Social media giant Facebook has released a chatbot API which is aimed at businesses that want to communicate with customers through Facebook Messenger with in-context automated responses. It’s all part of the company’s new Messenger Platform. Here’s what developers and businesses need to know.
Image: Facebook Messenger bots
Despite Microsoft’s Tay tweetbot going rogue, Facebook is determined to convince the world that bots can be a viable tool for businesses to drive deeper engagement with customers. And what better way to do this than through its Messenger app, which is used by over 900 million people and 50 million businesses?
Here’s what Facebook’s bots for the Messenger Platform can do, according to the company:
Bots can provide anything from automated subscription content like weather and traffic updates, to customised communications like receipts, shipping notifications, and live automated messages all by interacting directly with the people who want to get them.
the availability of Wit.ai’s Bot Engine will enable developers to build more complex bots that can interpret intent from natural language, and continuously learn to get better over time.
Facebook has also opened up customisation and added support for call-to-action features to the new Messenger Platform.
From today, all developers and businesses will have access to documents to build bots for Messenger. They can then submit the end product for Facebook to review for approvals before they can go live.
You can find all the details and some featured bots over on Facebook’s Messenger Platform page.
[Via Facebook Newsroom]
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