
Facebook Messenger Platform - hendler
https://www.messenger.com/platform
======
ethanpil
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?

~~~
natrius
We can take back the internet. We've been at a disadvantage for so long
because centralized services are easier to build great experiences with than
federated services. Messaging protocols require identities, and federated
identities are user-hostile. They worked once: email. Never again.

Luckily, we're in the middle of a decentralization renaissance. Instead of
managing your identity on a server controlled by Facebook or your XMPP host,
you can manage your identity on a blockchain controlled by no one. We can
build identities that any app can use. When it comes to network effects,
federation loses to centralization, but centralization loses to
decentralization.

Pick up the tools—Ethereum and IPFS—and start building systems without
gatekeepers. We will win.

~~~
api
You're right about UX being central to the problem, but you're missing a major
part of it here.

UX is _hard_. Getting great user experience takes IMHO a lot more _pain_ than
getting algorithms and systems to work right (in most cases). UX is about
endless revisions, a lot of boring and often ugly code, obsessing about pixels
and quirky details of your UI's "story," and other things that are very time
consuming, not fun, and that the vast majority of programmers hate doing.

As a result, people generally have to be paid to work on UX.

This is doubly true because most nerds don't need great UX. They know how
things work and can use "raw" hacker projects from the command line. So
there's really no motive in most cases. "Works for me."

Until and unless there is an economic model for a less centralized less
winner-take-all Internet economy, vertically integrated closed silos will
continue to dominate if for no other reason than the fact that they can pay
people to do the boring tedious work that separates a nerd project from an app
non-nerds want to use.

Edit: It's really always been about UX to some extent. Personal computing won
back in the 70s and 80s because it offered far superior user experience to
closed silo mainframes. But the Internet and especially mobile have changed
the game pretty dramatically. Now closed silos are winning because they offer
superior user experience.

~~~
thirdsun
But isn't that exactly where countless free and paid clients/apps of varying
quality for the user to choose from would come in handy? Take RSS as an
example - the technology as open for everyone, but as a profit-seeking company
you can still seduce with high-quality, polished client / feed reader. Of
course, that option would be open to any number of freelancers, one-man-
operations and other indie developers, not just the Googles and Facebooks of
this world. A great thing for the enduser, not necessarily a desirable outcome
for the mentioned companies.

~~~
WorldMaker
This is pretty much why the very common failure state of these open
technologies is that some company gets very close to perfecting the UX, pulls
in a vast majority of the possible users in that space, then slowly abandons
the open technology for closed replacements, thus locking in those users that
thought they were buying into the open system. (Google Reader, Google Talk,
Facebook Messenger, ...)

------
malanj
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-...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-
revenue-per-user-by-region/)).

~~~
pbreit
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
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..

------
pierre
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
> \- 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
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?

~~~
JoshTriplett
> and a plumbing system that requires most houses to own a plunger.

Getting off topic for the article at hand, but what's different in Australian
plumbing in that area?

~~~
codeka
[https://youtu.be/ryIQYYogQ8A](https://youtu.be/ryIQYYogQ8A)

I've literally never owned a plunger in my whole life, and I don't know
anybody who does. It baffles me everything I'm in the US and every toilet has
a plunger!

~~~
matwood
Why wouldn't these be the default in all new construction everywhere? Are
there downsides?

~~~
Rapzid
Not that I'm aware of. Lived in NZ for 5 years and just moved into a brand new
construction in CA just a few months back. Terrible. I've had to
plunge(technically I use the scrubber to generate the pressure) a few times
already :(

Also, the showers mostly all have baskets under the drain caps to capture hair
and stuff now.

~~~
matwood
I searched Lowes website and could not find any toilets like this. There has
to be some reason!

------
jswrenn
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-g...](http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2009/05/attention-nerds-new-gadgets-
api-for.html)

------
ascendantlogic
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
> 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
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.

~~~
michaelmior
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/)

------
aaron-lebo
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.

~~~
hayksaakian
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.

~~~
gue5t
There's a word for people who only care about their own quality of life, and
not that of those around them: "assholes".

Don't be an asshole, and don't advocate "fuck you got mine" practices like
these. Let's work to dismantle abusive systems like Facebook.

~~~
sbov
So you agree with
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11482075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11482075)
but also just felt like calling the parent an asshole?

~~~
gue5t
Yes!

------
cromwellian
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
First browsers became OS's, now you want messenger apps to become OS's?

How many layers of cruft do we need?

