Facebook's Messenger Platform Bots Want To Be Your Middle-Man

At Facebook's F8 conference today, Mark Zuckerberg talked a lot about bringing people together, and giving everyone access to share virtually anything. He then went on to talk about how widely-used their Messenger app is, going so far as to point out that the company is delivering a higher volume of messages every day, than phone companies transmit SMS messages. And now the company wants you to use those same messages for everything.

Mark talked a lot about how hard it is to communicate with companies. He went on to say that no one likes to call a company, and that these days most places want you to download their own custom app, which can be annoying. So that's why Facebook's solution is to have you do all of your communication with businesses through Facebook's Messenger app.

No, the Messenger app won't actually get you a live person to assist you. Instead, Facebook will be providing an API that will allow businesses to create their own AI helper. Once it's online, the custom AI will allow customers to ask questions, and have them craft responses.

Some of the example uses were getting news updates from CNN delivered to your Messenger app, and sending a message to 1-800-Flowers to order a bouquet for someone. He demonstrated this by ordering some flowers and having them sent to a co-worker.

The idea here is that Messenger will become an app that is now a tool for communicating with businesses. No more browsing websites looking for the information you need, or dealing with phone calls to robots. Now you'll be able to have all of your automated services in one handy app.