Facebook Messenger Bots Losing Steam?

Since its inception into Facebook, the Messenger app has been a great way to keep in touch with friends and family. When business pages began populating the social media giant, partnerships naturally arose.

And yet, with retailer Everlane’s public departure from the Messenger app to return to more traditional customer outreach, some are questioning if this Facebook feature is seeing a downturn. The reasoning behind businesses leaving the application may be due in part to the fuzzy nature of its bots listing. While this listing wasn’t initially available, it’s now only visible post-app search.

Facebook is hoping to change businesses perspectives with its most recent upgrade to the Messenger app that makes all chatbot capabilities more streamlined and visible. The social media platform is offering a reduced number of new menus and submenus to ease the chatbot setup process. With these new menus, some are questioning if Facebook should do away with calling its Messenger app a chatbot, as it’s moving more in the direction of a menu-based application. Rather than chatting with a bot, customers can drill down into these drop-down menus.

Facebook’s new Messenger updates include enhanced sharing capabilities, customer and business matching, new APIs, improved analytics and the ability to tailor the app experience. While all of these capabilities seem to follow the path of other hot tech companies, some are questioning if this is the right move for Facebook.

As the social media giant adds more menus and removes certain chatting features, it’s possible that we may see the Messenger lose its chatbot status in the future.