It’s been a big month in social updates!

Earlier this month, the merge of Facebook Messenger and Instagram direct messaging began rolling out. So while they’re separate Apps, the personal data feeding them now lives in one big shared database, which is fab from a marketing perspective as we can leverage a larger pool of data for targeted advertising. It’s a clear play to take market share from platforms like Snapchat (popular with teenagers) or iMessage (big in the US).

There are now 10+ new features including ‘vanish’ where messages disappear (echoing Snapchat features). There have also been changes to the Messenger API, so you can now integrate Instagram messaging into more applications.

The next major release is Facebook Business Suite, so if you had just gotten your head around Facebook Business Manager, prepare for it to all change. You’ll be able to schedule posts to both Facebook AND Instagram (doing away with third-party services) and manage all your notifications, messages and insights from both platforms in the one place.

You can fast track your access by downloading the Business Suite App if you don’t have browser access just yet. So if your pages have been glitchy of late, blame the major changes going on in the background and avoid throwing the mouse out the window in frustration just yet… because good things are on the way.