Manychat guys are on fire 🔥

Two days ago I was talking about their new revolutionary Flow Builder thing and here is a new cool stuff from these guys.

They’ve released a holy grail for marketers - “The Ultimate Guide To Messenger Marketing and Facebook
Chatbots”.

This guide was created to answer all of the unanswered questions you have about Messenger Marketing 📘

This is the most comprehensive piece of content on the web about Facebook chatbots… print it out, study it, and share with your friends!

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:
- Grow Your Business with Messenger Marketing
- Get Facebook Messenger Subscribers
- Send Messages to Your Subscribers
- Automate Your Messenger Marketing With Chatbots
- Use ManyChat
- Integrate ManyChat with Zapier
- Create a Messenger Ad Inside of Facebook
- Create Destination Ads
- Send a Sponsored Message
- Nurture Leads inside of Messenger
- Deliver Content
- Deploy Retargeting
- Drive More Sales
- Case Studies…. and more!! 😳

Enjoy 6,000+ words of juicy Facebook chatbot goodness 🍫🍩🍰

https://blog.manychat.com/ultimate-guide-messenger-marketing-and-facebook-chatbots/

Hey folks, most of you already know that we have the biggest knowledge base about bots - awesome-bots.

It has just passed 1000 stars and continue growing! ⭐️

It’s been a while since the last huge update there, so if you’ve built something cool during this time - feel free to drop me a message (@maximabramchuk) or just go straight and open a pull request on Github.

Thanks!

https://github.com/BotCube/awesome-bots

Google’s Chatbase is finally launching to public!

Most of you have probably heard or already used chatbot analytics service by Google called Chatbase.

But I personally spent about a month waiting for my request approval before I get access to it.

Now these problems are gone and the platform is open and free for everyone.

The idea behind Chatbase’s cloud service is to offer tools to more easily analyze and optimize chatbots.

This includes giving bot builders the ability to understand what works to increase customer conversions, improve the bot’s accuracy, and create a better user experience.

The system today integrates with any voice or text messaging platform, Google says, including Facebook, Kik, Viber, Slack, WhatsApp, WeChat, Alexa, Cortana, Allo, Line, Skype, Twitter, and more.

Beyond bot analytics, the tool leverages Google’s machine learning capabilities to figure out what sort of problems could be affecting the bot.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/16/googles-chatbot-analytics-platform-chatbase-launches-to-public/

Time to build apps for Google Home

Google Assistant received some major upgrades in recent days to help developers make voice apps that interact with Google’s AI assistant.

Upgrades include more expressive voices, ability to send push notifications and many more.

Beyond push notifications, voice apps can now deliver daily updates or notifications about certain kinds of content.

Also, on Monday, Google announced that Home speakers can now be used as an intercom system.

All of these features are already around on Amazon Alexa for a couple of months, so Google is still behind in this race.

More info about the updates is in the article below.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/15/google-gives-developers-more-tools-to-make-better-voice-apps/

Chatbot that can trick email scammers

Talking to chatbots is usually a waste of time, so why not have them waste someone else’s instead?

Better yet: why not have them waste an email scammer’s time.

That’s the premise behind Re:scam, an email chatbot operated by New Zealand cybersecurity firm Netsafe.

Next time you get a dodgy email in your inbox, says Netsafe, forward it on to me@rescam.org, and a proxy email address will start replying to the scammer for you, doing its very utmost to waste their time.

Open the article below to see a few sample dialogues, they’re hilarious.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/10/16632724/scam-chatbot-ai-email-rescam-netsafe

I'm sure you have already seen new Messenger feature - Customer Chat Plugin.

Here's a great example of how you can use it with your bot to drive leads to your Messenger channel:
https://www.jonloomer.com/2017/11/07/facebook-messenger-customer-chat-plugin/

Creating voice bots is hard.

Creating good voice bots is super hard.

There are 16,000 Alexa skills with 0 reviews.

They are Zombies.

People never get back to them.

The way to avoid it is to precisely understand the use case for the voice bot you’re building.

To come up with some ideas, I went through top Alexa skills and read all the user reviews.

And I learned a ton of stuff.

