Project “Lightspeed”.
It’s an awesome name, right?
But what is it?
At F8 this year Facebook announced a number of changes for the Messenger platform. Those changes were the first steps to making Messenger lighter, faster, and more user friendly.
Well, Facebook have now followed up on those initially mentioned F8 changes and released a slew of updates that will be effective from Aug 15th, 2019.
Here’s Facebook’s complete breakdown of what’s going to be changing.
These items won’t render on the new app
- Location quick reply will no longer be rendered! This means people won’t be able to respond with a “Send location” button (seen below). Facebook recommend you ask the user for their zip code and address within the chat instead.
- Share Button will no longer render in Messenger. Instead, Facebook recommends you use the Messenger forward function.
These features won’t function with the new app
- Begin share flow Messenger extension SDK – Facebook are removing the function allowing businesses to trigger a Messenger share experience from a webpage. Developers (that’s us!) are able to offer a workaround where generating a link using the context of the webview so the user can copy and share via Messenger.
- Share to Messenger SDK – Users will no longer be able to share links from apps to Messenger. However, users will be able to share using their device’s native sharing features.
- Messenger Codes – Messenger codes are being sunsetted. You’ll no longer be able to scan these codes to trigger a conversation. You will, however, be able to use a devices native scan feature of QR codes with m.me links.
These items will render differently in the new app
- Vertical list templates are being removed. Instead, those vertical lists will be rendered as horizontal carousel images. If you’re not sure what that means, it’s turning the first image below into the second.
- Nested menu is having support removed. The nested menu that appears within Messenger is going to be switched out for a flat list.
- Open Graph template is also having support removed. These are the little media features that allow you to play music direct in Messenger. From August 15th, they’re going to be replaced with a redirect to the source of the audio.
Messenger Bot Reviews will be removed on August 15, 2019. These allowed people to leave a rating for your bot. Page owners are losing the visibility of those ratings for the app and page within the page settings.
That’s the update!
As mentioned, these will be pushed live from August 15th. there’s not a lot you as a marketer have to change. However, you should still keep an eye on these and see if there is anything you need to do.
We’ll be pushing the changes to accommodate these changes within Jumper by mid-July so, if you’re a Jumper user, you’ll have this sorted well in advance.