there is a Snapchat-inspired feature called Messenger Code that shows the user’s profile photograph with circles and dots surrounding it. Simply scan the Messenger Code with your smartphone camera to start a chat within Messenger.

The whole idea is that businesses can rely on the Messenger platform for at least some of their customer service efforts. At this point, not all businesses with a Facebook presence have made Messenger a priority, and these new features could be a turning point for the platform.

Importantly, Messenger Links, Codes, and Usernames are also available to regular users, not just businesses. For the non-business folks, Facebook is promoting the new features as an easier way to share contact information and find friends.

Last but not the least, Facebook is also adding Messenger Greetings, which are customizable notes from a business that pop up in a new message thread before messages are sent. It could turn out to be an opportunity for businesses to set the tone for their brand and give people an idea of what to expect.