Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger launches video chat that lets you text at the same time

Posted by

0


Facebook Messenger launches new video chat feature

The instant messaging app has already shaken things up with gif search and secret basketball games, but now it hopes to excite users with a new video chat feature.

It’s not the first time Facebook has offered video chat. Since 2015, people have been able to talk in a similar way to Apple’s FaceTime.

The new addition is that people can now chat face to face while sending traditional written messages at the same time, as the video will be confined to a small corner.

This could be helpful in circumstances where you want to describe something, like a new outfit you’re thinking of buying or how cute your dog is when it snores.

Facebook launches new instant video feature on Messenger Picture: Facebook
It’s already available (Picture: Facebook)

Or if you want to see the person you’re chatting too, but not enough to see their face fill your phone in glorious technicolour the whole time. Or if you want to see them, but you hate the sound of your own voice (that’s not really how I sound, right?)

The feature is easy to use: just click the video camera option in the top right corner when you have a chat window open, as in the picture above.

When your friend is viewing your conversation at the same time, the button will pulse to let you know. This lets you share a short (silent) video with them.

 

‘It’s perfect for sharing quick moments with friends who aren’t right by your side or making your conversations richer by seeing each other face-to-face when you are messaging,’ Facebook said.

‘Instant Video is a reflection of the ubiquity of video — we simply expect to have that ability in real-time, all the time.’

Snapchat has a similar feature which has been popular. It comes after Facebook-owned Instragram introduced another Snapchatty feature, ‘Stories’, which has the same name in both apps.

 

Google Duo jumps ahead of Pokemon Go and Facebook Messenger in app rankings

Posted by

2


Although it has only been around since the start of the week, it looks like Google’s new video calling app is already a smash hit in the US. Google Duo, the video chat app that the Android makerlaunched earlier this week, is now the most downloaded free app in the Google Play Store.

Open up Google Play on your Android device, go the ‘Top Free’ section, and you’ll find that Google Duo is the #1 app in this category. Facebook Messenger and Pokemon Go complete the podium. Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube Music complete the first page of the section.
Given the strength of its competitors, it looks like Google Duo has managed to raise a significant amount of interest among Android users.
It’s also worth pointing out that Google Duo has an average rating of 4.5, which is much better than the rating of Facebook (4.0), Facebook Messenger (3.9), and Snapchat (3.9).
In the past week, many were quick to point out that Google Duo has little chance of actually competing against the likes of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and FaceTime in terms of users. As it turns out, however, Google Duo is already a smash hit with Android users.
google duo knock knock
After a limited initial launch in a number of countries around the world. Google Duo is now available globally.
Getting off to a very good start is one thing, but maintaining this initial inertia is another story altogether. It remains to be seen if Google Duo will be able to convert this wave of initial users into daily active users. This Google Play chart tells us for sure is that many Android users gave the app a chance, but Google’s real challenge is to convince users that Google Duo is their best option for video chats looking forward.

Facebook Messenger launches chat bot economy to take on apps

Posted by

0


Facebook Messenger
Facebook Messenger wants to replace all the apps on your phone

Bots are officially taking over from apps as the primary way we communicate with our phones.

Facebook Messenger boss David Marcus has announced the launch of the Messenger platform – a tool that will enable developers around the world to build chat bots for the Messenger app which now has 900m users globally.

Speaking at Facebook’s annual developer conference F8 in San Francisco, Marcus showcased three types of “bots” – entities similar to friends within the app with which you can exchange text messages to perform a task.

What a Facebook Messenger bot would look like

FB Messenger bots
How to search for bots in Facebook Messenger

A bot would appear in the app just like a friend.

“We aren’t just trying to do question and response bots like you see elsewhere, but to have a rich interactive experience inside of threads,” Marcus told the Telegraph.

This includes shopping, booking airline tickets and even reading the news.

For instance, Marcus demonstrated the CNN News Bot for those who want little snippets of news in Messenger.

You can tell the CNN Bot what you’re interested in so it can tailor topics that are sent to you, and scroll through a carousel of different news stories. You can also ask it for a specific summary of a story.

CNN bot for Messenger
CNN bot for Messenger

Marcus also mentioned the shopping concierge bot built by e-commerce site Spring.

The bot asks you what you’re looking to buy – you can just text it if you want to, or click on the buttons – say you pick shoes, you can input price, and you get a range of curated products that you can scroll horizontally.

“It’s completely automated. People at the Facebook office here have been playing it here for the last couple of days, spending way too much money on it,” Marcus said.

Spring bot in Messenger
You can buy shoes in Mesesnger via the bot

The bots will learn your preferences

Facebook hopes to build machine learning into these bots so they learn your preferences over time – what types of items you like to buy, what news stories you prefer and so on.

This rich data is a goldmine for a service like Facebook which is sustained by advertising. “We are testing if business bots can re-engage people on threads with sponsored messages, it’s a small tiny test,” Marcus said.

In other words, Facebook may ultimately let brands contact you independently through Messenger, if they think you may be persuaded – a whole new era of targeted advertising.

Facebook’s AI assistant ‘M’ will also get bots

Facebook is testing its artificially intelligent secretary, called M, within its Messenger app in the US which uses a combination of human labour and machine learning to complete tasks for you. It can purchase items, get gifts delivered, book restaurants, and make travel arrangements.

“We are opening a new ‘bot builder’ so developers around the world can build bots for M,” Marcus said. This means if you wanted your assistant M to give you a weather alert and traffic summary before your commute every day, it would. “We could build an automated bot for that that learned over time,” he said.

Facebook is testing an A.I.-based personal assistant called “M”

Posted by

1


Thumb2

You may soon have a new reason to use Facebook Messenger.The company is experimenting with a new personal assistant feature for Facebook Messenger that can complete tasks for you, Facebook’s Messenger chief David Marcus revealed Wednesday.

The assistant, nicknamed “M” can make purchases, book travel, and schedule appointments from within Messenger. The service is “powered by artificial intelligence that’s trained and supervised by people,” according to Marcus. M is able to understand conversational queries and act on them from within Facebook, according screenshots of the assistant-like service.

Facebook M

 

“Unlike other AI-based services in the market, M can actually complete tasks on your behalf,” Marcus, wrote in a Facebook post. “It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more.”

Facebook is just beginning to test the service, Marcus said. It’s not clear how many people it’s being tested with, though it sounds like the experiment is still in a relatively early stage. The service, which will be a direct competitor to Siri, Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana, goes a long way toward explaining Facebook’s increasing emphasis on Messenger as a standalone service over the last year.

The company has been rumored to be working on a Messenger-based personal assistant feature for the last several weeks. Earlier reports suggested it was testing a shopping-focused assistant internally nicknamed “Moneypenny.”