Read my article below to understand what makes a voice bot stand out.

https://medium.com/storyline-blog/what-i-learned-from-5000-reviews-of-top-5-alexa-skills-82aa54b5fc15

Dialogflow is launching API v2 and Enterprise edition

Since Google has acquired api.ai (now called Dialogflow) a long time ago, it remained completely free and hasn’t even had any pricing information anywhere on their website.

But many of their clients have asked for enterprise support, and today they’re launching Dialogflow Enterprise Edition.

Also, they’re releasing API v2 which is the next iteration of their developer API adding new features and capabilities, integration with Google Cloud Speech and many more.

Read more about the update in their article below.

https://blog.dialogflow.com/post/dialogflow-api-v2-and-enterprise-edition/

Messenger now allows sellers to invoice buyers through PayPal’s new chat extension

The feature is ideal for use with Facebook’s numerous Buy and Sell groups as well as Facebook Marketplace, in addition to being an easy way to send PayPal invoices in general.

This time, the focus is on shifting small business transactions and those between buyers and sellers into Messenger.

That leaves room for a product like PayPal’s to aid with transactions, given Facebook’s lack of interest in building out a payments business itself.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/21/sellers-can-now-invoice-buyers-through-paypals-new-chat-extension-for-messenger/

The world's first headphones to equip artificial intelligence

Did you see the “Her” movie? It is impressive, isn’t it, but not real, science fiction. Hmm, the voice part of the puzzle is already here: Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana, Sire etc. We need the head phones part for voice first UX from the “Her” movie.

Welcome to the future!

‘vinci 2.0’ are the world’s first smart headphones to feature a built-in AI (artificial intelligence) assistant that utilizes biosensing hardware and neural network learning algorithms. this means that whenever users listen to music and make voice commands, it collects and analyses data, such as heart rate and location, in order to familiarize and predict their preferences. with this, the in-ear device has 3G cellular, music streaming, voice assistant, health sensors and fitness coaching under its control.

https://www.designboom.com/technology/vinci-2-0-headphones-artificial-intelligence-11-25-2017/

Amazon is launching a lot of AI services

On Wednesday at the Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, AWS CEO Andy Jassy announced one new AI service after another.

The new tools do things like measure sentiment, track people in video feeds, and translate languages, among other things.

The most interesting one for us, bot builders, is Amazon Comprehend - service can pick up on positive or negative sentiment and specific people, places, and phrases in the text.

You can check it out below.

It's a great alternative to all those stuff from Google and Facebook.

https://aws.amazon.com/comprehend/

Amazon is putting Alexa in the office

At the AWS reinvent conference, Amazon announced Alexa for Business.

The new platform will let companies build out their own skills and integrations for both practical and business use cases.

The first focus for Alexa for Business is conference room.

Just as developers can build skills for Amazon Echo users, businesses can now build out Alexa skills for use within their own company.

You could imagine voice access to an employee directory, Salesforce data on various clients and accounts, or company calendar information.

Alexa for Business is a two-sided project for Amazon.

On the one hand, Amazon gets added data and revenue from larger-scale customers and, on the other, enterprise businesses will likely hop on the platform to build APIs and skills for a new breed of customer.

But the first challenge is getting large companies to invest in a huge quantity of Echo devices.

Given the shift toward voice interfaces, it’s likely not a question of if, but when.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/30/16720138/amazon-alexa-business-announcement

Amazon has finally released Alexa Gadgets

Alexa Gadgets are a new category of connected products and developer tools for building fun, interactive experiences.

Voice is the new gaming frontier.

Pioneers of voice games are reimagining a whole new way to engage players, feeding their curiosity with new ways to play—including interactive adventures, family friendly games, quiz games, and so much more.

Right now it’s even more interesting to build games for Alexa.

Here is a short video on how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA20rRVfe1Y

More information: https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit/gaming

Facebook chatbots are exploding, and for good reason.

They enable you to create sophisticated interactive messages that engage your audience where they hang out.

Messenger Marketing is so very new, many companies are a little uncertain about the best way to send out messages.

Should they just duplicate what they’re doing on email?

Should they send lots of promotional messages? Or avoid promotional messages?

Here is a great and very comprehensive article about different best practices for sending broadcasts through Facebook Messenger from Manychat team.

