Facebook wants to make Messenger bots better

In April, Facebook followed in the footsteps of many of its competitors and launched chat bots for its Messenger Platform. Since then, more than 34,000 different bots have been created for various purposes and by all kinds of businesses.

The bots can confirm reservations, accept payments, share information with users and so on. What they couldn't do, though, was track who they're talking to. So, the business owners didn't have any insights on their customers, unless they gained them from somewhere else.

This is now changing, as Facebook announced that its bots can now make use of the Facebook Analytics system. The bots will be able to track age, gender, education, language and interests of its users, among other things. However, this data will be available to bot developers only as aggregated, anonymized statistics. So Messenger users can rest assured that no one will know they're obsessed with cat videos or that they spend their day looking up dad jokes.

Along with the Facebook Analytics support for bots, Facebook opens its FbStart program to Messenger Platform developers and businesses. Said program's goal is to help startup apps and businesses build their apps and expand them afterwards.

source: Facebook via CNET