17 ms·

Facebook Messenger Platform

312 points by hendler 10y ago

bemmu 10y ago
The 1-800-FLOWERS example in the F8 livestream was pretty neat. In the example a user ordered flowers through only a chat. Somehow they were able to do this without entering their credit card details. I wonder if the payment was a Facebook Messenger feature, or if the user had just already entered their details on the 1-800-FLOWERS site.
- nocarrier 10y ago
  You've been able to setup a US debit card with your Messenger account and then use that to send friends money, so you can use that payment info with the Messenger platform integrations too. I'm guessing that FB processes the payment versus sending the partner your payment info. Here's more info on payments in Messenger, but note that this doesn't include info on the platform stuff and how payments interact with it since it's brand new: https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/750020781733477/ https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/750020781733477/
  - vernon99 10y ago
    > so you can use that payment info with the Messenger platform integrations too That's not supported by the platform yet.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sna1l 10y ago
I feel like this is going to be huge in terms of how much money starts flowing through Facebook Payments
aaron-lebo 10y ago
Facebook disregards your rights as a creator, user, and individual. I've read enough history to know what sharecropping looks like. Tell me how this is different than sharecropping. Why should I build something I don't control on Lord Zuckerberg's platform so I can play the startup lottery? We did this almost a decade ago. Facebook introduced their developer platform and people started giving up their freedoms. This isn't a conspiracy theory, this is something you can observe by yourself. Facebook has already broadcasted loud and wide how they are going to screw you over. It's your choice.
- callumjones 10y ago
  You could argue the same for the App Store, Play store, etc. This is the reality: you can reach these vast numbers of users on these platforms through these stores. Facebook isn't forcing anyone to do this, but they are providing an opportunity. If you don't want to be part of this then thats your choice.
  - vthallam 10y ago
    The app store/play store are different altogether. FB & Twitter launched as a seemingly open platform but later decided to cut down many things.
- hayksaakian 10y ago
  The real question is can you get in, win, and get out before any of that matters. If you 'rode the facebook apps' wave you probably made decent money unless you stayed in too long. Another strategy is to build an integration to messenger to get exposure for your totally independant app. For example If i made some pizza ordering ai, i could hook it up to messenger as an additional channel.
  - state 10y ago
    The 'real' question is how can we build an alternative platform that doesn't require you to try to 'win' by effectively screwing the people who actually use the stuff you build.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - nfoz 10y ago
      I think that problem has been unsolved for ~500 years? More?
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      After someone comes up with an answer to that let's backport it to the very concept of the cloud.
cromwellian 10y ago
This seems kinda disappointing in capability compared with what you see in WeChat. I was expecting you'd be able to build apps that run from inside messenger, instead of toggle back and forth between native apps, possibly using something like ExponentJS/Reactive-Native, but maybe Apple would disapprove. The WeChat SDK allows apps to run JS from inside WeChat itself. You see this in action in China where you can actually do complex stuff like book a taxi via Didi Dache without necessarily having to switch back and forth between heavyweight apps.
- Aleman360 10y ago
  First browsers became OS's, now you want messenger apps to become OS's? How many layers of cruft do we need?
  - pbreit 10y ago
    If anything, the cruft is shrinking since you simply can't fit as much cruft into mobile.
    - Aleman360 10y ago
      Let me get this straight. - The phone OS has a shell, usually written in native code. - The messenger app runs on top of the shell, usually written on top of some type of VM. - The messenger app contains a web browser that renders other apps, written in js.
      - ChristianBundy 10y ago
        Please, for your own sanity, don't even bother investigating how operating systems actually work.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        mwcampbell 10y ago
malanj 10y ago
Facebook seems to slowly be building out the feature set that WeChat (https://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/ https://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/ ) has had for ages. It seems like Facebook first set out to capture the whole market, and are now slowly monetizing it fully. WeChat has achieved incredible ARPU (>$7/user/year) through a combination of chat APIs, 3rd party bots and integrated payments Facebook. If Facebook can achieve a similar number, it would greatly increase their worldwide ARPU. (http://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-...).
- pbreit 10y ago
  The ARPU # is mis-leading. According to the Economist article, 85% of the revs are from gaming, not "to hail a taxi, order food delivery, buy movie tickets, play casual games, check in for a flight, send money to friends, access fitness tracker data, book a doctor appointment, get banking statements, pay the water bill, find geo-targeted coupons, recognize music, search for a book at the local library, meet strangers around you, follow celebrity news, read magazine articles, and even donate to charity."
  - yomly 10y ago
    I asked a Uber driver in China why he thought DiDiKuaiChe (local competitor) was more popular, and he said "because you can order one through WeChat... And everyone has WeChat" Of those services, gaming is probably the most mature which is why it generates the most revenue, but give it a few years and I'm sure more of those will become far more significant..
  - yomly 10y ago
    I asked a Uber driver in China why he thought DiDiKuaiChe (local competitor) was more popular, and he said "because you can order one through WeChat... And everyone has WeChat" Of those services, gaming is probably the most mature which is why it generates the most revenue, but give it a few years and I'm sure more of those will become far more significant..
- 10y ago
nns 10y ago
Wouldn't it be wise for Facebook to just replace Messenger with WhatsApp and offer that as a platform?
- vlunkr 10y ago
  I'm confused about this as well. Why are they choosing to compete with themselves?
  - BorisMelnik 10y ago
    from what I am reading they consider it a different market segment and are thus, pivoting.
  - eitally 10y ago
    Twice as many chances for success! :)
  - daptaq 10y ago
    Is it really competition though? You choose A, Facebook wins. You choose B, Facebook wins. I believe WhatsApp and FB Messenger are the two top chat networks right now (sadly), at least when looking at regional dominance. And since the value of a network to the individual is dependant on the size, AND they're locked up, they win whatever you choose. You might loose because you chose the network with less friends, but that changes nothing in the end.
    - thewhitetulip 10y ago
      How is this not different from the strategy MS used to follow either kill opponents or buy them? How did the anti trust dept of US allow whatsapp acquisition since it literally made FB king of everything digital?
      - Spivak 10y ago
        Mostly because they still have tons of competitors in the messaging space and they're not leveraging their success in social networking to force success in messaging. I'm personally reachable from 10-15 different forms of messaging (and neither WhatsApp nor FB messenger), and most people probably have at least 4-5 so it's a really tough argument that because of Facebook users have to use WhatsApp or FB messenger.
sajid 10y ago
This is the old platform. Not what was announced at F8 today.
- hendler 10y ago
  It redirects to https://messengerplatform.fb.com/ https://messengerplatform.fb.com/ see also https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform
jswrenn 10y ago
