Meta Announces New ‘Conversations’ Business Messaging Event

Meta has announced a new ‘Conversations’ messaging conference, where it will showcase its latest innovations and coming upgrades for its messaging platforms, which cumulatively have over 2 billion users.

As per Meta:

“The way people communicate with businesses is changing – and fast. Around the world, people are messaging with businesses of all sizes to ask questions about a purchase, get helpful information like a boarding pass or hotel reservation for an upcoming trip, and browse and discuss products from a local store – all in the same way they chat with friends and family. Gone are the days of calling a 1-800 number and waiting on hold or sending an email and not knowing whether it’s been read.”

Indeed, according to Meta, there are now more than a billion people connecting with businesses via its messaging services every week.

The Conversations conference will showcase new product updates, along with technical deep-dives for developers, feature demonstrations, panels and more.

And maybe, if you’re lucky, you might even get an appearance from Zuck himself.

Given the company’s larger focus on the next stage of digital connection, in the immersive, though theoretical metaverse, some of its core functions, like messaging, seem to have gotten less focus of late, but as Meta branches into new markets, messaging, especially on WhatsApp, still facilitates important connection capacity, in a broad range of ways.

Meta’s been looking to develop this through improved business tools, including shops on WhatsApp, improved payment options on Messenger, updated functionality in Instagram Direct and more. And eventually, all of its messaging apps will be integrated, meaning all the functions available on each one will be available in the other two. That will include increased security via encryption, which Meta is still facing several regulatory challenges on, but it will also facilitate new connection capacity for brands as well, with more ways to stay in touch.

The next stage of messaging will also align with this, and as Meta looks to keep growing in newer regions, with US growth now stagnant, it could be set to unveil some interesting commerce integrations in its apps.

You can register for the ‘Conversations’ conference here.