5 ms·

PM on Messenger Platform here. Great feedback! For discovery, FB Messenger actually has more channels for bot discovery than any other platform, including: -

PM on Messenger Platform here. Great feedback! For discovery, FB Messenger actually has more channels for bot discovery than any other platform, including: - m.me links with referral tracking - Messenger Codes - Several plugins that allow easy opt-in via developer's website, including the ability to by default opt-in users on any form/flow on your website into your bot experience on Messenger. - Customer matching (use phone numbers to send updates to customers and acquire them as a bot user) - Messenger destination ads - Sharing features that many have used to achieve incredible viral reach. The power that developers have to promote their own bots using these existing channels is largely undertapped. I would encourage developers to see what they're building as a business first, and a bot second. The bot is just a facet/channel into what you offer (even if it is a primary one). If you don't have a reason to offer a product or service or publish content, you probably don't have a reason to have a bot. Admittedly, we could do better at setting user expectations for bots and in distinguishing them in search results and in the FB main app, and maybe pushing them in more places. Re: inflated expectations. Totally right. The "AI Agent"/NLP use case is just one possibility for a bot, yet it's the sexiest one that the media seems to like. It's the tip of the iceberg -- there are a ton of more mundane but incredibly useful bots that are succeeding on the platform. If any bot developer has questions about this, or wants to brainstorm ways to get users, I am happy to help or bounce ideas!