Back in 2009, Google Talk toyed with a similar idea of realtime chat as a platform for other applications to build on. [0] The demos were very neat at the time, but it turned out to be a brief detour along a road that ended with Google stripping out extensibility and interoperation from Google Talk and building it into the service we now know as Google Hangouts. I love the idea of chat as a platform, but Facebook will need to convince developers it won't close the door on them down the road. [0] - http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2009/05/attention-nerds-new-gadgets-api-for.html http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2009/05/attention-nerds-new-g...
atonse 10y ago
Anyone know what stack FB uses for their messaging platform? I know WhatsApp uses Erlang...
- mkagenius 10y ago
  > Anyone know what stack FB uses for their messaging platform? Initially Erlang. Now C++. [1] 1. https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Erlang-chosen-for-use-in-Facebook-chat https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Erlang-chosen-for-use-in-Faceb... edit: was quoting wrong part of the op comment
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    Note: The link you post is about Facebook's rewrite of their chat services from Erlang to C++, not WhatsApp.
  - profmonocle 10y ago
    Unless I'm misreading, I think he's talking about Facebook Messenger's backend being migrated to C++, not WhatsApp's.
- felixhandte 10y ago
  It's a number of services written in a mix of Java and C++. https://code.facebook.com/posts/820258981365363/building-mobile-first-infrastructure-for-messenger/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/820258981365363/building-mob... https://code.facebook.com/posts/699902483369896/inside-facebook-messages-application-server/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/699902483369896/inside-faceb... https://code.facebook.com/posts/403496919755405/scaling-the-messages-application-back-end/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/403496919755405/scaling-the-...
pbreit 10y ago
I like bots and everything but I wonder if chat's popularity stems from there being a human at the other end?
- smacktoward 10y ago
  I don't think so. 15 years ago I created a service to let people access data from my company's intranet via AOL Instant Messenger (which everyone was already using for internal chat). It was still a big hit. People loved the convenience of just being able to ping a bot and immediately get back Client X's phone number, instead of having to wade through umpty-ump levels of menus and web pages to get the same info. The interface to that service was extremely crude by today's standards (basically a set of magic keywords that comprised a simple query language), but people liked the convenience so much they were more than willing how to talk to the bot in its own lingo. I can only imagine how much more popular it would have been if it had a real, natural-language chat interface. As long as it's easy and convenient, and comes back with the right answers (a big if, that last one), nobody will care if there's a human on the other end or not.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Funny thing - the bot you described is essentially a CLI. I'm willing to bet that at least some of the same people who happily used it would also be terrified by the real command line. Reminds me also of an observation that a lot of people in accounting are actually programming without realizing it, by virtue of making pretty complex Excel spreadsheets to automate their work. It's funny how much of users' apparent inability to grok computers is actually in their heads. Also, the fetishization of GUIs that has been going on for the past two decades is actually quite sad - it robs people of efficiency and convenience in using the machine.
  - pbreit 10y ago
    If they were so popular, why do they still not exist in any meaningful sense to this day? I was all over IMified & ActiveBuddy when they came out 10-15 years ago but they never really took off at all. My agent basically returned the Google "magic box" which was kinda cool.
vr3690 10y ago
I don't get the hype behind bots? When are where was it proved that bots as interfaces can be successful?
- nemothekid 10y ago
  I'm assuming they are trying to replicate the success Chinese platforms, like WeChat.
- lowglow 10y ago
  I think people are conflating bots with something intelligent, some people go so far as to say AI bots, which is very misleading. There's a lot of hype around autonomous agents, with not a lot of understanding.
- shopkins 10y ago
  Everyone read this [0] and now think it's The Next Big Thing™. That and Slack, I guess? I don't get it either. The nice thing about not typing out requests ("it's not a command-line interface," they all say) to perform virtual actions is that you don't have to type out requests to perform virtual actions. And having different apps and websites for different purposes gives you choice, privacy, and control over who you interact with online. You don't have to get locked in to a platform and hope they never do anything nefarious or user-unfriendly for fear there's nowhere else to turn. But I guess we're the minority. [0] https://medium.com/chris-messina/2016-will-be-the-year-of-conversational-commerce-1586e85e3991 https://medium.com/chris-messina/2016-will-be-the-year-of-co...
- kirykl 10y ago
  I could see it being useful as an interface for Siri to a website
shaohua 10y ago
I suggest we crowdsource a list of chat bot related startups: https://github.com/shaohua/awesome-chatbot https://github.com/shaohua/awesome-chatbot Submit a pull request to include your bot :)
- Johnie 10y ago
  This was on HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11472612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11472612
ascendantlogic 10y ago
The Twitter debacle is what really did it for me. As others have pointed out this is sharecropping through and through. You build anything meaningful on this and Facebook has you by the you-know-whats and can pull the rug out from under you at will. Thanks but no thanks.
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  > You build anything meaningful on this and Facebook has you by the you-know-whats and can pull the rug out from under you at will. Is that accurate? If I build a chat-based application, why can't I build out interfaces to various services? It may not be trivial, since some will offer features that others don't, but what's the principal problem preventing me from building a chat-based application that works over Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Kik, etc. so long as they each provide an API for connecting these bots, beyond time?
  - free2rhyme214 10y ago
    You can but FB has the most MAU's. I believe after FB Skype is the biggest. Is it easy to build bots on multiple platforms? Personally I'm staying away from Kik. Their MAU is low and I really dislike their constant spam.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - michaelmior 10y ago
      I'm blanking on any names right now, but I've seen a few startups recently working on platforms for building bots with integrations to multiple different services. No doubt one or more of these will add Messenger support. There are also open source projects like Lita[0], BotBuilder[1], and Hubot[2] which give a nice abstraction layer. [0] https://www.lita.io/ https://www.lita.io/ [1] https://dev.botframework.com/ https://dev.botframework.com/ [2] https://hubot.github.com/ https://hubot.github.com/
  - theseatoms 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
KingMob 10y ago
In the meantime, Facebook still hasn't gotten around to allowing 1-to-1 messages from users on mobile websites, and probably never will. Sharing on your wall, sure, but send something privately? Sorry, we haven't gotten around to fixing that 4-year-old bug yet. (Even weirder, it works fine in desktop browsers...)
- sambe 10y ago
  What do you mean? Sending messages from mobile to a single user using the messages menu works doesn't it?
  - KingMob 10y ago
    I mean from our website, not Facebook's. You can use the Fbook API to share (1-to-many) on mobile websites, but you can't use the "send" functionality to send a private 1-to-1 message. It's surely not a technical issue, I'm assuming Fbook just decided never to implement it.
sourcd 10y ago
From official docs : https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/t39.2178-6/12057143_198218393902993_755928037_n.png https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/t39.2178-6/12057143_1982183939...
sssparkkk 10y ago
