How big is the ambition of becoming a Facebook super app: Users will surf social networks, text, shop, transfer money without leaving the app

Mark Zuckerberg makes users who are already addicted to Facebook even more addicted, making it a scary “killing machine”.

Mark Zuckerberg has announced a feature that allows users to buy products directly on Facebook and Instagram. This is said to be a great ambition of Mark Zuckerberg, shifting focus from social networking applications to “super applications” – combining everything including messaging, shopping and money transfer.

Accordingly, businesses can create a Facebook Shop, completely free – just download, sort the product, select a background image and adjust the color. Customers can then browse, save and order products.

If there is a model for what Facebook is trying to build, it could be Tencent’s WeChat, the largest social network in China. There are a few key differences between the two products, but their end goal is the same: A unique, extraordinary network that can be used to serve users of all sorts of different services from Mobile payments, shopping to play games or work.

A scary time-killing machine

In China, Wechat is called “everything application” thanks to the force of 800 million mobile phone users: It is a game application, a bank, a car ordering service, food delivery, buying shopping. It is also available in other regions, making their monthly active user base over 1 billion people.

Due to such dominance and popularity, WeChat has become a desirable role model but not easy to copy with any social networking company including Facebook.

However it is specific in China. The worldwide market is yet another problem. Because of some legal barriers that Facebook cannot penetrate into the Chinese market, but globally, they have 2.6 billion users and this is an impossible leverage to help ambition become ” super apps ”.

In fact, a few years ago Facebook secretly revealed its plans. It was 2012 and 2014 when they acquired Instagram and Whatsapp. Since then, Instagram and WhatsApp have left no direct competitors, Messenger has assumed most of the responsibility for becoming an application platform that can integrate everything of Facebook.

In a half-decade development history, Messenger has started to let users play games, chat with AI, integrate AR camera features, mobile payments and many other features besides messaging, so that users can use Messenger as a “mini-Facebook”.

In 2014, the company hired David Marcus – an extremely successful digital payment entrepreneur – PayPal founder to run Messenger. That is the clearest signal that Facebook’s ambition to turn the platform into a service provider.

Now, with the new Facebook Shop feature, which allows users to make direct purchases, Mark can create a WeChat version outside of China. It can be a dreadful time-killing machine, enticing users to stick with apps that not only text or chat, this tool can serve other purposes in people’s daily lives. Consumers like entertainment, news and commerce.

Facebook owns a few advantages to help turn that ambition into instant. Around the world, Facebook and WhatsAppl are the most used social networks, surpassing Snapchat, Twitter, Viber and other applications.

Of course, some problems will arise. Incorporating everything into one app could be a concern for the European Council. The US House of Representatives will also wonder if Facebook is too exclusive or not.

In addition, a super application can also cause Facebook to witness slower user growth, they will have to rely more on advertising revenue, strategies to deal with lawmakers. However, with the latest announcements, it seems that Facebook is ready to take on all those challenges!

Source : Techtalk