Facebook Messenger now open to third-party developers

Facebook has reportedly announced its decision to open its Messenger service to third-party developers, allowing them to add functions of their own. The move will mark the four-year-old software's final transformation from a "lightweight" messaging service, born out of Facebook, to a full-fledged "platform" of its own, reported the BBC.

Also read: Facebook mulling changing `Messenger` into content platform

The report said that at least 40 new add-on apps have already been developed so far. Among the new apps are ways to post looped animated images known as Gifs sourced from the sports TV service ESPN and elsewhere, still images from the picture hosting site Imgur, computer-generated animal cartoon messages with recorded audio via Talking Tom, forecasts from the Weather Channel service, e-cards from the humour site Jibjab and audio files from the Sound Clip.

The decision was announced by Mark Zuckerberg at his firm's F8 developers conference in San Francisco.