Everyone seems to be jumping on the bots bandwagon - Microsoft, Facebook, Slack etc. Do we really think this kind of text-based interaction is the future? Granted, it's an interface practically everyone knows how to use, but I believe it could result in rather long conversations (what are the available commands/questions?) to actually get something a little more complex done. Our messaging startup is heading in the opposite direction: we offer fully functional tools and games that can be instantly used by groups of people. We also offer a platform that allows developers to create these HTML5 based apps themselves. If you think this sounds interesting, have a look at https://platform.happening.im https://platform.happening.im .
- miguelrochefort 10y ago
  Natural languages are terrible interfaces. They're linear, verbose, inexpressive, ambiguous. Clearly, we need a computer-assisted language to elevate humanity's ability to communicate. Such a platform could be as important as Gutenberg's printing press.
  - jexe 10y ago
    I don't know what that means, but you've got my attention. Could you elaborate on what you have in mind?
    - miguelrochefort 10y ago
      # PROBLEM Software is fragmented. This leads to poor user experience. - I have 100+ apps on my phone - I have 1000+ online accounts I need to discover these apps/websites/services, repeat the same information over and over again, learn their features and limitations. They don't talk to each other, which means that I need to continuously update them. We're humans, we're smart, we adapt easily, we got used to it, we don't even notice. However, when you take a step back and look at it, it's a mess. Generally, when I try to show the problem to people, they blame the user. They say there's no need to use that many systems. And they're right. In the real world, I can get by using only English (or in my case, French) as a general-purpose communication interface. The problem with software is that people tend to associate one system with one use-case. One app for this, one app for that. Do one thing, and do it well. That's the general direction a lot of software is going in (i.e., Facebook Messenger vs Facebook). When people tell me I should use fewer systems, they also imply that I should accept to cover fewer use-cases with software. And while most people think it's reasonable not to use software for various things (unlock doors, turn on lights, preheat oven, change channel, pay goods, track calories), I consider them short-sighted. We can't afford to choose which activities deserve the power of software and which can continue to be done the old-fashion (and so-called "simpler") way. We need software everywhere. Beyond the consumer-facing UX fragmentation problems, as an application developer, I'm exposed to the even uglier side of things. The arbitrary design process, the compromise-ridden business decisions. Most people have no idea how expensive (in time and resources) it is to build the simplest of software in the real world. Take 100 different teams, and they'll all design the same system in completely different ways, repeating the very same mistakes. How many different user authentication systems have been implemented in the world? How many caching layers? How many ORMs? How many online stores (all with pretty much the very same features, from the image gallery to the cart). This is insane. This makes SAP look sexy. Now, take the top 100 most popular apps and websites. List out all of their features. Remove duplicates. Remove duplicates. Generalize. Remove duplicates. You'll realize they all share 80% of the same features, probably more. Don't be tricked by functional synonyms. A like, an upvote, a favorite, a share, a retweet, a rating, a pin. They're all the same things. You can reduce the functionalities of most app to a very simple vocabulary. Basically, people have things, people want things. The only challenge is in describing things. And that's what we need a tool for. # SOLUTION The customer is NOT king. Stop thinking that software should be tailored to its users. People don't know what they want. People have a tendency to under-generalize. They think that because two things look different, they're different. They're wrong. There is not as much difference between hailing a cab, ordering a pizza, sharing a video, shipping a package, flying to Hawaii, renting a room, sending money, taking an elevator, and selling your couch, as people are lead to believe. They're essentially the same things, and software should treat them as such. We need a general purpose communication platform. Not one monolithic app to which all possible features were added, but something that can be extended to a wide array of use cases. I'm not talking about plugins, micro-apps, or a web browser. These usually give too much freedom to developers, which once again results in fragmentation. I'm talking about a language, English on computer-steroids. By communicating through a computer, this language gains access to the world's knowledge. This language can challenge your thoughts. This language can predict your thoughts. You only need to be as verbose as what the language doesn't already know about you. With time, the language becomes more like a to-do list a la Google Now (i.e., tells you what to do next) than a notepad. This language is your interface with the past, present and future world. English is text-based and linear. You start from nothing, then a word, then a sentence. I don't want a language where you start with nothing. Start with the entire state of the entire world (as some sort of hyper-graph), communicate by editing it. Edit edges, introduce new nodes. One place for every idea. Never repeat, support instead. Invest your social credit to augment the credibility/value of facts. Use it as a way to describe both the past, present, and future (prediction and/or wish). Follow the path of PROLOG, RDF and lojban. Graph-oriented communication is what the world needs. I believe we can make it accessible, not without a learning curve, by the use of inference and custom renderers. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but I can't foresee it not being done.
leowinterde 10y ago
https://messengerplatform.fb.com/ https://messengerplatform.fb.com/ "Powered by WordPress.com VIP" lazy faebook developers...
- andreasklinger 10y ago
  Imo it's a sign of effectiveness not laziness
BlakePetersen 10y ago
Ah ha... Now I understand why they pulled Messenger out of the core FB app. So they could badger people for a year to install an intrusive application (or never be able to read those notifications the FB app keeps sending you without firing up a web browser) that would ultimately be leveraged as a B2C marketing platform.
OJFord 10y ago
Nice. I assume Facebook gets a tonne of data about what I ordered etc. (many examples are order confirmations)
jaywunder 10y ago
People are talking about sharecropping, but this seems to me like they're trying to make Slack-like integrations for the general (non-dev) public. Can someone explain why this is different from Slack's model of using their platform to make apps? Also people sound like they want to make money from an app on Facebook's platform. But I'd think that to consider making your start-up off someone else's platform is just a bad idea to begin with. Maybe have integrations to the messenger app from your app, but making an entire app on the messenger platform is a bad idea.
ethanpil 10y ago
I'm crying. Remember when messaging was built on open platforms and standards like XMPP and IRC? The golden year(s?) when Google Talk worked with AIM and anyone could choose whatever client they preferred? Welcome to the future friends when we must pay to battle the keymasters and gatekeepers on their terms to do what we used to do ourselves, for free. First they took my RSS, then they took my XMPP... Who can guess whats next?
- static_noise 10y ago
  HTTP
  - rgbrgb 10y ago
    Yep, it's not like we don't have open protocols with millions of users. Data silos and super nodes in the network are a socio-economic effect, not technical. What I mean is that as long as it's desirable to become a high traffic, high authority node, there will be people (and corporations) spending time and money to build them -- I think it's an emergent property of human society + resource scarcity.
  - ivanca 10y ago
    ...even worse, HTML. Someday Facebook will decide that HTML is not enough for them and will make users install its own pseud-browser.
    - qznc 10y ago
      Like Google did?
- cpach 10y ago
  I think what’s needed is an open chat protocol that also works well in mobile settings, since that’s where a huge chunk of the potential user base is these days.
  - outside1234 10y ago
islandThinker 10y ago
so it's basically just those automated phone systems that everyone hates except over Facebook Messenger? I have to say I don't understand Silicon Valley these days...
- danneu 10y ago
