Yesterday was Facebook’s annual developers conference, otherwise known as F8. During their conference, the company made it clear that they want to make sure Messenger is the new way that businesses can connect with people by pushing the platform and their new bot support.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, took the attendees of the conference on a 30 minute opening keynote, which outlined a broad vision of a world where things are better by being connected. Mark seemed to focus on Messenger, as it got more of a detailed presentation by others in following tasks.
There was a new Messenger Platform that was announced, which will allow developers to create bots that will automatically interact with customers. These bots could do something as simple as help people perform actions, such as purchase shoes:
And we’re buying sneakers with Messenger #F8 https://t.co/L44ADCBk85 pic.twitter.com/OC42XYG3vy
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) April 12, 2016
Facebook wanted to make sure that they were clear on the idea of how the bots would work. They won’t simply be “command-line” chatbots, but will be more featured and app-like:
Facebook doesn’t see bots as a command line interface #F8 https://t.co/L44ADCBk85 pic.twitter.com/FiHXlCLdip
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) April 12, 2016
It looks like the reason why Facebook is focusing so much on Messenger this year is due to their belief that people are suffering from app-fatigue. They feel that Messenger will be a platform that all businesses can easily use to connect with people.
Zuckerberg mentioned that Messenger, along with development of Live and 360 video, is the top priorities of Facebook over the next five years:
The Facebook 10 year plan #F8 https://t.co/L44ADCBk85 pic.twitter.com/SEDLrATZlQ
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) April 12, 2016
Here are some of Marketing Land’s follow-up stories out of the event: