Facebook turned its year-in-review eyes toward Messenger Platform and suggestions from M, its messaging application’s virtual digital assistant.
The social network said its 1.3 billion-plus users generate more than 2 billion conversations between people and businesses every month, and there are now more than 200,000 Messenger bots on the platform.
According to Facebook, the top five verticals for businesses on Messenger in 2017 were:
- Professional services
- Retail
- Local entertainment
- Public good
- Media
And the top five countries in terms of people messaging businesses via the app were:
- U.S.
- Brazil
- Thailand
- Mexico
- Vietnam
As for M, Facebook began testing the virtual digital assistant in August 2015 and introduced suggestions from M this past April.
Despite that short time frame, 100 million people interacted with suggestions from M in November, across 10 countries and in four languages.
Suggestions from M cover areas such as sending or requesting money, extending birthday wishes and sharing location, and Facebook said the most popular suggestion of the year was sharing stickers, with the most popular sticker pictured below.
Finally, the social network looked back at the major features it introduced for Messenger throughout 2017:
The Discover tab was introduced at F8 in April and rolled out to all U.S. users in June.
The tab allows Messenger users to search for and browse businesses’ pages and bots, and it is now available in 24 countries.
Facebook launched Chat Extensions in May as a way for multiple people to chat with the same businesses at the same time, and the feature has been embraced by brands including Apple Music, Food Network, Fandango and Pinterest.
Fandango chief marketing officer Adam Rockmore is happy to be on board, telling Adweek, “The Facebook Messenger team has been innovative and consumer-focused, and it shares our goal to connect fans with the movies whenever and wherever they are making their entertainment plans. As part of our social commerce strategy, Fandango is always looking to ways to make it easier for consumers to make plans and buy tickets during their conversations about moviegoing, and Facebook Messenger helps us do just that in an organic way.”
And the customer chat plugin, released in open beta last month, enables businesses and customers to continue their conversations across businesses’ websites and Messenger without losing history and context. It has already been deployed by Air France, KLM and Volaris.
Lisa Licht, chief marketing officer of the U.S. concerts division at Live Nation, told Adweek she finds Messenger to be “an extremely valuable tool to talk to millions of music fans,” adding that as Live Nation learns more about Messenger users’ individual music preferences, it can suggest which of the 28,000 shows per year it promotes that they are most likely to be interested in.
She said, “Most people have a friend or core concert group that they attend shows with. Live Nation’s Facebook Messenger experience leverages the platform’s extension technology, so it is easy for fans to find and plan concert outings with their friends. Concerts are social, messaging is social, so it works really well together.”
