Facebook is opening Messenger up to third-party apps

Facebook has been making some major changes to Messenger recently but the fact that the company will be opening it up to third-party apps is the biggest change yet. According to Mashable, the company is going to announce somewhere around 20 third-party services that will work on top of Messenger at Facebook’s upcoming F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco.

Facebook Messenger is slated to get a big overhaul. Mashable has learned Facebook plans to announce that it’s opening up Facebook Messenger to third-party apps during its upcoming F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco next week. The social network is set to announce about 20 third-party services, whose apps will work on top of Messenger when the integration rolls out, according to a person familiar with the matter. It’s not yet clear who the early partners are or what the integration will look like, but Facebook will likely expand the capability to more developers following the initial rollout. Facebook has previously announced major new features at its F8 Developer Conference and typically offers guidance, in the form of workshops and talks on the new features to developers during the event. The upcoming update to Messenger, first reported Thursday, is the company’s latest in a series of moves that have vastly expanded the reach of Messenger over the last year.