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Facebook's Messenger Bot Store Could Be Most Important Launch Since App Store (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes from an opinionated article on TechCrunch by Tom Hadfield: If Facebook announces the "Messenger Bot Store" at F8, as many predict, it would be arguably the most consequential event for the tech industry since Apple announced the App Store and iPhone SDK in March 2008. Today, Facebook Messenger has 800 million monthly active users -- more than 100 times the number of iPhone owners when Apple launched the App Store. In January, TechCrunch first reported rumors of Facebook's secret Chat SDK for building Messenger bots. If and when Facebook announces a Bot Store, it will mark the "end of the beginning" of a new era: messaging as a platform. Over the summer, The Information broke the news that AI-powered Facebook M would enable Messenger users to make purchases, restaurant reservations, and travel bookings within the messaging interface. A Messenger Bot Store would have far-reaching consequences not only for entrepreneurs and investors, but also developers and designers. Sam Lessin, the CEO of Fin, says the rise of chat-based user interfaces will mark "a fundamental shift that is going to change the types of applications that get developed and the style of service development." For a time, bots were perceived to be plain-text exchanges and as such were often described as "invisible apps." As Jonathan Libov at USV points out, "just because the container is a messenger doesn't mean that all the apps inside are text-based." Tomaz Stolfa says there is "unexplored potential in blending conversational interfaces with rich graphical UI elements." If 800 million Facebook users start discovering bots in Messenger after F8, it will vindicate those who have been saying bots are the new apps.
What?
Facebook Messenger is Emacs in disguise?
Let's find a way to organize bots into committees. That'll do them in.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Maybe this is me wanting the kids off my lawn, but I don't think I've ever wanted a technology launch to fail so badly. The potential for abuse and bloat is just enormous.
Finding God in a Dog
Wow, a new way to make purchases, restaurant reservations, and travel bookings! Truly, the new beginning.
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth...
Stolfa says there is "unexplored potential in blending conversational interfaces with rich graphical UI elements."
Kill. Me. Now.
--
BMO
Can someone tell me, in English, what any of this means?
I only have a face book account so that someone else can't register an account in my name and spew god knows what.
With a message chat bot, face book might become usable! It can reply to messages, post random links to tech stuff and read other people's dribble so that I don't every have to log on. I can finally continue to do what I'm not doing already! Non-problem officially solved.
...but will this improve my connection speed?
Nobody trusts Facebook. It's only popular because they have so many users. Plus, who wants to type crap into their phone just to order something?
Because messenger is part of the facebook page, everyone on facebook uses it? Someone is very optimistic... Facebook will get financial information out of my cold, dead, hands.
That's one of the best analogies I've heard in a long time! +1
Elaborating further with another analogy to highlight that the problem isn't with the messaging:
- Messaging is good, but putting a tiara on a turd won't turn it into a princess.
...with the whole VR/life-like thing. Computers are part of life. GUIs are part of life. We don't need to simulate something else - something worse. If you want to order something, it's way easier to make a few clicks than type out - or even speak - ambiguous instructions.
I'd rather work with humans on the other end of a chat interface like this:
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/...
I wonder if FB "AI" is going to be like the Netflix "AI" that did the recommendations engine - based on human intelligence.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I've read the summary. Something about buying stuff chat interfaces and buying stuff? Massaging as platform? Invisible apps? Blue swirly thing? Anyone want to put this in English?
(or not... just a passing curiosity)
A horrible accident happens--they try to integrate Farmville into this and... Oh no... He bot the farm. Thanks. I'll see myself out.
This is pure hype, none of these apply to 98% of the world...
so irc is gonna take the world over?? haha...
Also, you forgot the obligatory wired longread.
Trying to hype his start up and market segment.
First we visited a local store a bought something in person. Then we mailed in a request for information, received it, then mailed in an order. Then comes along the phone and we call a company, tell the person what we wanted, and they put in the order for us. Next we can visit a company's website, view all the products, and put in the order our self. A few years later, we get little chat pop-ups from bored phone operators wanting to know if we need help with the website (after we already learned to use the web, but then companies decided to make their sites harder to use so now we need help with them). Then some people send a specific message to a specific number to let a company know they wanted one specific item.
And now, Facebook is going to change the world, change the landscape of how people and companies do business together. Change it by letting you type your order in on your tiny phone keyboard to an automated, text-based menu system. And they have a vision, a bold new vision of the future, where sometimes the text-based menu system will respond with pictures instead of text. Maybe they'll even go as far as displaying a "Buy" button the user can use by typing "click Buy" or perhaps the user can drag an image of an apple from their set of images and the menu will order an apple from whomever pay Apple the most to be the preferred apply supplier. After after that magical step of looking at graphics instead of text, you'll be able to go to a virtual store where you can pay for the privilege of typing to a different company's menu (who also had to pay to get make available their menu). I wonder if this virtual store will be text based or not.
WOW! I'm sure they're going to make a ton of money off this and I'm not being sarcastic. This is a sad fact of life, marketing wins above everyone else. I wonder how many patents they've got on their new system.
I'd like to predict the future. After everyone is using this text-based-but-everyone-only-uses-images system, Apple will roll out an upgrade that lets you write text using your finger or some type of pointed device instead of typing. This way you can order through writing or drawing. At some point someone will come out with a system that lets you take a picture of the item you want to buy, then it buys it for you while guessing which preferred corporate partner sells the closest looking item.
So basically, Facebook will provide a command-line interface to lots of services. I will not use it because Facebook, but I like the direction this is heading.
The end of the world? blending conversational interfaces with rich graphical UI elements is scary? I suppose it depends how you use it.
Yes, I realize that we are in a sort of difficult period in computing. There are still a lot of us that remember learning programming as kids, and it was high tech and new - and the only way to interact with computers. And yet there is a huge percentage of people under 24 which have absolutely no idea how technology works; I'd put them in a lower class than my mother who is in her 70s. She realizes that she has no idea how it works and that bothers her. Where as the 22 year old (real person) who doesn't understand what has gone wrong when the email on his computer isn't sync'd with his phone simply decides not to use the computer anymore for email, and figures he'll buy a new one someday and that will probably fix it.
We're going back to the 1970s, folks. These bots (what a horrible name) will bring back the historic travel agency model, where you are steered towards what you are looking for, and you just have to hope and trust that the agent handing you glossy brochures knows what the fuck they're doing and isn't screwing you on the price. If there's enough competition that the prices stay mostly in parity with keyboard-based bookings, it will simply be one more separation of the tech from the user. AI for the win. Or it could be like modern advertising on the web, and anyone who has a clue does their best to block out as much of it as possible because nearly all of it is predatory.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Who wants a point and click app, when you can have a textual conversation in Facebook messenger. I mean, it is so much quicker to type out a block of text and hope a bot can figure out what I am saying than it is to click an icon. WTF. The only way something like this could work, is if "OK Google" and Siri could take direct commands like "OK Google, I need to book a flight to CLE from STL tommorow on United Airlines" But Again, I would bet that Google and Apple are working on their own concoction for that as we speak.
China has had WeChat Pay and quite a few other integrated functions (e.g. adding minutes to phone card) for quite some time. It even allows one to send money to other WeChat users, assuming both have a linked bank account.
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https://xkcd.com/1497/
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Tomaz Stolfa says there is "unexplored potential in blending conversational interfaces with rich graphical UI elements."
Rich graphical UI elements, like ads?
Try it! Library of Babel