Facebook brings apps, businesses to Messenger in face of competition from WeChat, Line

Facebook is following the lead of Asian competitors WeChat and Line in opening its Messenger service to developers, as well as allowing businesses to use the app to handle customer support queries.

The new features mark Facebook's latest effort to transform its mobile messaging service into a full-featured platform with the same pull with consumers and businesses as its flagship 1.4-billion user social network.

Facebook unveiled the new features at its annual developer conference in San Francisco, for the first time allowing developers to create apps that function inside the Messenger service used by more than 600 million people.

Messenger will feature more than 40 different apps in the next few days, allowing users to send each other sports clips, animations and other items, Facebook said.

"This is just the first step toward creating better sharing experiences across this whole family of apps," Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on stage at the conference.

Facebook has amassed a collection of mobile apps in recent years, including photo-sharing app Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired for $19 billion in 2014. But the spotlight was on Messenger during the first day of the two-day event.

Facebook hopes to turn its messaging service into one that operates independently of the company's social media network as it faces intensifying competition from Twitter and Google, as well as fast-growing messaging apps such as Snapchat and WeChat.