  You don't see the difference between this and hanging around with a phone to your ear listening to an audio user-interface synchronously waiting until it's ready for you to input commands with your numpad?
intrasight 10y ago
I've no idea why anybody would install or use that POS spyware Messenger.
vittore 10y ago
I am surprised no one comparing that to Telegram.
Perceptes 10y ago
I hope people will help support matrix.org instead of building on a platform like this.
- f14ist 10y ago
  I just checked out some of the previous HN posts about matrix.org - I´d love something like it to become widely used... in the same way that I'm hoping for a Mozilla Persona, diaspora, etc. to become succesful. Is that ever going to happen though? With all this money going to centralised products?
  - Perceptes 10y ago
    Probably not, which is why I said "hope." I'm doing my part by working on implementations of matrix.org components myself. Obviously, I can't predict the future, but I think it's unlikely any open system will "beat" or even compete meaningfully with the big proprietary systems. It's like a small group of well meaning political activists thinking they can beat lobbyists with unlimited funds. It's an army vs a couple people wielding sticks.
wanda 10y ago
Off-topic: I have few friends but they all have a preferred chat medium. One I keep in touch with via SMS; another via WhatsApp. Others via IRC. Is there a good iOS app that is essentially Pidgin, enabling communication via multiple protocols?
- wcummings 10y ago
  Bitlbee + irccloud/znc maybe?
pierre 10y ago
It is now time to take all the innovations that have been happening in china around WeChat/WeiXin and to implement them into messenger. This time it's the other way around, we are actually going to copy the Chinese (they have had an API addressable messaging platform way before us and are ahead of us in the exploration of what work / is possible) : - this may disrupt Local business/shop relation to client. (see how weixin is used by small online shop) - this may disrupt insurance (see how zhongan is selling micro-insurance through weixin) - this may disrupt paypal, as soon as you can send 'money' over a messaging app. - this may disrupt movie / theater ticket selling ... (there is tones of other example) There is a lot of land to grab, the working use cases are already known (we get 5 year of china market data). I hope I had a couple of millions to invest in this market.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  > - this may disrupt paypal, as soon as you can send 'money' over a messaging app. American banking is so backwards and this will only make it worse. In Australia and New Zealand, no bank offers you checks. Do I own you $50? Well give me your BSB and account number. I type it into my phone app or web browser, type $50 and click send. It shows up tomorrow morning. Works on weekends, holidays, ANZAC day, New Years Day and no fees. $0. Person-to-person transfers are free, move in 24 hours and your account number doesn't need to be private. I came back to America back to the world of three business days for an electronic ACH payment to clear (if you're lucky)!! WTF?! Our banking system is in the 1990s because PayPal, Square and now Facebook will lobby to keep their business models. Fuck. That. Shit. Money should move through the banking system using standards, not via Facebook with their proprietary PayPal like garbage.
  - knz 10y ago
    I don't think the average kiwi has seen a cheque in decades. After 10 years of living in the US I have started to rejoice in how despite being one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth the US still clings to things like paper cheques, $0.01/$0.05/$0.10 coins, US customary units, and a plumbing system that requires most houses to own a plunger. Perhaps it's a sign of assimilation?
X-Istence 10y ago
Am I the only one that keeps some separation between different platforms? For example, there are people I follow on Snapchat, but I have absolutely no interest doing the same on Facebook Messenger. My Facebook is still mostly people I have met in real life and care about, that and groups I am a part of because social life. I don't want to adulterate that with chat bots, and ordering pizza and any other integrations. In reality I spend very little time in Facebook messenger and have zero interest in increasing the amount of time I spend on Facebook.
- __abc 10y ago
  amen
- 0xdeafcafe 10y ago
  Clearly this isn't for you then. I, however, use messenger frequently - too frequently. And I welcome all these changes, as they are really maturing the platform and making it a delight to use. I have a group chat on messenger of all my friends, and when they added the simple options to change the group colours, add nicknames, and even change the default emoji to something other than a thumbs up, messenger became a whole lot more fun to use. I can't wait to see how it develops with these changes.
  - equalsnil 10y ago
    Honestly curious: Why is this your first and only comment on HN?
    - 0xdeafcafe 10y ago
      Honestly, because I needed karma so I could confirm this account on keybase. So I jumped on the homepage and commented on something I thought relevant to me.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  I agree completely. My Snapchat friends are nothing like my Facebook friends (since by definition we keep up in very different ways) and my Twitter feed contains very little from either. And then there is the microscopic overlap between any of those social networks and my Xbox Live account.
anysz 10y ago
Is there anybody that sees positives to this ?
gedrap 10y ago
For a while, Messenger supports some partners-only kind of program for bots. For example, if someone posts @dailycute then a random image from imgur aww is posted [0]. I am quite interested whether they have plans to extend this and make it more open (some kind of chat apps so that you can't just reserve a bunch of good keywords with non functioning bots?). [0] http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/05/facebook-messenger-bots/ http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/05/facebook-messenger-bots/
- __float 10y ago
  https://www.fbf8.com/schedule/session/introducing-bots-on-messenger https://www.fbf8.com/schedule/session/introducing-bots-on-me... They covered this today at F8, but there doesn't seem to be any text or archived video version just yet.
Snowdax 10y ago
"Now that we've almost finished migrating our app away from Parse lets start integrating this new Facebook thing!" Yeah, how about no.
runn1ng 10y ago
As much as I don't like Telegram weird pseudo-crypto, I really like what they are doing with their bot API and the messenger is really good in general. They are adding features like on fire.
pat_space 10y ago
Does anyone see Messenger as a potential Skype for business/Slack/Hipchat competitor? I feel like the technology is on par, but the link to my personal facebook kills it for me.
- dbbk 10y ago
  Well, Facebook at Work has Messenger built-in, just scoped to your organisation. So I guess they're already doing it.
tyingq 10y ago
"The Send/Receive API must not be used to send marketing or promotional messages...advertising...branded content..up selling..cross selling" Then, "Spring offers a personal shopping assistant on Messenger" https://messengerplatform.fb.com/wp-content/themes/fbmessengerplatform/images/slides/caseStudies_spring/foreground.png https://messengerplatform.fb.com/wp-content/themes/fbmesseng... Huh?
- vogt 10y ago
  The big difference seems to be that bots built on this platform are not to be used as an ad delivery mechanism, like, say, outbound.io. The App Review section of the docs makes this a little clearer of what is acceptable and what isn't, complete with graphics: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/app-review https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/app-...
peterchane 10y ago
Backchannel: http://dev.backchannel.net http://dev.backchannel.net https://medium.com/@backchannelbots/introducing-backchannel-826f3836e6d2#.hr7vxmni7 https://medium.com/@backchannelbots/introducing-backchannel-...
arturojain 10y ago
We need a WhatsApp API
thesquib 10y ago
Looks like a dead end to me
akramhussein 10y ago
Interestingly if you try and set up a Messenger Bot, there is a one-time fee of $99[0] to take advantage of Customer Matching - where they use phone numbers you have to find existing customers to contact.
greenspot 10y ago
Does FB own Wit.ai or is there any strategic coop? How is their relation?
- dbbk 10y ago
  Wit.ai is apparently the new brand for the developer side of their 'M' personal assistant.