ricardobeat 10y ago
Note that none of what you mentioned is about discovery, but pushing the other way around.
- dangrover 10y ago
  These are all ways to reach users in places they already are so that they can discover your bot. People who already have a reason to encounter you are much more likely to use your bot once they discover you have one. Here's what I mean: - Processing orders through your site? Add the checkbox plugin. Users discover the bot when they go about their business on your site. - Got a retail store, print ad, or want to post fliers around town? Messenger Codes. Users can discover your bot by seeing it in real life in those places. - Reach a targeted audience on FB? Destination ads. Users discover via news feed. - Got tons of users signing up for your app or site with SMS and want to expose a bot version to them, to take advantage of a better notification channel and social features? Customer matching. - Publishing content? Put the "Send to messenger" plugin on your site. And use the share CTAs to let people spread the bot to their friends. The users discover your bot because their friend thinks what you're doing is awesome. At this stage, "How do I get my bot discovered?" is akin to "How do I get my website discovered?". The answer, as it is for every startup, is "Make something people want" (and put it in places people in that audience are likely to be!) If users have zero reason to come into contact with what you're doing otherwise, why would it being in the form of a bot make any difference? That being said, we definitely want to familiarize more users with the concept and get them to try more bots! It's clear even those who are doing their darnedest to get their bot out there are running into this as an obstacle. Yet still, the sum impact developers could have by solving a real problem in users' lives (i.e. not "I wish I had more bots to try out!"), and wielding these tools to make people with that problem come across your bot is going to be way more substantial than anything we can do on the platform level. There plenty of real world problems whose solutions may be best expressed as bots rather than yet another app to download or website login to remember. And they come with awesome discovery opportunities built-in: - Bot for dentists that sends appointment reminders and makes it a few taps for patients to book appointments (instead of calling and having to deal with the receptionist). Discovered via phone number matching. (Paging kalzumeus!) - Bot for restaurants that makes it easy to order take-out and has special offers and loyalty points. Discovered via codes or me.me URLs printed on the receipt, and/or website. - Bot for schools that make it easy for teachers to communicate with students/parents at scale, as well as collect money for field trips/supplies. Discovered via phone matching or URL sent out to students/parents, or by searching for the name of the school. - Bot for night clubs that lets them send out their performance schedule and sell tickets all in the same place. Discovered via the nightclub's website + QR codes physically placed in the club. Or by searching for that nightclub. Or by your friends forwarding the fliers from the bot and asking "What are you doing Friday?". (Stuff forwarded from bots in Messenger automatically have a huge button linking the recipient to the bot to check it out!) - Bot for newspapers to send out content to subscribers in a high engagement way. Discovered via website and via printed codes/URLs on the newspaper itself. - Bot for public transit agencies to let riders look up schedule/fare info and get notifications for their routes and notification of anything that might affect their trip. Discovered via poster by the bus stop, on the bus, and on the agency's website. - Bot for landlords to collect rent, sent invoices, and recieve maintenance requests without the user having to download some dumb app. (After moving back to SF, saw that mine has something called "Rent Cafe" I'm supposed to download. Puh-leese.). Discovered via the move-in packet and/or link in emails. I'd probably pay my rent on time if I had this. I think you're getting the point. The total number of people who go to nightclubs, dentists, read newspapers, ride busses, and live in apartments, is many many times the number who go "Oh, I wonder what bots are out this week!" These examples are not to say that "bots for bots sake" won't succeed and that you should only be solving boring small business problems. But these sort of problems felt by the long tail are things bots are particularly great at! They're real problems worth money, have natural built-in discovery opportunities that wouldn't work for apps/sites. I hope this makes sense and gets people thinking!
  - godot 10y ago
    Hi Dan, great list of things that should be bots here. (also, I'm a fan of your post about your experience in wechat while in guangzhou) Funny that you made the comparison of bots to websites, I wrote a post making the same comparison (in other aspects). Won't link here (don't want to self-promo), you can check my post history on HN if interested. Anyway, I wanted to point out that while you're absolutely correct that there are tons of channels of Discovery outside of Messenger, I've found that by far the most effective method for accelerated growth of a bot was being featured on the "Bots" section on the Messenger app. In my experience launching several side projects bots, the only scenario where I've gained any meaningful amount of users at all is when I was listed there for a short time in a region. This leads me to think that a lot of users browse around the Messenger app itself, looking for things to do, or bots to message. Yes, in most of your use cases on this list, the bots tie to some outside service (physical or digital), and it wouldn't make sense to feature those bots on Messenger itself. But there are also bots that are primarily useful as a bot only, not tied to other services. (Icon8 is a great example, it's a very cool filter app that works by itself as a bot. Which is why it seems to be featured forever :) But that's exactly what I mean.) In one of my previous write-ups I pointed out that, while unlikely for FB to implement, if there is some sort of newsfeed-like page on the Messenger mobile app where users can explore what other bots that their friends are using, it could expose bots to users a lot more quickly. Not saying exactly that would be a good design (it probably is a poorly designed feature if done that way), but something along those lines is what we would think is something that the platform itself could do to help.
    - dangrover 10y ago
      I would be curious to see the bots you've made. Lots of side-projects don't get traction -- whether they're apps, sites, or bots. Would love to see what you've tried and learned along the way.
      - godot 10y ago
        Sure, here's a list of bots that I've either made solely or with some friends, chronologically from newest to oldest: https://m.me/memechicken https://m.me/memechicken (dev myself with design help) https://m.me/mobmessenger https://m.me/mobmessenger (with friends) https://m.me/playcoffeebreakgames https://m.me/playcoffeebreakgames (myself) https://m.me/localcatchclub https://m.me/localcatchclub (with friends) As far as learnings go, by far the most significant thing was on the UX side -- to not leave a user hanging. At the end of almost every response, include a quick reply button or a button (in a template) -- even if it just says "back to main menu" or something. As soon as the conversation hits a "dead end", the likelihood of a user dropping off skyrockets.
mikesabat 10y ago
I'm very excited about Messenger As a Destination although, I've yet to see one in the wild and from the campaigns I've helped launch the results have not been amazing. It could be a targeting problem, but I'm worried that the user gets the page where they have to choose web browser or Messenger App. Can you confirm if the user directs into Messenger directly when they click the ad?
- godot 10y ago
  I'm not Dan and don't work in FB, but I can confirm that for Messenger As Destination ads, the user does go directly into Messenger when clicking on the ad. (I've purchased ads and tried it out) But I get what you mean -- the screen when you choose web browser or Messenger App is a really bad screen. It's a real turn-off for almost all users. Out of everyone we've surveyed (tens of them), nobody knew what that screen was about and what they were supposed to do on it.
  - dangrover 10y ago
    Fixing this!
    - JonathanDuarte 10y ago
      Hi Dan. I was specifically searching for other Messenger bot owners who had similar "Destination Messenger" ad problems. We did a campaign last week, with 0 conversions. I just saw someone responded that the issue is fixed. We're interested in testing it out again. - Jonathan Duarte
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - shanegau 10y ago
      I believe this has been fixed, thank you. I ran a messenger as destination this past weekend and saw a 43% conversion rate. Thank you FB PM team!
eriknstr 10y ago
This thread is the first time I've ever heard of bots for FB Messenger.
pranay01 10y ago
Was working on making FB messenger bots around September, but got very poor results. The drop off from number of people who click " Send to Messenger" button to actual opening on chat is close to 50%. And this is in India where people I was targetting generally have messenger installed. Any updates coming on this issue?
shanegau 10y ago
Most qr scanners cannot read messenger codes...

