It seems as though there’s no avenue Amazon won’t go down and with the latest news, the eCommerce giant isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
Given the popularity of Facebook’s Messenger app, Amazon is dipping its toes into the instant messenger (IM) market with its new stand-alone messaging application. Dubbed Anytime, Amazon is hoping to increase its engagement with consumers by allowing them to not only chat via text and video but send photos and play games. This new messaging service is going to be available on smartphones, tablets, PCs and smart watches.
Currently, Amazon has been soliciting feedback on the chat app through a survey. Some of the features of the Anytime Messenger app include the ability to connect without using phone numbers and privacy via encrypted messages.
While there may be internal use cases in the past, Anytime Messenger isn’t the initial foray for the eCommerce giant into communication efforts for consumers, with Alexa Calling being just one example. And while Amazon has certainly made small moves over the past decade to acquire companies with social networking aspects, it has yet to truly implement them.
The Anytime IM messaging app, however, may be a good first step into the social media arena.