Facebook acquired the photo-sharing app Instagram in 2012; however, many people would not know it because of how separate the platforms have been. But that is changing in a huge way, at least for the corporate world, reports TechCrunch.
Facebook making life easier for business managers
Evidently, small-to-medium-sized businesses and social media directors for businesses had a difficult time managing the separate Facebook, Messenger and Instagram accounts all at the same time. In fact, some have been juggling a number of phones to make it all work, notes Adweek. Facebook’s universal inbox will assist in managing communications for all three platforms via the Facebook Pages app.
Benji Shomair, global head of pages at Facebook, said, “Some people have been flipping through different apps to manage their various presences. Other people would actually have multiple phones open.”
In addition, social media managers can get a better sense of the user’s history. They will see the user’s publicly available Instagram or Facebook profile and will know if they have spoken before or not. They can also apply labels to know if the concerns of the user are particularly urgent or not.
One-stop solution for all publicly-available data
Facebook’s unified Pages Manager inbox allows businesses to see and reply to their Instagram, Facebook and Messenger interactions in one place. So if a user complains about a faulty product in his Instagram account, then they are just as likely to be answered as if they sent a scathing Messenger message, notes Engadget.
Universal Inbox will also allow businessmen to take note of reviews, direct messages and comments written by users on Facebook’s platforms more easily. Additionally, page managers can use their cursor to tap the profile of a user to see publicly-available data. This will give businesses better insights on how to communicate with apotential customer.
Shomair said, “It’s a relatively simple story where we are trying to save businesses time.”
People using Pages Manager will see the new inbox available within the coming weeks, and it will soon spread to other devices. The main question is why regular users can’t check their Instagram interactions via Facebook and whether they will ever see anything similar to this. Nevertheless, the latest change is a good sign, as it shows that the social networking site is aware of at least some situations in which its platforms require stronger integration.