ricardobeat 10y ago

Note that none of what you mentioned is about discovery, but pushing the other way around.

dangrover 10y ago
These are all ways to reach users in places they already are so that they can discover your bot. People who already have a reason to encounter you are much more likely to use your bot once they discover you have one. Here's what I mean: - Processing orders through your site? Add the checkbox plugin. Users discover the bot when they go about their business on your site. - Got a retail store, print ad, or want to post fliers around town? Messenger Codes. Users can discover your bot by seeing it in real life in those places. - Reach a targeted audience on FB? Destination ads. Users discover via news feed. - Got tons of users signing up for your app or site with SMS and want to expose a bot version to them, to take advantage of a better notification channel and social features? Customer matching. - Publishing content? Put the "Send to messenger" plugin on your site. And use the share CTAs to let people spread the bot to their friends. The users discover your bot because their friend thinks what you're doing is awesome. At this stage, "How do I get my bot discovered?" is akin to "How do I get my website discovered?". The answer, as it is for every startup, is "Make something people want" (and put it in places people in that audience are likely to be!) If users have zero reason to come into contact with what you're doing otherwise, why would it being in the form of a bot make any difference? That being said, we definitely want to familiarize more users with the concept and get them to try more bots! It's clear even those who are doing their darnedest to get their bot out there are running into this as an obstacle. Yet still, the sum impact developers could have by solving a real problem in users' lives (i.e. not "I wish I had more bots to try out!"), and wielding these tools to make people with that problem come across your bot is going to be way more substantial than anything we can do on the platform level. There plenty of real world problems whose solutions may be best expressed as bots rather than yet another app to download or website login to remember. And they come with awesome discovery opportunities built-in: - Bot for dentists that sends appointment reminders and makes it a few taps for patients to book appointments (instead of calling and having to deal with the receptionist). Discovered via phone number matching. (Paging kalzumeus!) - Bot for restaurants that makes it easy to order take-out and has special offers and loyalty points. Discovered via codes or me.me URLs printed on the receipt, and/or website. - Bot for schools that make it easy for teachers to communicate with students/parents at scale, as well as collect money for field trips/supplies. Discovered via phone matching or URL sent out to students/parents, or by searching for the name of the school. - Bot for night clubs that lets them send out their performance schedule and sell tickets all in the same place. Discovered via the nightclub's website + QR codes physically placed in the club. Or by searching for that nightclub. Or by your friends forwarding the fliers from the bot and asking "What are you doing Friday?". (Stuff forwarded from bots in Messenger automatically have a huge button linking the recipient to the bot to check it out!) - Bot for newspapers to send out content to subscribers in a high engagement way. Discovered via website and via printed codes/URLs on the newspaper itself. - Bot for public transit agencies to let riders look up schedule/fare info and get notifications for their routes and notification of anything that might affect their trip. Discovered via poster by the bus stop, on the bus, and on the agency's website. - Bot for landlords to collect rent, sent invoices, and recieve maintenance requests without the user having to download some dumb app. (After moving back to SF, saw that mine has something called "Rent Cafe" I'm supposed to download. Puh-leese.). Discovered via the move-in packet and/or link in emails. I'd probably pay my rent on time if I had this. I think you're getting the point. The total number of people who go to nightclubs, dentists, read newspapers, ride busses, and live in apartments, is many many times the number who go "Oh, I wonder what bots are out this week!" These examples are not to say that "bots for bots sake" won't succeed and that you should only be solving boring small business problems. But these sort of problems felt by the long tail are things bots are particularly great at! They're real problems worth money, have natural built-in discovery opportunities that wouldn't work for apps/sites. I hope this makes sense and gets people thinking!
- godot 10y ago
  Hi Dan, great list of things that should be bots here. (also, I'm a fan of your post about your experience in wechat while in guangzhou) Funny that you made the comparison of bots to websites, I wrote a post making the same comparison (in other aspects). Won't link here (don't want to self-promo), you can check my post history on HN if interested. Anyway, I wanted to point out that while you're absolutely correct that there are tons of channels of Discovery outside of Messenger, I've found that by far the most effective method for accelerated growth of a bot was being featured on the "Bots" section on the Messenger app. In my experience launching several side projects bots, the only scenario where I've gained any meaningful amount of users at all is when I was listed there for a short time in a region. This leads me to think that a lot of users browse around the Messenger app itself, looking for things to do, or bots to message. Yes, in most of your use cases on this list, the bots tie to some outside service (physical or digital), and it wouldn't make sense to feature those bots on Messenger itself. But there are also bots that are primarily useful as a bot only, not tied to other services. (Icon8 is a great example, it's a very cool filter app that works by itself as a bot. Which is why it seems to be featured forever :) But that's exactly what I mean.) In one of my previous write-ups I pointed out that, while unlikely for FB to implement, if there is some sort of newsfeed-like page on the Messenger mobile app where users can explore what other bots that their friends are using, it could expose bots to users a lot more quickly. Not saying exactly that would be a good design (it probably is a poorly designed feature if done that way), but something along those lines is what we would think is something that the platform itself could do to help.
  - dangrover 10y ago
    I would be curious to see the bots you've made. Lots of side-projects don't get traction -- whether they're apps, sites, or bots. Would love to see what you've tried and learned along the way.
    - godot 10y ago
      Sure, here's a list of bots that I've either made solely or with some friends, chronologically from newest to oldest: https://m.me/memechicken https://m.me/memechicken (dev myself with design help) https://m.me/mobmessenger https://m.me/mobmessenger (with friends) https://m.me/playcoffeebreakgames https://m.me/playcoffeebreakgames (myself) https://m.me/localcatchclub https://m.me/localcatchclub (with friends) As far as learnings go, by far the most significant thing was on the UX side -- to not leave a user hanging. At the end of almost every response, include a quick reply button or a button (in a template) -- even if it just says "back to main menu" or something. As soon as the conversation hits a "dead end", the likelihood of a user dropping off skyrockets.

