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Facebook’s chat app “Messenger” now has over 900 million users, which is a result of their aggressive effort at forcing users off their main app if they wanted to chat with their friends and family. Now, the social network is forcing users off of the browser version of their chat, which is one way that users have found to circumvent Facebook’s relentless campaign to force users to download and install “Messenger.” Based on the recent quarterly reports, it seems that Mark Zuckerberg’s company got a lot out of the choices they are making.
As Fortune notes, Facebook has been delivering the goods for investors for a long time now. For this quarter, the social network raked in revenue for a 59 percent increase and shares went up by 6 percent. Facebook users are now at 1.71 billion as well, which is an increase of 15 percent. This presents a lot of opportunities to just pile on ad revenue, but only if the social media company can maintain their momentum.
According to Fortune, some investors are already expecting that Facebook will see a slowdown in ad spending because tech startups are also slowing down. More than that, there are fears that perhaps investors have become a little too overzealous with their expectations, which the social network might not be able to deliver.
On that note, Bloomberg points out that there are several Aces up Facebook’s sleeves that can potentially bring in some big bucks. With “WhatsApp,” “Facebook Live,” and “Messenger” still in their incubation phase as far as monetization goes, the social network could still potentially have several Golden Geese in the pond.
Speaking of “Messenger,” The Washington Post reports that Facebook is being very aggressive in eliminating every opportunity for mobile users to not download the app. Anyone who tries to chat with friends using Facebook on a mobile browser will be redirected to a download page after being told that their conversations are being moved to “Messenger.”
At this rate, anyone who wants to chat with their friends on Facebook will have no choice but to use “Messenger” or resort to other chat options.
