Facebook plans to let developers build bots for Messenger, report says

2016 may turn out to be the year of the bots.

Facebook is reportedly working on a plan that would allow developers to build chatbots to run inside of Messenger. The news comes weeks after a report that Google may also be working on a new bot-based messaging service.

The latest rumor, which comes to us from TechCrunch, says Facebook is working on a "Chat SDK" that enables developers to build bots that would allow Facebook users to access shopping, travel and other services through conversations in Messenger

Note that this different than M, the artificially intelligent assistant Facebook is creating for Messenger. Though M can do many of the tasks bots could complete — make a restaurant reservation, for example — the idea here, it seems, is to allow Facebook's partner developers to build their own bots that users could chat with inside of message threads to complete tasks. Read more...