, Columnist
Facebook Fills the Messenger
The company must find the right activity to make money without turning off users.
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Facebook has changed the way people communicate and turned private activities like family vacations into semipublic events. For its next behavior-molding trick, Facebook is making over its Messenger app into a hub for commercial activity.
Facebook is treading carefully, but it is still at a delicate point where Messenger could be the company's next world-changing moneymaker or its biggest flop.