BotCube

Facebook Messenger team has just finally released a new feature I’ve been waiting for a long time - group payments. Splitting the bill, concert tickets, a present for a friend, lodging for a trip, or whatever needs to be settled in a group is now easier than ever. And you can do it right in the very place you're already using to make group plans - in the chat! Just select people, amount of money to be charged and what is it for (“pizza”, “cinema tickets”) - that’s it. Your friends can easily pay via PayPal. Huge kudos to FB Messenger team 💪🏻 https://www.facebook.com/davidm/videos/vb.800665194/10158676691550195/?type=2&theater

Today I have a pretty new chatbot for #botoftheweek. First time it comes from big brand - TripAdvisor. Basically it's a discovery chatbot in Facebook Messenger that allows you to search for recommendations by narrowing down the options and providing you with the best results. I highly recommend you to listen to podcast interview with Jeff Chow, VP Product @ TripAdvisor to gather some insights about this project and how big brands are going on chatbots. Hint: chatbots has always been very interesting to TripAdvisor as a company and they plan even more projects on this field! 🤖🚀 https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2017/04/06/tripadvisors-lessons-learned-from-building-a-chatbot/#231eda5a6f37 Podcast direct link: http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/3/b/5/3b54676497471444/Jeff_Chow_Podcast_DONE.mp3?c_id=14810169&expiration=1491774416&hwt=9062751abe083830beaf6a0d1856f550

Seems like Twitter is going hard on bots! 🤖 Yesterday they opened a brand new Twitter DM API platform to allow everyone to build bots on Twitter. Actually, it's a huge step forward for Twitter platform. These APIs are very well-designed and could assist a lot of Twitter-first businesses to connect with their customers at scale. Yesterday's release includes A LOT of features, and most of them are simply copied from Facebook (welcome message, get started, location, buttons). That's why I'd like to highlight the most interesting ones here: 1) Custom profiles allow developers to override the default avatar and name attached to a given message. This is extremely cool because you can show who's writing: human or bot 👦🤖 2) Customer feedback cards allows businesses to collect feedback on the experiences they provide on Twitter, it's kinda special cards for feedback purposes only. Nice idea, very similar to reactions on Messenger 👍 So go check out the APIs and build some cool bots on Twitter! https://blog.twitter.com/2017/new-apis-to-power-the-future-of-customer-engagement-in-direct-messages

Hey everyone, Vasili from BotCube is here! I'll help Maxim to curate & share more awesome content about bots 🤖❤️ A friend of mine Paul Boutin from Chatbots Magazine recently wrote a great piece of content about natural language processing in chatbots. Do bots require NLP at all? Actually it's a very tough question, because current state of tech doesn't allow you to easily build conversational logic without making a ton of intents and most NLP bots (even from giants) still suck. From my perspective, the best solution is to build mixed interfaces: integrate NLP where needed and add buttons & structured messages for actionable items. I also shared some thoughts in this article how chat helps to create trust in banking bots so be sure to check it out 😉 https://chatbotsmagazine.com/does-a-bot-need-natural-language-processing-c2f76ab7ef11

I have a really cool chatbot for #botoftheweek nomination today. I think this is a great example of how we should solve problems. Start, investigate and do, even if you have to work full-time. 🤖❤️ When it comes to choosing a place to go, most people ask their friends or influencers who they can relate to. Sure is a Facebook Messenger chatbot for the most Instagrammed food & drink spots near you. Simple as that. I highly recommend you to read the full article because the story here matters. The bot currently operates in 22 cities like SF, LA, London and Berlin, so go check the list of available cities and try it! 🙂 https://blog.surebot.io/launching-sure-5e695380c8bc

Robots… Robots everywhere. Pizza giant Domino’s has announced a pilot program in a couple of German and Dutch cities, where customers within a 1-mile radius of certain Domino’s stores will be greeted with a non-humanoid robot rather than a person on a bike 🤖 The main reason of such a drastic experiment can be explained by the quote of Domino’s CEO: “With our growth plans over the next five to 10 years, we simply won’t have enough delivery drivers if we do not look to add to our fleet through initiatives such as this.” https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/29/dominos-taps-starship-technologies-to-deliver-pizzas-with-autonomous-ground-drones/

Seems like a long-waited feature is finally coming to Facebook - group chatbots. Facebook will reveal at its F8 conference a new class of bots that work inside Messenger group chats 😍 I really like this update because from my perspective there is a plenty of cases where it can be useful. For example, a Messenger group of football fans could add a sports bot to their thread, where it could report score changes, big plays and other news from the game. An e-commerce group bot could keep a group of coworkers informed about the status of their lunch delivery, letting them know that the order is being prepared and when it arrives. And the main point here - since these group bots won’t be the sole conversation partner, there will be less pressure on them to act human, and more opportunity for them to service a specific utility. https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/29/facebook-group-bots/

A week ago Chris Messina had a webinar called "The future of messaging bots and chat for business". I really enjoyed watching the video script and I hope that it would be helpful for you too! Yesterday he wrote a great wrap-up with best thoughts and insights and I'm 100% sure it would help everyone to refresh their knowledge base and get some useful insights! 🤖❤️ Hint: at the end of the post you can find an example of best use case for group bots I've seen till the moment. 😉 https://medium.com/chris-messina/the-future-of-messaging-bots-and-chat-for-business-54b94380ffb7

Hey, guys, do you remember the list of bot resources we’ve recently collected? Finally, we've been hunted on Product Hunt today! Right now we really need your help to spread the word about it. 💪🏻 So, please, follow the link below, find 'awesome-bots' and click the “Upvote” button Thanks in advance! ✋🏻 https://www.producthunt.com/topics/bots?order=by-date

Sunday evening is always a great time for 2 things: planning the next week and reading about the #botoftheweek nomination. We have a very controversial bot today. I can’t say that it’s useful at all. It can be even harmful for your time. But it’s a very loud case though. So, it’s a Kim Kardashian’s chatbot promoting her mobile game🙈 https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/23/kim-kardashian-launches-a-facebook-messenger-bot-to-promote-her-mobile-game/

Do you remember I shared an article about reactions in Messenger last week? Here's a huuuge update: they just released Message Reactions and Mentions for Messenger! Now you can react to any message by pressing​ and holding​ any message, and then tapping to make your selection from the Facebook emojis. I suppose it's a new way to improve their ML and especially M. More interesting feature is group mentions. Instead of simply seeing that someone responded in the conversation, users will receive a new kind of notification that lets them know they were called out specifically. Hoping that mentions offer a way to incorporate bots into group threads! http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/03/introducing-message-reactions-and-mentions-for-messenger/

Surprising news - Andrew Ng, chief data scientist at Baidu, today announced that he will be leaving the company. “Baidu’s AI is incredibly strong, and the team is stacked up and down with talent; I am confident AI at Baidu will continue to flourish,” Ng wrote in a Medium post. “After Baidu, I am excited to continue working toward the AI transformation of our society and the use of AI to make life better for everyone.” It’s not clear who at Baidu will take Ng’s title of chief scientist. http://venturebeat.com/2017/03/21/baidu-chief-scientist-andrew-ng-is-stepping-down-haifeng-wang-will-lead-expanded-ai-group/