The (Facebook) Bots Are Coming!

“Hey those boots you were looking at last week are now sale! Would you like us to hold a pair for you?”

This is an example of a message you could be receiving from your favourite shoe shop – directly to your phone – to your personal Facebook messenger account.

Facebook has upped it’s conversational skills with the announcement at it’s F8 developer conference yesterday that it will be releasing the bots to it’s successful Facebook Messenger platform.

So what exactly will these bots do?

• The bots will be powered through one centralized system called the Facebook’s Bot Engine.
• ‘Spring’ is the name of one of the bots and will play the role of an artificially intelligent concierge service.
• The bots will ‘live’ within Facebook messenger.
• Developers will be able to create their own bots.
• The Bot Engine will have access to all the Facebook Messenger users interactions (neally one billion people).
• Facebook plans to allow businesses which already have your mobile number to contact you directly through Messengers.

Officially launched yesterday, stay tuned for your first Bot update and be prepared for a whole heap of new ‘friends’ in your Facebook Messenger inbox.