Bots Could Give Facebook a Bigger Slice of the App Economy
Mark Zuckerberg has said that Facebook thinks a new product is ready to become a real business only once it has 1 billion users. The company’s Messenger app isn’t quite there yet — Mr. Zuckerberg said on Tuesday the app has 900 million people using it each month — but he’s already started laying out his vision for the software’s commercial future. And the future, it seems, is bots.
The kinds of bots Mr. Zuckerberg is referring to are software programs that can discern what people type in plain language, then provide an appropriate response. Mr. Zuckerberg said at Facebook’s F8 developer conference in San Francisco that the company is rolling out tools that will allow other businesses to build such bots to live within Messenger. In one example he showed from the stage, a CNN bot sent out a daily news update and responded to a user’s messages with information about a specific topic. In another, Mr. Zuckerberg requested a bouquet of flowers by sending a message to 1-800-Flowers.
Facebook has already lined up more than 30 partners, including Bank of America, Burger King, and Staples. This list gives perhaps a clearer picture of Facebook’s moneymaking goals. If the company can coax people into ordering flowers, hamburgers, and office supplies by sending texts to helpful robotic assistants on Messenger, it becomes an important driver of commerce. And Facebook puts itself in a position to take a cut of those transactions someday.
