Introducing New Messaging and Group Features for Businesses

Today, we're kicking off the Facebook Communities Summit at our headquarters in Menlo Park. For the first time at the event, we’re hosting leaders of local businesses and nonprofit communities in addition to people leading communities in Facebook Groups, Pages and Fundraisers from across Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and the US. The Facebook Communities Summit celebrates the connections made on our platforms and the impact those connections have on strengthening communities around the world.

And now, we're introducing two new ways to make it easier for people and businesses to connect on Facebook through messaging and group participation.

Mobile messaging has become an integral part of people's lives and an increasing number of people use messaging to communicate with businesses. In fact, 150 million people on Instagram have a conversation with a business every month,¹ and on Messenger, 10 billion messages are sent between people and businesses every month.²

To help businesses manage these conversations, we're making it easier for businesses to receive and respond to customer messages across our platforms in a single location. In the coming weeks, businesses in Brazil and the US will be able to receive and respond to Instagram Direct messages from their Facebook Page Inbox on desktop and mobile through the Pages Manager app. This enables businesses to respond faster and never miss a message from a customer.

Over 90 million businesses and non-profits of all sizes are using our platforms to connect with customers and their communities. People who manage Pages find that posting and sharing stories are great ways to get the word out broadly, but many are eager to also engage with their community in more personal ways. We've heard from people that engaging with small businesses in a more intimate setting can be incredibly meaningful. Pages already have the ability to create groups to build their own communities, and in the coming weeks, Pages will be able to participate in Facebook Groups and join community discussions in a way that is representative of their business or organization.