Social networking giant Facebook is reportedly introducing new features to its Messenger in order to enable third-party app support.
The social networking site has not made any official confirmation in this regard, but is likely to announce the same soon at its F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco.
According to the sources, Facebook is going to integrate nearly 20 third-party services with its existing Messenger application.
Following the rollout, the Messenger service is expected to expand the capability to more developers.
The upcoming roll out will be the latest move by the social media site in a series of initiatives that has highly boosted and expanded the reach of Facebook Messenger in 2014, when the service was pulled out by the company as a separate app from the main Facebook app.
Even though the main motive of Facebook behind the large-scale integration of the third party is unclear till the official announcement is made, the analysts believe it is a step to offer its users with similar facilities provided by rival apps such as Line and WeChat, which also support third-party services and apps.
With such updates, the California-based social network is attempting to position its messaging app as a “separate messaging platform” which will be somewhat autonomous to the main website and provide tough competition to the rivals messaging apps.
Facebook has recently introduced friend-to-friend payment service, enabling easy transaction of funds between the Facebook friends.