4 ms·

> The 20-year-old chose Facebook Messenger as a home for the latest incarnation of his robot lawyer because of accessibility. “It works with almost every device

by dao- 10y ago

> The 20-year-old chose Facebook Messenger as a home for the latest incarnation of his robot lawyer because of accessibility. “It works with almost every device, making it accessible to over a billion people,” he said. That can't be the whole story... A web app could have been at least as accessible. I guess Facebook offers APIs that make developing this kind of application easier than looking for other frameworks or starting from scratch.

RangerScience 10y ago
Sure, but the dev already has experience with the tech behind a chat bot, and may not have the experience needed to make a web app as easily. Think about all the "obvious" steps involved (text input, message chain display, page/server communications), the extra features FB messenger has (in-message buttons); then the issues with cleanly displaying on multiple screen sizes; and then you start getting into the fiddly bits like page reloading, form submission failures (say, due to internet disconnect).... ...All of that is done for you. You just need to have the meat of the program (the chat) and you're good to go. Makes a lot of sense, actually.
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  Doing this with (say) Twilio isn't a whole lot harder.
  - ylem 10y ago
    But, wouldn't he have to pay for Twilio? I love the Twilio API, but if he's running a fee service with a lot of users, that must be a consideration...
andrenotgiant 10y ago
The idea of Facebook platform being more accessible than the web is scary to me, but not surprising. Think about non-tech-savvy users on low-end devices, Facebook is familiar, and there's no responsiveness or web accessibility issues, it can feel faster because Facebook can optimize what is getting downloaded. It is scary when you extend this out a few years, FB and Google continue to extend the line of what gets consumed on their platform vs what sends people off to a web page. Your company's branded app is already dead, soon your company's website will be dead.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  This is partly a consequence of phone manufacturers implementing notification APIs for native apps first, and on several years later in browsers. Although somewhat it's just the nature of the beast that these things take a little while to percolate into each browser. I don't know how complete support is for web notifications, but eventually it will be a larger number than Facebook installed base. You can sometimes get some features early in apps, but the web browsers eventually cover everyone.
  - dgellow 10y ago
    Are you using native notifications with websites? I'm really annoyed by the trend of actual websites asking for access to the notification feature when I just want to read an article then leave. The last thing I need is more notifications.
    - erikpukinskis 10y ago
      You don't get notifications for messaging? Text, email, etc? And phone calls? Those are all things a person might want a web app to handle. I agree the notification requests in browsers are too obtrusive. In an app store they have the property of only asking when you choose to install. On the web there is no install so the request for access is not in response to any action you took, which is annoying. I think they should make the notification request block the whole app so that sites only put it up when it's the main thing they want to show. That aside... the point ia for some apps, like messaging, it is necessary. I am building an app for selling food, people need to know when to start prepping an order. notifications are a must.
      - dgellow 10y ago
        I agree that there are good cases for notification. It's difficult to find the correct amount of them and it's too easy to get so much of them so that everything important is being lost in the noise. I don't know what's the correct balance is but for my own usage I'm ok using emails as a notifications spooler and only use native notifications for some specific usages (mostly chat and email clients). What's sure is that I don't care about notifications from my browser. Btw I can only say for myself, we all have different way to use our tools. If your clients are happy with your notifications, great. I know I would disable them.

by dao- 10y ago

RangerScience 10y ago

Sure, but the dev already has experience with the tech behind a chat bot, and may not have the experience needed to make a web app as easily. Think about all the "obvious" steps involved (text input, message chain display, page/server communications), the extra features FB messenger has (in-message buttons); then the issues with cleanly displaying on multiple screen sizes; and then you start getting into the fiddly bits like page reloading, form submission failures (say, due to internet disconnect).... ...All of that is done for you. You just need to have the meat of the program (the chat) and you're good to go. Makes a lot of sense, actually.

wutbrodo 10y ago
Doing this with (say) Twilio isn't a whole lot harder.
- ylem 10y ago
  But, wouldn't he have to pay for Twilio? I love the Twilio API, but if he's running a fee service with a lot of users, that must be a consideration...

andrenotgiant 10y ago

The idea of Facebook platform being more accessible than the web is scary to me, but not surprising. Think about non-tech-savvy users on low-end devices, Facebook is familiar, and there's no responsiveness or web accessibility issues, it can feel faster because Facebook can optimize what is getting downloaded. It is scary when you extend this out a few years, FB and Google continue to extend the line of what gets consumed on their platform vs what sends people off to a web page. Your company's branded app is already dead, soon your company's website will be dead.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
This is partly a consequence of phone manufacturers implementing notification APIs for native apps first, and on several years later in browsers. Although somewhat it's just the nature of the beast that these things take a little while to percolate into each browser. I don't know how complete support is for web notifications, but eventually it will be a larger number than Facebook installed base. You can sometimes get some features early in apps, but the web browsers eventually cover everyone.
- dgellow 10y ago
  Are you using native notifications with websites? I'm really annoyed by the trend of actual websites asking for access to the notification feature when I just want to read an article then leave. The last thing I need is more notifications.
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    You don't get notifications for messaging? Text, email, etc? And phone calls? Those are all things a person might want a web app to handle. I agree the notification requests in browsers are too obtrusive. In an app store they have the property of only asking when you choose to install. On the web there is no install so the request for access is not in response to any action you took, which is annoying. I think they should make the notification request block the whole app so that sites only put it up when it's the main thing they want to show. That aside... the point ia for some apps, like messaging, it is necessary. I am building an app for selling food, people need to know when to start prepping an order. notifications are a must.
    - dgellow 10y ago
      I agree that there are good cases for notification. It's difficult to find the correct amount of them and it's too easy to get so much of them so that everything important is being lost in the noise. I don't know what's the correct balance is but for my own usage I'm ok using emails as a notifications spooler and only use native notifications for some specific usages (mostly chat and email clients). What's sure is that I don't care about notifications from my browser. Btw I can only say for myself, we all have different way to use our tools. If your clients are happy with your notifications, great. I know I would disable them.