Facebook’s Messenger bots may not be having the impact the social network desired. Just yesterday, online retailer Everlane, one of the launch partners for the bot platform, announced it was ditching Messenger for customer notifications and returning to email. Following this, Facebook today announced an upgraded Messenger Platform, which introduces a new way for users to interact with… Read More
As Messenger’s bots lose steam, Facebook pushes menus over chat
Application development has long been fraught with peril: Projects become bloated, expensive and never ship. The “micro” trend in application development is focused on delivering bottoms-up, simple solutions to complex problems. Micro services, apps and flows offer a new way to weave existing systems in novel, organic ways in order to deliver solutions immediately. Read More
Managing the App Store can be one of the most difficult experiences for new developers. Getting noticed is hard, the experience isn’t that great, and now Apple is allowing search ads. And to make things more interesting, there’s a lot of interest in different platforms beyond traditional apps — including messaging bots. Eventually, there will have to be a way to… Read More
Blackstorm raises $33.5M to help developers get their apps everywhere beyond the App Store
Big purchases are scary to make online without anyone there to quell your fears and answer questions. Operator’s app wants to give you the same peace of mind, not with mechanical chat bot responses, but through real humans with knowledge about whatever you’re buying. Today Operator 2.0 launches with a new Discovery tab where curators assemble recommendations about their… Read More
Operator fuses bots with humans to build cyborg shopping experts
We’re excited to announce the launch of the first cross-platform and personalized news recommendations bot on Facebook Messenger. The bot is part of Facebook’s “Agents for Messenger” program revealed at F8, and it will help our readers get the news they want from us in a more conversational way. Read More
TechCrunch launches a personalized news recommendations bot on Facebook Messenger