Facebook Messenger Won't Require FB Account; Could It Spell Trouble For Twitter?
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) announced recently that users don't need to sign up or have accounts to use the Facebook Messenger service.
Sascha Segan, lead mobile analyst at PCMag, was on CNBC Thursday to weigh in on this and discuss how this move could impact Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR).
Wants To Harvest Information And Data
"Facebook really wants to be the way people and businesses message each other, and it really has text messaging in its sites," Segan began.
"It wants to through its complementary brands – Facebook mostly in the U.S. and WhatsApp, which is really strong in like Asia and Latin America – it wants to kill off traditional SMS text-messaging and be able to harvest a lot of the information and data and personality that goes through those messaging systems for its own use."
Going After Twitter's Strength
Segan was asked how this move will impact Twitter. He replied, "Well, Facebook and Twitter are absolutely passionate enemies. Twitter has a real strength in business-to-consumer messaging. The whole Twitter customer service situation and that's an area where Facebook hasn't been strong up until now and, I think, with the new move that's an area that Facebook really wants to hone in on."
General Purpose Messaging Brand
On whether Facebook will be able to succeed in the messaging service space with this new initiative, Segan said, "I think that Facebook is in a very strong position to extend Messenger even further, and I think it's going to be very interesting to see Facebook changing from this very sort of 'this is your personality, this is your life' brand into a general purpose messaging brand."
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