312 points by hendler 10y ago

bemmu 10y ago

The 1-800-FLOWERS example in the F8 livestream was pretty neat. In the example a user ordered flowers through only a chat. Somehow they were able to do this without entering their credit card details. I wonder if the payment was a Facebook Messenger feature, or if the user had just already entered their details on the 1-800-FLOWERS site.

nocarrier 10y ago
You've been able to setup a US debit card with your Messenger account and then use that to send friends money, so you can use that payment info with the Messenger platform integrations too. I'm guessing that FB processes the payment versus sending the partner your payment info. Here's more info on payments in Messenger, but note that this doesn't include info on the platform stuff and how payments interact with it since it's brand new: https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/750020781733477/ https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/750020781733477/
- vernon99 10y ago
  > so you can use that payment info with the Messenger platform integrations too That's not supported by the platform yet.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sna1l 10y ago

I feel like this is going to be huge in terms of how much money starts flowing through Facebook Payments

aaron-lebo 10y ago

Facebook disregards your rights as a creator, user, and individual. I've read enough history to know what sharecropping looks like. Tell me how this is different than sharecropping. Why should I build something I don't control on Lord Zuckerberg's platform so I can play the startup lottery? We did this almost a decade ago. Facebook introduced their developer platform and people started giving up their freedoms. This isn't a conspiracy theory, this is something you can observe by yourself. Facebook has already broadcasted loud and wide how they are going to screw you over. It's your choice.

callumjones 10y ago
You could argue the same for the App Store, Play store, etc. This is the reality: you can reach these vast numbers of users on these platforms through these stores. Facebook isn't forcing anyone to do this, but they are providing an opportunity. If you don't want to be part of this then thats your choice.
- vthallam 10y ago
  The app store/play store are different altogether. FB & Twitter launched as a seemingly open platform but later decided to cut down many things.
hayksaakian 10y ago
The real question is can you get in, win, and get out before any of that matters. If you 'rode the facebook apps' wave you probably made decent money unless you stayed in too long. Another strategy is to build an integration to messenger to get exposure for your totally independant app. For example If i made some pizza ordering ai, i could hook it up to messenger as an additional channel.
- state 10y ago
  The 'real' question is how can we build an alternative platform that doesn't require you to try to 'win' by effectively screwing the people who actually use the stuff you build.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - nfoz 10y ago
    I think that problem has been unsolved for ~500 years? More?
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    After someone comes up with an answer to that let's backport it to the very concept of the cloud.

cromwellian 10y ago

This seems kinda disappointing in capability compared with what you see in WeChat. I was expecting you'd be able to build apps that run from inside messenger, instead of toggle back and forth between native apps, possibly using something like ExponentJS/Reactive-Native, but maybe Apple would disapprove. The WeChat SDK allows apps to run JS from inside WeChat itself. You see this in action in China where you can actually do complex stuff like book a taxi via Didi Dache without necessarily having to switch back and forth between heavyweight apps.

Aleman360 10y ago
First browsers became OS's, now you want messenger apps to become OS's? How many layers of cruft do we need?
- pbreit 10y ago
  If anything, the cruft is shrinking since you simply can't fit as much cruft into mobile.
  - Aleman360 10y ago
    Let me get this straight. - The phone OS has a shell, usually written in native code. - The messenger app runs on top of the shell, usually written on top of some type of VM. - The messenger app contains a web browser that renders other apps, written in js.
    - ChristianBundy 10y ago
      Please, for your own sanity, don't even bother investigating how operating systems actually work.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - mwcampbell 10y ago

malanj 10y ago

Facebook seems to slowly be building out the feature set that WeChat (https://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/ https://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/ ) has had for ages. It seems like Facebook first set out to capture the whole market, and are now slowly monetizing it fully. WeChat has achieved incredible ARPU (>$7/user/year) through a combination of chat APIs, 3rd party bots and integrated payments Facebook. If Facebook can achieve a similar number, it would greatly increase their worldwide ARPU. (http://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-...).

pbreit 10y ago
The ARPU # is mis-leading. According to the Economist article, 85% of the revs are from gaming, not "to hail a taxi, order food delivery, buy movie tickets, play casual games, check in for a flight, send money to friends, access fitness tracker data, book a doctor appointment, get banking statements, pay the water bill, find geo-targeted coupons, recognize music, search for a book at the local library, meet strangers around you, follow celebrity news, read magazine articles, and even donate to charity."
- yomly 10y ago
  I asked a Uber driver in China why he thought DiDiKuaiChe (local competitor) was more popular, and he said "because you can order one through WeChat... And everyone has WeChat" Of those services, gaming is probably the most mature which is why it generates the most revenue, but give it a few years and I'm sure more of those will become far more significant..
- yomly 10y ago
  I asked a Uber driver in China why he thought DiDiKuaiChe (local competitor) was more popular, and he said "because you can order one through WeChat... And everyone has WeChat" Of those services, gaming is probably the most mature which is why it generates the most revenue, but give it a few years and I'm sure more of those will become far more significant..
10y ago

nns 10y ago

Wouldn't it be wise for Facebook to just replace Messenger with WhatsApp and offer that as a platform?

vlunkr 10y ago
I'm confused about this as well. Why are they choosing to compete with themselves?
- BorisMelnik 10y ago
  from what I am reading they consider it a different market segment and are thus, pivoting.
- eitally 10y ago
  Twice as many chances for success! :)
- daptaq 10y ago
  Is it really competition though? You choose A, Facebook wins. You choose B, Facebook wins. I believe WhatsApp and FB Messenger are the two top chat networks right now (sadly), at least when looking at regional dominance. And since the value of a network to the individual is dependant on the size, AND they're locked up, they win whatever you choose. You might loose because you chose the network with less friends, but that changes nothing in the end.
  - thewhitetulip 10y ago
    How is this not different from the strategy MS used to follow either kill opponents or buy them? How did the anti trust dept of US allow whatsapp acquisition since it literally made FB king of everything digital?
    - Spivak 10y ago
      Mostly because they still have tons of competitors in the messaging space and they're not leveraging their success in social networking to force success in messaging. I'm personally reachable from 10-15 different forms of messaging (and neither WhatsApp nor FB messenger), and most people probably have at least 4-5 so it's a really tough argument that because of Facebook users have to use WhatsApp or FB messenger.

sajid 10y ago

This is the old platform. Not what was announced at F8 today.

hendler 10y ago
It redirects to https://messengerplatform.fb.com/ https://messengerplatform.fb.com/ see also https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform

jswrenn 10y ago

Back in 2009, Google Talk toyed with a similar idea of realtime chat as a platform for other applications to build on. [0] The demos were very neat at the time, but it turned out to be a brief detour along a road that ended with Google stripping out extensibility and interoperation from Google Talk and building it into the service we now know as Google Hangouts. I love the idea of chat as a platform, but Facebook will need to convince developers it won't close the door on them down the road. [0] - http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2009/05/attention-nerds-new-gadgets-api-for.html http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2009/05/attention-nerds-new-g...

