Slashdot Mirror
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
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?
It means whatever it is, you probably don't want it and you definitely don't need it.
It's like a commercial for some new pharmaceutical when you don't have the disease. You think, "Oh man, that's a shame that some people have to live with that kind of horror" while at the same time thinking, "I am SO glad I don't have that awful disease".
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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 been a programmer since the early 1970's, have used messaging programs since "talk" on early Unix machines, and I have no clue either.
Perhaps it is related to leveraging their synergies.
I think it means one more insecure way to buy stuff. Not sure I want to trust FB with any more of my life.
Don't step on the baby.
Can someone tell me, in English, what any of this means?
It seems to be Web 2.0 Clippy.
It looks like you're arranging a dinner. Would you like help? [x] Get help with booking a restaurant.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
How will it be any more powerful than at most an IRC bot? OK, in principle you could message an app that would send messages back and possibly to other apps. So you could have an OO message fest. Is that what they have in mind?
I read the link and I still have no idea what a 'Bot Store' is. I wrote an IRC chat bot 15 years ago, can I sell it?
Trying to hype his start up and market segment.
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.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
https://xkcd.com/1497/
Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed.
Press one if you’d like to be driven insane by something that might have been on-hold music before it was turned into horrific, distorted mush on its way to your phone.
Press two if you’d like to listen to another menu full of options that have nothing to do with why you called.
Press three if you would like to be summarily disconnected while waiting for “the next available representative.”
Press four if you would like us to kill your cellphone battery with an indefinite hold, regularly punctuated by wholly false assurances that “we really care about you and will be with you soon.”
Press five if you’d like to be directed to our website. Please be aware that our website is only partly functional and was designed by poorly paid foreigners who have neither language skills appropriate to the regions we sell our products in, or any understanding that websites should only take action, such as drop menus or pop up windows, when people actually click on buttons and links clearly intended to initiate such action.
Pulse seis si desea escuchar a estos menús en mal hablado español.
Press zero to hear these options again. Thank you for calling StupidCorp, and we look forward to taking your money and under-serving you in the future. Remember: StupidCorp. We were the ones that drove you to regular doses of Bupropion. Now you can up your dose!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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