Slack and Telegram Messenger have a bot platform and these bots are programs that perform certain automated tasks for you. They have become quite the defining feature in the above messaging apps and it seems Facebook wants Messenger to join the club.
According to a report by TechCrunch, Facebook has apparently given some developers a Chat SDK that will allow them to build bots in Messenger, which in turn will be used by users to look for images, product prices, for booking and shopping due to the fact that it can also use Messenger’s payment system. The bots look like the ones recently announced by Telegram where users can just type their name (like @gif) and it will be ready to load the content after typing.
This move by Facebook was signaled earlier by the recent development where hailing an Uber ride was integrated right into Messenger. In addition, the Uber integration was to be used as a real time customer service tool so this could be another use of the bot service. However, this new development conflicts with Messenger’s own virtual assistant, which was to perform almost the same tasks.
So why is Facebook trying to include bots alongside Facebook M, its virtual assistant? Well, if you take the case of bots on Telegram Messenger, they are quite interesting and in turn has the potential of making the over 700 million users who use Messenger be fully vested in the platform. It has the potential of retaining users to its platform so that those people who have wanted to use bots on the platform see no need of leaving Messenger.As I said in an earlier article, Facebook Messenger is one app you need to check out this year and this is one of the signs that it will have a great year.