~~~
catfest
I'd hardly call it "cruft" \- this is the beauty of computer systems and
software - abstraction!

~~~
Aleman360
And now your messenger app needs a launcher, switcher, notification manager,
search, per-app settings pages, etc. And maybe its own process
model/scheduler, to prevent rogue apps from slowing down the messenger app.
And apps within the messenger app now need to be cross-messenger-platform on
top of being cross-webview-platform.

~~~
KirinDave
It's almost like people's expectations for software go up over time.

------
X-Istence
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.

~~~
0xdeafcafe
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
Honestly curious: Why is this your first and only comment on HN?

~~~
0xdeafcafe
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.

------
sssparkkk
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
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
I don't know what that means, but you've got my attention. Could you elaborate
on what you have in mind?

~~~
miguelrochefort
# 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.

~~~
flipside
I'm working on Retrace, "Graph-oriented communication" for sharing the ups and
downs of experiences via a waveform interface. Reach out if you'd like to
chat!

------
bemmu
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
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
> so you can use that payment info with the Messenger platform integrations
> too

That's not supported by the platform yet.

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

~~~
vlunkr
I'm confused about this as well. Why are they choosing to compete with
themselves?

~~~
daptaq
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
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
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.

~~~
thewhitetulip
Valid points, they aren't stiffling anyone, you can use others but since
everyone is on whatsapp and facebook you have to use them.

------
vr3690
I don't get the hype behind bots? When are where was it proved that bots as
interfaces can be successful?

~~~
shopkins
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-
co...](https://medium.com/chris-messina/2016-will-be-the-year-of-
conversational-commerce-1586e85e3991)

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

~~~
f14ist
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
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.

------
sna1l
I feel like this is going to be huge in terms of how much money starts flowing
through Facebook Payments

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

~~~
smacktoward
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
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.

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

~~~
hendler
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)

------
jaywunder
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.

------
gedrap
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
[https://www.fbf8.com/schedule/session/introducing-bots-on-
me...](https://www.fbf8.com/schedule/session/introducing-bots-on-messenger)

They covered this today at F8, but there doesn't seem to be any text or
archived video version just yet.

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

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

~~~
mkagenius
> 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-
Faceb...](https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Erlang-chosen-for-use-in-Facebook-
chat)

edit: was quoting wrong part of the op comment

~~~
Jtsummers
Note: The link you post is about Facebook's rewrite of their chat services
from Erlang to C++, not WhatsApp.

------
KingMob
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
What do you mean? Sending messages from mobile to a single user using the
messages menu works doesn't it?

~~~
KingMob
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.

------
BlakePetersen
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.

------
islandThinker
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
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?

------
vittore
I am surprised no one comparing that to Telegram.

------
wanda
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
Bitlbee + irccloud/znc maybe?

------
tyingq
_" 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/fbmesseng...](https://messengerplatform.fb.com/wp-
content/themes/fbmessengerplatform/images/slides/caseStudies_spring/foreground.png)

Huh?

~~~
vogt
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-...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/app-
review)

------
runn1ng
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.

------
peterchane
Backchannel: [http://dev.backchannel.net](http://dev.backchannel.net)

[https://medium.com/@backchannelbots/introducing-
backchannel-...](https://medium.com/@backchannelbots/introducing-
backchannel-826f3836e6d2#.hr7vxmni7)

------
sourcd
From official docs :
[https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/t39.2178-6/12057143_1982183939...](https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/t39.2178-6/12057143_198218393902993_755928037_n.png)

------
akramhussein
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.

------
leowinterde
[https://messengerplatform.fb.com/](https://messengerplatform.fb.com/)
"Powered by WordPress.com VIP" lazy faebook developers...

~~~
andreasklinger
Imo it's a sign of effectiveness not laziness

------
arturojain
We need a WhatsApp API

------
anysz
Is there _anybody_ that sees positives to this ?

------
Snowdax
"Now that we've almost finished migrating our app away from Parse lets start
integrating this new Facebook thing!"

Yeah, how about no.

------
OJFord
Nice.

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

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

------
greenspot
Does FB own Wit.ai or is there any strategic coop?

How is their relation?

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

------
thesquib
Looks like a dead end to me

------
shaohua
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
This was on HN yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11472612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11472612)

