Humans, we’ve got company.
No longer satisfied with being the dominant network for our humble species, Facebook is now courting a different type of user: bots. And eventually you’ll be able to talk to them as if they were your mates.
“Could you transfer £100 to my brother, please?” you might one day ask your bank. Or maybe, “Do you have any blue shirts in my size?”
Sometimes they’ll ask you things too, with something like: “Do you want to hear today’s top stories?”
Right now the conversations will be structured – with Messenger bots suggesting things you can say. But the goal is natural conversation, and it could be a huge step.
If what Facebook has promised today at its F8 developer conference comes to pass, the effect on our everyday lives could be enormous. It could be, according to Facebook’s head of messaging David Marcus, a return to more personal interactions.
“Before the internet era, everything was conversational,” he told the BBC.
“But then we traded conversations for scale.”
One of the bots being launched on the service today will be from Spring, an artificially intelligent concierge service.
“Spring is actually going to build an experience where everything is automated except customer service,” Mr Marcus explained.
“It’s bot for 99.9%, but then if you have a problem, a human can actually jump in and sort out your problem.
“That’s the best of both worlds.”
Gold rush
There are obvious concerns to all this, and I’ll get to those in a second, but first here’s how it will work.
Messenger Platform, as Facebook calls it, is the firm’s latest application programming interface (API).
An API is a way for companies like Facebook to give external developers the access and know-how to make things on their platforms.
It’s a big opportunity – the company’s first API, which allowed anyone to create apps on Facebook, led to the birth of multi-billion dollar companies including Farmville creator, Zynga.
