When Facebook got inspired by Twitter

Facebook, what really begun as a social networking website to connect with friends and family is today one of the biggest and most in demand ‘marketing’ tools. And why won’t it be. Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg keeps coming up with features and plans that would help marketers across the globe leverage this platform for every possible marketing activities such as promotions, announcements, product launches; the platform even helps businesses start engaging conversations with its consumers.

Few months ago, Zuckerberg had announced educational tools and resources for marketers that can help them take their business to new heights leveraging the Facebook platform. And today, Facebook has announced Page Messaging, a feature that will help businesses have private communications with its consumers. To us, this feature looks way similar to the Private Messages feature available on the micro-blogging platform Twitter, which has reportedly lost more than half its value since early 2014.

However, in reality Page Messaging would enable several new things on Facebookm, such as:

1. Send private messages to a Page from local awareness ads: Businesses can now add “Send Message” call-to-action button to their ads and allow consumers to initiate private conversations with business Pages from News Feed ads.

2. Reply to comments privately with a message: Until now, Page admins could only respond to customers in the same way that the person reached out to the Page, either through a comment or private message. In the coming weeks, Page admins will be able to reply to public comments with a private message.

3. Help people identify responsive Pages: You can now identify Pages that are very responsive to private messages. Pages that respond to 90% of messages and have a median response time of less than five minutes will now have a “Very responsive to messages” badge on their profiles.

4. New tools for managing messages: To help Page admins respond faster to incoming messages, Page admins can now create and save responses to common questions. Page admins can pull up saved replies and send them in one tap, making it faster and easier to respond to customers from mobile devices. Page admins also have the option to edit saved responses before they send them. This feature again reminds us of Canned Responses feature available on Apple Watch, Gmail and others.

(Image credits: Indiatimes)