Must read for sure!

https://blog.manychat.com/how-to-send-facebook-messenger-broadcasts/

Smart speakers from Amazon and Google are setting records

Amazon announced today that the Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend resulted in “millions of Alexa devices sold.”

“This weekend, Echo Dot was the #1 selling product on Amazon globally, from any manufacturer in any category…Echo Dot was the best-selling device at Whole Foods Market over the holiday weekend.”

Google Home Mini devices were already sold out at Walmart by 9:00 am on Black Friday.

Smart speakers are shaping up to be the most popular gift this holiday season.

Just think about it.

A couple of millions users added to the voice market during Black Friday.

Still haven’t built anything for Alexa and Google Home? 🤨

https://www.voicebot.ai/2017/11/28/amazon-says-millions-alexa-devices-sold-black-friday-weekend/

Drift today launched the Drift Platform to give developers tools to make Drift bots for marketing and sales.

Drift Platform gives developers and businesses using Drift the ability to make custom bots and integrations.

The Drift App Directory will allow customers to find and discover bots made by third-party developers, enterprise software makers, or Drift customers.

Unlike Slack or Microsoft’s bot offerings for chat apps like Microsoft Teams or Slack, Drift bots are most often used on apps and websites.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/05/drift-launches-third-party-platform-for-sales-and-marketing-bots/

⚡️HEROES, a tool which allows social media Influencers to send direct messages to their fans on Facebook Messenger, is launching today on Product Hunt!

Think of it as a parallel channel alongside Instagram or Youtube, but entirely chat-based, where Influencers can directly broadcast content to their follower's Messenger, be it a private video or a voice message.

Influencers are able to schedule their broadcasts and even segment their audience, creating richer and more interactive experiences both for them and for their users.

In the future, HEROES will let Influencers directly monetize from their audience through subnoscriptions and in-chat sales as well as Influencer Marketing campaigns.

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/heroes-for-facebook-messenger

Apple wants to buy Shazam for $400 million

Seems like a big number, right?

But if you factor in Shazam’s last round of funding, which valued the company at around $1 billion, a $400 million price tag is a steal.

But what would Apple do with Shazam?

Well, Apple likely wants Siri to do what both Amazon and Google are working on: help the user figure out the world around them, and also sell them content.

Siri should be able to extract valuable information for the user from what it hears and what it sees. 

It could also then let you add that song to your Apple Music playlist, watch the trailer, or even buy the movie on iTunes, and so on.

That’s much easier to achieve once Siri has swallowed Shazam.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/09/apples-shazam-steal-is-all-about-siri/

A lot of you guys have been busy building chatbots and still haven’t had a chance to dive into the voice space.

I’ve found a really great video to help you get started.

It’s an introduction into the whole Amazon Alexa ecosystem.

It explains what is Amazon Alexa, how to build apps for it, what apps are there and a plenty of other stuff.

It’s quite long, but totally worth it.

I highly recommend you to watch this video if you want to start building voice bots for Amazon Alexa.

Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cjsxRtrbNs

Today, Facebook is launching a new ad unit that will let businesses create a link between the two platforms: advertisers can now include a button on their ads so that people can call or message via WhatsApp with the click of a button.

The new feature getting announced today, more generally, follows on from some bigger developments for how WhatsApp is already being used by businesses.

The new button ad-unit is also similar to the click-to-Messenger ads that Facebook previously rolled out.

Since Manychat is killing it with simple bots that are connected to Facebook Ads, it sounds like a huge opportunity for bot builders 🤘

https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/13/click-to-whatsapp-messaging-buttons-are-now-rolling-out-in-facebook-ads

Microsoft introduced the Azure Bot Framework more than two years ago and companies have been building chatbots for a variety of scenarios ever since.

Today, the company made generally available the Microsoft Azure Bot Service and Microsoft Cognitive Language Understanding service (known as LUIS).

When you combine the bot building tools with the LUIS language understanding tool, you get what should be a powerful combination.

The latter helps the bot understand and parse the query to deliver the correct answer (and understand related queries).

Cheng said more than 200,000 developers have signed up for the Bot service, and they currently have 33,000 active bots in areas like retail, healthcare, financial services and insurance.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/13/microsoft-launches-bot-engine-and-language-understanding-services-out-of-beta/