BotCube

ManyChat changes the way of building chatbots 🔥 A couple of weeks ago they’ve released really revolutionary thing - a new way to build your bots that makes the process faster, easier and gives you – the bot builder – more power. It’s called Flow Builder. Flow Builder is a visual map of all the messages, actions and transitions between them. It gives you a birds-eye view of the whole interaction without having to switch between single messages. A single flow consists of Steps (like sending a message or performing actions) and connections between them. A flow begins with a starting step which has a green "Starting Step" badge on top and then progresses step-by-step depending on user's actions. Of course all the other platforms like MotionAI and others have a flow builder for a while already, but it’s a really new level. Be sure to check it out, it’s a truly new ManyChat at all. http://flowbuilder.manychat.com

Amazon Alexa expands to Japan Amazon has announced that its smart Echo speakers and voice-activated Alexa digital assistant are now available in Japan by invitation. Though Amazon was the first of the major tech firms to popularize voice-controlled smart speakers in the U.S., it could face an uphill battle in Japan. Local tech titan Line recently launched its own version of the Echo, called Clova Wave, and Google introduced Home to Japan a few weeks back. https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/08/amazons-alexa-expands-beyond-english-and-german-into-japanese-as-the-echo-launches-in-japan/

Facebook Messenger native payments come to UK and France Facebook Messenger extended its peer-to-peer payment system to millions of users by making payments possible in Euros and British pounds in France and the United Kingdom respectively. This is the first time P2P payment is being made available to Facebook Messenger users outside the U.S. since being introduced more than two years ago. https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/11/send-money-to-friends-in-messenger-now-in-euros-and-british-pounds/

Alexa is coming to Japan!🇯🇵 Amazon announced that Alexa, the brain behind the Amazon Echo, is coming to Japan, along with several Alexa-enabled devices: Amazon Echo, Echo Plus, and Echo Dot. Customers who want to help further the development of Alexa and the Echo family of devices may request an invitation to purchase devices beginning today. This opens up new opportunities for developers in Japan and around the world. Starting today, you can build for voice with Alexa and reach customers in Japan with the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), the collection of self-service APIs, tools, documentation, and code samples. And starting this month, developers can preview all AVS technical documentation and generally available development tools on the Japanese language Developer Portal, and can sign up for the developer preview. Hardware makers are already planning voice-driven experiences for customers in Japan through an invite-only customer preview program including Onkyo P3 speakers, Harman Kardon Allure, and Eufy Genie. Tens of thousands of developers from around the world have already started developing voice experiences for Alexa. More than 250 skills will be available at launch with Alexa in Japan. Popular Japanese brands are already building skills for Japanese customers including: ALC PRESS INC., All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., Hitachi, Ltd., JTB Corp., Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc., Nomura Holdings, Inc., The Pokémon Company, Shiseido Japan Co., Ltd., TV Asahi Corporation, ZENSHO HOLDINGS CO., LTD., and others. https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/0fcba76b-7460-4975-8fad-833996f6a23e/alexa-skills-kit-now-available-in-japan

This is an absolute game changer! 🔥 In today's Messenger Platform 2.2 updates the Customer Chat plugin was announced. We've all wanted to extend the Messenger experience to website visitors and now you can. How does this improve your process? 1. No more asking for an email address to engage with a potential customer with a likely tiny CTR. 2. No need to direct website visitors away from your site via a "Send to Messenger" button to chat with your Messenger bot, potentially never seeing them again. 3. Instantly get access to full name, location, language, profile photo and gender which all can be used to segment and personalise future engagements. 4. Further qualify leads using Facebooks quick replies and rich UI which make it easy and enjoyable for visitors to give you more info about them 5. Hand over warm leads to live agents using Facebook's Handover protocol. 6. Hello open rates of 85% and CTR of 35% when re-engaging website visitors in Messenger. Congrats the Messenger team and to Chatfuel for being a launch partner for this feature. https://messenger.fb.com/blog/2-2-release/