atonse 10y ago

Anyone know what stack FB uses for their messaging platform? I know WhatsApp uses Erlang...

mkagenius 10y ago
> Anyone know what stack FB uses for their messaging platform? Initially Erlang. Now C++. [1] 1. https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Erlang-chosen-for-use-in-Facebook-chat https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Erlang-chosen-for-use-in-Faceb... edit: was quoting wrong part of the op comment
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  Note: The link you post is about Facebook's rewrite of their chat services from Erlang to C++, not WhatsApp.
- profmonocle 10y ago
  Unless I'm misreading, I think he's talking about Facebook Messenger's backend being migrated to C++, not WhatsApp's.
felixhandte 10y ago
It's a number of services written in a mix of Java and C++. https://code.facebook.com/posts/820258981365363/building-mobile-first-infrastructure-for-messenger/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/820258981365363/building-mob... https://code.facebook.com/posts/699902483369896/inside-facebook-messages-application-server/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/699902483369896/inside-faceb... https://code.facebook.com/posts/403496919755405/scaling-the-messages-application-back-end/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/403496919755405/scaling-the-...

pbreit 10y ago

I like bots and everything but I wonder if chat's popularity stems from there being a human at the other end?

smacktoward 10y ago
I don't think so. 15 years ago I created a service to let people access data from my company's intranet via AOL Instant Messenger (which everyone was already using for internal chat). It was still a big hit. People loved the convenience of just being able to ping a bot and immediately get back Client X's phone number, instead of having to wade through umpty-ump levels of menus and web pages to get the same info. The interface to that service was extremely crude by today's standards (basically a set of magic keywords that comprised a simple query language), but people liked the convenience so much they were more than willing how to talk to the bot in its own lingo. I can only imagine how much more popular it would have been if it had a real, natural-language chat interface. As long as it's easy and convenient, and comes back with the right answers (a big if, that last one), nobody will care if there's a human on the other end or not.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Funny thing - the bot you described is essentially a CLI. I'm willing to bet that at least some of the same people who happily used it would also be terrified by the real command line. Reminds me also of an observation that a lot of people in accounting are actually programming without realizing it, by virtue of making pretty complex Excel spreadsheets to automate their work. It's funny how much of users' apparent inability to grok computers is actually in their heads. Also, the fetishization of GUIs that has been going on for the past two decades is actually quite sad - it robs people of efficiency and convenience in using the machine.
- pbreit 10y ago
  If they were so popular, why do they still not exist in any meaningful sense to this day? I was all over IMified & ActiveBuddy when they came out 10-15 years ago but they never really took off at all. My agent basically returned the Google "magic box" which was kinda cool.

vr3690 10y ago

I don't get the hype behind bots? When are where was it proved that bots as interfaces can be successful?

nemothekid 10y ago
I'm assuming they are trying to replicate the success Chinese platforms, like WeChat.
lowglow 10y ago
I think people are conflating bots with something intelligent, some people go so far as to say AI bots, which is very misleading. There's a lot of hype around autonomous agents, with not a lot of understanding.
shopkins 10y ago
Everyone read this [0] and now think it's The Next Big Thing™. That and Slack, I guess? I don't get it either. The nice thing about not typing out requests ("it's not a command-line interface," they all say) to perform virtual actions is that you don't have to type out requests to perform virtual actions. And having different apps and websites for different purposes gives you choice, privacy, and control over who you interact with online. You don't have to get locked in to a platform and hope they never do anything nefarious or user-unfriendly for fear there's nowhere else to turn. But I guess we're the minority. [0] https://medium.com/chris-messina/2016-will-be-the-year-of-conversational-commerce-1586e85e3991 https://medium.com/chris-messina/2016-will-be-the-year-of-co...
kirykl 10y ago
I could see it being useful as an interface for Siri to a website

shaohua 10y ago

I suggest we crowdsource a list of chat bot related startups: https://github.com/shaohua/awesome-chatbot https://github.com/shaohua/awesome-chatbot Submit a pull request to include your bot :)

Johnie 10y ago
This was on HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11472612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11472612

ascendantlogic 10y ago

The Twitter debacle is what really did it for me. As others have pointed out this is sharecropping through and through. You build anything meaningful on this and Facebook has you by the you-know-whats and can pull the rug out from under you at will. Thanks but no thanks.

Jtsummers 10y ago
> You build anything meaningful on this and Facebook has you by the you-know-whats and can pull the rug out from under you at will. Is that accurate? If I build a chat-based application, why can't I build out interfaces to various services? It may not be trivial, since some will offer features that others don't, but what's the principal problem preventing me from building a chat-based application that works over Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Kik, etc. so long as they each provide an API for connecting these bots, beyond time?
- free2rhyme214 10y ago
  You can but FB has the most MAU's. I believe after FB Skype is the biggest. Is it easy to build bots on multiple platforms? Personally I'm staying away from Kik. Their MAU is low and I really dislike their constant spam.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - michaelmior 10y ago
    I'm blanking on any names right now, but I've seen a few startups recently working on platforms for building bots with integrations to multiple different services. No doubt one or more of these will add Messenger support. There are also open source projects like Lita[0], BotBuilder[1], and Hubot[2] which give a nice abstraction layer. [0] https://www.lita.io/ https://www.lita.io/ [1] https://dev.botframework.com/ https://dev.botframework.com/ [2] https://hubot.github.com/ https://hubot.github.com/
- theseatoms 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

KingMob 10y ago

In the meantime, Facebook still hasn't gotten around to allowing 1-to-1 messages from users on mobile websites, and probably never will. Sharing on your wall, sure, but send something privately? Sorry, we haven't gotten around to fixing that 4-year-old bug yet. (Even weirder, it works fine in desktop browsers...)

sambe 10y ago
What do you mean? Sending messages from mobile to a single user using the messages menu works doesn't it?
- KingMob 10y ago
  I mean from our website, not Facebook's. You can use the Fbook API to share (1-to-many) on mobile websites, but you can't use the "send" functionality to send a private 1-to-1 message. It's surely not a technical issue, I'm assuming Fbook just decided never to implement it.

sourcd 10y ago

From official docs : https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/t39.2178-6/12057143_198218393902993_755928037_n.png https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/t39.2178-6/12057143_1982183939...

sssparkkk 10y ago

Everyone seems to be jumping on the bots bandwagon - Microsoft, Facebook, Slack etc. Do we really think this kind of text-based interaction is the future? Granted, it's an interface practically everyone knows how to use, but I believe it could result in rather long conversations (what are the available commands/questions?) to actually get something a little more complex done. Our messaging startup is heading in the opposite direction: we offer fully functional tools and games that can be instantly used by groups of people. We also offer a platform that allows developers to create these HTML5 based apps themselves. If you think this sounds interesting, have a look at https://platform.happening.im https://platform.happening.im .

