NEW YORK (TheStreet) –– As Facebook continues to become more than just a social network, its properties, including Facebook Messenger, Oculus and others, are getting more attention. Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook made several big announcements on Wednesday, the first day of its F8 developer conference, most notably opening up its popular Messenger platform to developers to build on top of it, allowing Messenger to become its own platform. Facebook unveiled new products known as Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger, which let app makers as well as online retailers work with the messaging application to boost their own audiences or communicate with customers. Must Read: Facebook Makes the Biggest Change Ever to Messenger App As part of Messenger Platform, Facebook will have 40 partners at launch, including Disney's ESPN and Giphy, a search engine for GIF files. Apps from Facebook's partners will be featured inside Messenger, allowing users to do things such as add images and show videos. Messenger now has more than 600 million users per month. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "It's a really exciting, big new area and opportunity" for the company. Businesses on Messenger will allow online retailers to communicate with their shoppers. The feature will be available for preview during the next few weeks. During the checkout process, the shopper can select a "get real-time updates on your phone" option, which initiates a conversation thread with the business in Messenger. Facebook also unveiled video plans in an effort to take on Google's YouTube, showing off Facebook Platform, an embedded video player, which will allow every Facebook user who posts videos on Facebook to be able to embed them elsewhere.Analysts were largely positive on the announcements, as Facebook stretches its muscles all over the Internet. Here's what two of them said: JMP Securities analyst Ronald Josey (Market Outperform, $97 PT) "We reiterate our Market Outperform rating on our top pick, Facebook, and our $97 price target after attending Facebook's developer conference, F8, yesterday in San Francisco. Overall, we believe Facebook is utilizing its scale across multiple verticals and brands--WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and core Facebook--to expand engagement and capabilities. We believe the launch of the Messenger Platform and the opening of its API to third-party developers can lead to new product experiences around social, payments, and shopping. On video and publishing, we believe Facebook is in the early days of working with and hosting publisher content and we expect video to be increasingly integrated both on and off Facebook's products and services. Additional takeaways include updates on LiveRail, share gains across its brands, and updates on Parse, where Parse is increasingly becoming a core part of the developer's ecosystem." Jefferies analyst Brian Pitz (Buy, $105 PT) "F8 featured a number of announcements with a specific focus on Messenger and video. Users will soon be able to view Facebook videos (and presumably, ads) on 3rd party sites. As video usage on FB soars (~3B daily video views, up from 1B in Sept), TV ad budgets are just beginning to shift online. By '17, online video ads could be a $17B per year oppt'y in the US alone. FB looks increasingly well positioned to capture a meaningful piece of that pie." Must Read: What It Means Now That Facebook Is Serious About Taking on YouTube
Click to view a price quote on FB. Click to research the Internet industry.
from Latest TSC Headlines http://ift.tt/1Bsl3vq
No comments:
Post a Comment