Facebook “chatbots.”
No, not those AOL Instant Messenger chatbots of the mid-2000s—these chatbots will actually have the capability to interact with a business customers, leading to a wealth of possibilities for sports organizations and tech companies alike.
Similar to the old AIM chatbots, these use special software to interact with a user, like how an artificially intelligent robot would speak to a person.
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With this, Facebook is attempting to turn their Messenger into much more than just a way for friends and acquaintances to talk; they want it to become a more universal platform to do almost anything the user desires. For example, you could check movie times, buy movie tickets and order some snacks for that movie without having to leave Facebook Messenger.
“We think you should message a business just the way you would message a friend,” said Mark Zuckerburg at the Facebook developer conference, F8.
As this new technology will surely have a huge impact on almost any business wanting to be included in the new wave of Messenger chatbots, sports teams will have an opportunity to interact more easily with the nearly 900 million people on the platform monthly.
Not only will this be a cool gimmick of sorts for organizations to have in their advertising repertoire, but chatbots will surely pull an actual following from millennials, who are more used to text-based conversation than calling.
Sports teams could send messages and alerts for upcoming games, sell tickets to fans and take fan interaction to another level.
This goes similarly for any other brand, who will be able to send automated promotions or advertising with Messenger, along with selling their products through the messaging platform.
While this is the first big pull for chatbots in the United States, they have blown up in Asia and Europe—allowing people to do things like shop or schedule doctor’s appointments.
How can you see chatbots impacting the ways teams engage their fans?
For any company looking to build one of these, the developer notes are here.