Will.i.am’s startup raises $117 million to launch a voice assistant I.am+, the tech startup founded by pop star and entrepreneur will.i.am, has raised $117 million in venture funding to enter the corporate computing market with a voice assistant for customer service. The company, founded in 2012, initially focused on consumer electronics devices such as headphones. The new artificial intelligence product, similar to Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, marks a sharp departure for the firm, which now employs about 300 people. Will.i.am said customer support is just the start of Omega. The plan is to use the technology to build several more enterprise voice AI products. Voice space is heating quickly 🔥 https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/06/will-i-ams-startup-raises-117-million-and-launches-bot-engine-for-enterprise-market/

Alexa gets its first celeb voice with Oprah Don’t get too excited, Oprah won’t respond to your day-to-day questions, the addition of Oprah’s voice is part of a holiday shopping promotion between Oprah’s O magazine and Amazon. To trigger Oprah’s voice, Alexa users have to say, “Alexa, let’s shop Oprah’s favorite things.” If anything, this integration is more of a gimmick to promote Oprah’s holiday list and Amazon’s Echo speakers. It’s not, however, a very efficient way to shop. Not only does it force you to listen to items one-by-one, it’s also difficult to encourage people to shop based on product suggestions and descriptions alone. Most people want to see photos – and sometimes even videos – before making an online purchase. But I’m pretty sure that is 5 years Alexa-powered devices, especially Echo Show, will be a preferred way of shopping. https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/02/alexa-gets-its-first-celeb-voice-with-oprah-but-its-just-a-holiday-promo/

Facebook today announced that sponsored messages are being rolled out to more businesses The Messenger ads were initially made available to a small number of businesses but will become available to all businesses in the coming months. Unlike other Messenger ads, sponsored messages that pop up on your Messenger home screen will not be marked as such. In fact, they look like all other conversations on Facebook Messenger. As previously defined rules for advertising and marketing on Facebook Messenger state, promotional messages like the kind being rolled out now may only be sent once in a 24-hour period, and they can only be sent to a person who previously chatted with that business’ Facebook Messenger bot or account. https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/03/facebook-messenger-will-soon-let-all-businesses-send-sponsored-messages/

Google is hoping the way to your ears is through your stomach. To promote the launch of Google Home Mini, about the size of, say, a donut—the tech company is putting on its baking mitts with a series of pop-up doughnut shops across the country. At nine cities across the U.S. and Canada, visitors will be able to walk into a donut shop to a kiosk, where they’ll be able to ask a Mini device a question, triggering a box to slide down from a chute. Visitors will then head to a counter and unbox their package, which will either contain a donut or a Mini. (Google says it won’t deprive Mini winners of donuts, too.) The doughnut shops at various locations will be open at different days throughout the fall, starting this weekend in San Francisco and Manhattan and ending in St. Louis on Nov. 9. Donut or voice assistant? 🤔 http://www.adweek.com/digital/google-is-opening-pop-up-doughnut-shops-to-promote-its-voice-activated-mini-speakers/

Google has just released an IDE for building bots Bottery is a syntax, editor, and simulator for prototyping generative contextual conversations. The goal of Bottery is to help everyone, from designers to writers to coders, be able to write simple and engaging contextual conversational agents, and to test them out in a realistic interactive simulation, mimicking how they'd work on a "real" platform like API.AI. I would definitely suggest you to take a look, it can be a game changer. https://github.com/google/bottery

Amazon Alexa now allows you to define routines Amazon’s Alexa is getting the ability to respond to custom phrases, schedule actions by smart home appliances, and give you a rundown of the weather, traffic, or news. Customizable voice commands and routines can be made with the new Routines tab in the Alexa app for Android and iOS. You create a new routine by picking a phrase that begins with Alexa, then you choose an action you want to happen anytime you say that phrase. The most obvious routines to establish are “Alexa, I’m home” or “Alexa, I’m heading out”. Though Alexa Routines can really change the way you interact with an Echo device. https://venturebeat.com/2017/10/30/amazon-debuts-alexa-routines-for-customizable-and-scheduled-tasks/

“Don’t be a Robot, Build the Robot.” Wade Foster knows a thing or two about automation. He’s the founder and CEO of Zapier, which has become the web’s default platform for automating repetitive tasks, so he knows first hand how automation is reshaping how we do our jobs. Zapier is also a fully distributed team, with employees in over a dozen countries. Along with AI and automation, remote work is one of the top trends defining the future of work. https://x.ai/how-ai-is-changing-my-job-wade-foster-ceo-at-zapier/