miguelrochefort 10y ago
Natural languages are terrible interfaces. They're linear, verbose, inexpressive, ambiguous. Clearly, we need a computer-assisted language to elevate humanity's ability to communicate. Such a platform could be as important as Gutenberg's printing press.
- jexe 10y ago
  I don't know what that means, but you've got my attention. Could you elaborate on what you have in mind?
  - miguelrochefort 10y ago
    # PROBLEM Software is fragmented. This leads to poor user experience. - I have 100+ apps on my phone - I have 1000+ online accounts I need to discover these apps/websites/services, repeat the same information over and over again, learn their features and limitations. They don't talk to each other, which means that I need to continuously update them. We're humans, we're smart, we adapt easily, we got used to it, we don't even notice. However, when you take a step back and look at it, it's a mess. Generally, when I try to show the problem to people, they blame the user. They say there's no need to use that many systems. And they're right. In the real world, I can get by using only English (or in my case, French) as a general-purpose communication interface. The problem with software is that people tend to associate one system with one use-case. One app for this, one app for that. Do one thing, and do it well. That's the general direction a lot of software is going in (i.e., Facebook Messenger vs Facebook). When people tell me I should use fewer systems, they also imply that I should accept to cover fewer use-cases with software. And while most people think it's reasonable not to use software for various things (unlock doors, turn on lights, preheat oven, change channel, pay goods, track calories), I consider them short-sighted. We can't afford to choose which activities deserve the power of software and which can continue to be done the old-fashion (and so-called "simpler") way. We need software everywhere. Beyond the consumer-facing UX fragmentation problems, as an application developer, I'm exposed to the even uglier side of things. The arbitrary design process, the compromise-ridden business decisions. Most people have no idea how expensive (in time and resources) it is to build the simplest of software in the real world. Take 100 different teams, and they'll all design the same system in completely different ways, repeating the very same mistakes. How many different user authentication systems have been implemented in the world? How many caching layers? How many ORMs? How many online stores (all with pretty much the very same features, from the image gallery to the cart). This is insane. This makes SAP look sexy. Now, take the top 100 most popular apps and websites. List out all of their features. Remove duplicates. Remove duplicates. Generalize. Remove duplicates. You'll realize they all share 80% of the same features, probably more. Don't be tricked by functional synonyms. A like, an upvote, a favorite, a share, a retweet, a rating, a pin. They're all the same things. You can reduce the functionalities of most app to a very simple vocabulary. Basically, people have things, people want things. The only challenge is in describing things. And that's what we need a tool for. # SOLUTION The customer is NOT king. Stop thinking that software should be tailored to its users. People don't know what they want. People have a tendency to under-generalize. They think that because two things look different, they're different. They're wrong. There is not as much difference between hailing a cab, ordering a pizza, sharing a video, shipping a package, flying to Hawaii, renting a room, sending money, taking an elevator, and selling your couch, as people are lead to believe. They're essentially the same things, and software should treat them as such. We need a general purpose communication platform. Not one monolithic app to which all possible features were added, but something that can be extended to a wide array of use cases. I'm not talking about plugins, micro-apps, or a web browser. These usually give too much freedom to developers, which once again results in fragmentation. I'm talking about a language, English on computer-steroids. By communicating through a computer, this language gains access to the world's knowledge. This language can challenge your thoughts. This language can predict your thoughts. You only need to be as verbose as what the language doesn't already know about you. With time, the language becomes more like a to-do list a la Google Now (i.e., tells you what to do next) than a notepad. This language is your interface with the past, present and future world. English is text-based and linear. You start from nothing, then a word, then a sentence. I don't want a language where you start with nothing. Start with the entire state of the entire world (as some sort of hyper-graph), communicate by editing it. Edit edges, introduce new nodes. One place for every idea. Never repeat, support instead. Invest your social credit to augment the credibility/value of facts. Use it as a way to describe both the past, present, and future (prediction and/or wish). Follow the path of PROLOG, RDF and lojban. Graph-oriented communication is what the world needs. I believe we can make it accessible, not without a learning curve, by the use of inference and custom renderers. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but I can't foresee it not being done.

leowinterde 10y ago

https://messengerplatform.fb.com/ https://messengerplatform.fb.com/ "Powered by WordPress.com VIP" lazy faebook developers...

andreasklinger 10y ago
Imo it's a sign of effectiveness not laziness

BlakePetersen 10y ago

Ah ha... Now I understand why they pulled Messenger out of the core FB app. So they could badger people for a year to install an intrusive application (or never be able to read those notifications the FB app keeps sending you without firing up a web browser) that would ultimately be leveraged as a B2C marketing platform.

OJFord 10y ago

Nice. I assume Facebook gets a tonne of data about what I ordered etc. (many examples are order confirmations)

jaywunder 10y ago

People are talking about sharecropping, but this seems to me like they're trying to make Slack-like integrations for the general (non-dev) public. Can someone explain why this is different from Slack's model of using their platform to make apps? Also people sound like they want to make money from an app on Facebook's platform. But I'd think that to consider making your start-up off someone else's platform is just a bad idea to begin with. Maybe have integrations to the messenger app from your app, but making an entire app on the messenger platform is a bad idea.

ethanpil 10y ago

I'm crying. Remember when messaging was built on open platforms and standards like XMPP and IRC? The golden year(s?) when Google Talk worked with AIM and anyone could choose whatever client they preferred? Welcome to the future friends when we must pay to battle the keymasters and gatekeepers on their terms to do what we used to do ourselves, for free. First they took my RSS, then they took my XMPP... Who can guess whats next?

static_noise 10y ago
HTTP
- rgbrgb 10y ago
  Yep, it's not like we don't have open protocols with millions of users. Data silos and super nodes in the network are a socio-economic effect, not technical. What I mean is that as long as it's desirable to become a high traffic, high authority node, there will be people (and corporations) spending time and money to build them -- I think it's an emergent property of human society + resource scarcity.
- ivanca 10y ago
  ...even worse, HTML. Someday Facebook will decide that HTML is not enough for them and will make users install its own pseud-browser.
  - qznc 10y ago
    Like Google did?
cpach 10y ago
I think what’s needed is an open chat protocol that also works well in mobile settings, since that’s where a huge chunk of the potential user base is these days.
- outside1234 10y ago

islandThinker 10y ago

so it's basically just those automated phone systems that everyone hates except over Facebook Messenger? I have to say I don't understand Silicon Valley these days...

danneu 10y ago
You don't see the difference between this and hanging around with a phone to your ear listening to an audio user-interface synchronously waiting until it's ready for you to input commands with your numpad?

intrasight 10y ago

I've no idea why anybody would install or use that POS spyware Messenger.

vittore 10y ago

I am surprised no one comparing that to Telegram.

