For the love of groups!

Facebook Messenger chatbots could have been perfect
But then F8 happened.

This is part of a continuing research and development project, so read the rest of the story here.

Within the tech world, we were all psyched for Facebook’s impending drop of their Messenger chatbot platform.

But, what we got with F8 was not quite all we expected.

Bots for Messenger doesn’t support groups.

For those of us looking for something more, this was a bit of a shocking reality after the release. After all, haven’t slack chatbots supported group interaction for quite sometime now? Most of them are simple, automated bots, but look at how easily they can help with conversational questions:

So why the hold-off?

If you look at how Facebook is now emphasizing usernames for both people AND pages (chatbots) then clearly, they COULD be integrated into group conversations. Just like @dailycute, @holidaychallenge, etc. were from the beginning.

Nonetheless, the reality is, it’s just not part of the Bots for Business deal.

Now, for me and my team — this was pretty upsetting.

If you read our last post, and any of our previous research then you’ll see why. We had been designing the structure for a chatbot that could be called within Facebook Groups. Giving people to have quick conversations together about where to go to eat.

So, time to reframe. Do we stick with Messenger, or explore other platforms?