mikesabat 10y ago

I'm very excited about Messenger As a Destination although, I've yet to see one in the wild and from the campaigns I've helped launch the results have not been amazing. It could be a targeting problem, but I'm worried that the user gets the page where they have to choose web browser or Messenger App. Can you confirm if the user directs into Messenger directly when they click the ad?

godot 10y ago
I'm not Dan and don't work in FB, but I can confirm that for Messenger As Destination ads, the user does go directly into Messenger when clicking on the ad. (I've purchased ads and tried it out) But I get what you mean -- the screen when you choose web browser or Messenger App is a really bad screen. It's a real turn-off for almost all users. Out of everyone we've surveyed (tens of them), nobody knew what that screen was about and what they were supposed to do on it.
- dangrover 10y ago
  Fixing this!
  - JonathanDuarte 10y ago
    Hi Dan. I was specifically searching for other Messenger bot owners who had similar "Destination Messenger" ad problems. We did a campaign last week, with 0 conversions. I just saw someone responded that the issue is fixed. We're interested in testing it out again. - Jonathan Duarte
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - shanegau 10y ago
    I believe this has been fixed, thank you. I ran a messenger as destination this past weekend and saw a 43% conversion rate. Thank you FB PM team!

eriknstr 10y ago

This thread is the first time I've ever heard of bots for FB Messenger.

pranay01 10y ago

Was working on making FB messenger bots around September, but got very poor results. The drop off from number of people who click " Send to Messenger" button to actual opening on chat is close to 50%. And this is in India where people I was targetting generally have messenger installed. Any updates coming on this issue?

shanegau 10y ago

Most qr scanners cannot read messenger codes...