Perceptes 10y ago

I hope people will help support matrix.org instead of building on a platform like this.

f14ist 10y ago
I just checked out some of the previous HN posts about matrix.org - I´d love something like it to become widely used... in the same way that I'm hoping for a Mozilla Persona, diaspora, etc. to become succesful. Is that ever going to happen though? With all this money going to centralised products?
- Perceptes 10y ago
  Probably not, which is why I said "hope." I'm doing my part by working on implementations of matrix.org components myself. Obviously, I can't predict the future, but I think it's unlikely any open system will "beat" or even compete meaningfully with the big proprietary systems. It's like a small group of well meaning political activists thinking they can beat lobbyists with unlimited funds. It's an army vs a couple people wielding sticks.

wanda 10y ago

Off-topic: I have few friends but they all have a preferred chat medium. One I keep in touch with via SMS; another via WhatsApp. Others via IRC. Is there a good iOS app that is essentially Pidgin, enabling communication via multiple protocols?

wcummings 10y ago
Bitlbee + irccloud/znc maybe?

pierre 10y ago

It is now time to take all the innovations that have been happening in china around WeChat/WeiXin and to implement them into messenger. This time it's the other way around, we are actually going to copy the Chinese (they have had an API addressable messaging platform way before us and are ahead of us in the exploration of what work / is possible) : - this may disrupt Local business/shop relation to client. (see how weixin is used by small online shop) - this may disrupt insurance (see how zhongan is selling micro-insurance through weixin) - this may disrupt paypal, as soon as you can send 'money' over a messaging app. - this may disrupt movie / theater ticket selling ... (there is tones of other example) There is a lot of land to grab, the working use cases are already known (we get 5 year of china market data). I hope I had a couple of millions to invest in this market.

djsumdog 10y ago
> - this may disrupt paypal, as soon as you can send 'money' over a messaging app. American banking is so backwards and this will only make it worse. In Australia and New Zealand, no bank offers you checks. Do I own you $50? Well give me your BSB and account number. I type it into my phone app or web browser, type $50 and click send. It shows up tomorrow morning. Works on weekends, holidays, ANZAC day, New Years Day and no fees. $0. Person-to-person transfers are free, move in 24 hours and your account number doesn't need to be private. I came back to America back to the world of three business days for an electronic ACH payment to clear (if you're lucky)!! WTF?! Our banking system is in the 1990s because PayPal, Square and now Facebook will lobby to keep their business models. Fuck. That. Shit. Money should move through the banking system using standards, not via Facebook with their proprietary PayPal like garbage.
- knz 10y ago
  I don't think the average kiwi has seen a cheque in decades. After 10 years of living in the US I have started to rejoice in how despite being one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth the US still clings to things like paper cheques, $0.01/$0.05/$0.10 coins, US customary units, and a plumbing system that requires most houses to own a plunger. Perhaps it's a sign of assimilation?

X-Istence 10y ago

Am I the only one that keeps some separation between different platforms? For example, there are people I follow on Snapchat, but I have absolutely no interest doing the same on Facebook Messenger. My Facebook is still mostly people I have met in real life and care about, that and groups I am a part of because social life. I don't want to adulterate that with chat bots, and ordering pizza and any other integrations. In reality I spend very little time in Facebook messenger and have zero interest in increasing the amount of time I spend on Facebook.

__abc 10y ago
amen
0xdeafcafe 10y ago
Clearly this isn't for you then. I, however, use messenger frequently - too frequently. And I welcome all these changes, as they are really maturing the platform and making it a delight to use. I have a group chat on messenger of all my friends, and when they added the simple options to change the group colours, add nicknames, and even change the default emoji to something other than a thumbs up, messenger became a whole lot more fun to use. I can't wait to see how it develops with these changes.
- equalsnil 10y ago
  Honestly curious: Why is this your first and only comment on HN?
  - 0xdeafcafe 10y ago
    Honestly, because I needed karma so I could confirm this account on keybase. So I jumped on the homepage and commented on something I thought relevant to me.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
I agree completely. My Snapchat friends are nothing like my Facebook friends (since by definition we keep up in very different ways) and my Twitter feed contains very little from either. And then there is the microscopic overlap between any of those social networks and my Xbox Live account.

anysz 10y ago

Is there anybody that sees positives to this ?

gedrap 10y ago

For a while, Messenger supports some partners-only kind of program for bots. For example, if someone posts @dailycute then a random image from imgur aww is posted [0]. I am quite interested whether they have plans to extend this and make it more open (some kind of chat apps so that you can't just reserve a bunch of good keywords with non functioning bots?). [0] http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/05/facebook-messenger-bots/ http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/05/facebook-messenger-bots/

__float 10y ago
https://www.fbf8.com/schedule/session/introducing-bots-on-messenger https://www.fbf8.com/schedule/session/introducing-bots-on-me... They covered this today at F8, but there doesn't seem to be any text or archived video version just yet.

Snowdax 10y ago

"Now that we've almost finished migrating our app away from Parse lets start integrating this new Facebook thing!" Yeah, how about no.

runn1ng 10y ago

As much as I don't like Telegram weird pseudo-crypto, I really like what they are doing with their bot API and the messenger is really good in general. They are adding features like on fire.

pat_space 10y ago

Does anyone see Messenger as a potential Skype for business/Slack/Hipchat competitor? I feel like the technology is on par, but the link to my personal facebook kills it for me.

dbbk 10y ago
Well, Facebook at Work has Messenger built-in, just scoped to your organisation. So I guess they're already doing it.

tyingq 10y ago

"The Send/Receive API must not be used to send marketing or promotional messages...advertising...branded content..up selling..cross selling" Then, "Spring offers a personal shopping assistant on Messenger" https://messengerplatform.fb.com/wp-content/themes/fbmessengerplatform/images/slides/caseStudies_spring/foreground.png https://messengerplatform.fb.com/wp-content/themes/fbmesseng... Huh?

vogt 10y ago
The big difference seems to be that bots built on this platform are not to be used as an ad delivery mechanism, like, say, outbound.io. The App Review section of the docs makes this a little clearer of what is acceptable and what isn't, complete with graphics: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/app-review https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/app-...

peterchane 10y ago

Backchannel: http://dev.backchannel.net http://dev.backchannel.net https://medium.com/@backchannelbots/introducing-backchannel-826f3836e6d2#.hr7vxmni7 https://medium.com/@backchannelbots/introducing-backchannel-...

arturojain 10y ago

We need a WhatsApp API

thesquib 10y ago

Looks like a dead end to me

akramhussein 10y ago

Interestingly if you try and set up a Messenger Bot, there is a one-time fee of $99[0] to take advantage of Customer Matching - where they use phone numbers you have to find existing customers to contact.

greenspot 10y ago

Does FB own Wit.ai or is there any strategic coop? How is their relation?

dbbk 10y ago
Wit.ai is apparently the new brand for the developer side of their 'M' personal assistant.