{"id":30967,"date":"2016-04-13T08:05:34","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T15:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/facebook-shows-new-ways-to-chat-stream-video\/"},"modified":"2016-04-13T08:05:34","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T15:05:34","slug":"facebook-shows-new-ways-to-chat-stream-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/facebook-shows-new-ways-to-chat-stream-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook shows new ways to chat, stream video"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO<\/strong> \u2014 Facebook says people who use its Messenger chat service will soon be able to order flowers, shop for shoes and talk with a variety of businesses by sending them direct text messages.<\/p>\n

And soon, if you haven\u2019t \u201cchatted\u201d with those businesses on Messenger in a while, they\u2019ll be able to send you a paid message that offers a special deal or encourages you to buy a product you liked before.<\/p>\n

CEO Mark Zuckerberg used Facebook\u2019s annual software conference Tuesday to describe its latest initiatives at a time when some reports indicate people may be sharing less personal information on the social network \u2014 either because of privacy concerns or the growing appeal of competing apps.<\/p>\n

That underscores the importance for Facebook of adding more features to its growing chat services: It needs to keep people engaged \u2014 and continue to learn about their interests for advertising purposes, said analyst Ben Bajarin of the Creative Strategies research firm.<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s biggest social network is also putting a high priority on creating new video features, both as a way to hold people\u2019s interest and to show them ads. Zuckerberg said users will soon be able to see and share a lot more live video from major public events, as well as more personal moments, such as weddings or family gatherings.<\/p>\n

With its new emphasis on chatting with businesses, Facebook is joining several tech companies working to promote the use of intelligent software programs known as \u201cchatbots,\u201d which let businesses interact with customers in conversational language. Microsoft recently announced a similar effort with its Skype service, but Facebook appears further along.<\/p>\n

Facebook already has more than 30 companies signed up to deploy chatbots on Messenger, including major corporations like CNN, eBay, Burger King and Bank of America. Facebook is also releasing programming tools that other companies can use to build their own chatbots for Messenger.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think you should just be able to message a business the same way that you message a friend,\u201d Zuckerberg said, noting many people hate the experience of calling businesses on the phone.<\/p>\n

Facebook is also making it easier for individuals to contact businesses by searching for their bots within Messenger or clicking on an ad in Facebook\u2019s regular news stream. But Vice President David Marcus said the company wants to be careful not to annoy users by filling the Messenger app with unsolicited spam.<\/p>\n

Facebook is testing a program that charges businesses for the opportunity to send a \u201csponsored message,\u201d but they\u2019ll only be able to contact people who are existing customers or have already messaged the business, Marcus said. Individuals on Messenger will be able to block future messages from a business at any time.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s consistent with the conservative approach Facebook has used to gradually introduce paid video ads on its main platform and commercials on its Instagram photo-sharing service. The company doesn\u2019t want to risk driving people away with too many annoying ads, Marcus said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very high-quality, personal environment,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cWe want to keep it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The effort comes as more people are embracing the Internet chat service and its competitors. Messenger now has 900 million active users worldwide, while WhatsApp, another chat service owned by Facebook, claims 1 billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore and more of our mobile time is spent within messaging,\u201d said Ken Sena, an investment analyst at Evercore ISI, who examined the apps in a recent report. He\u2019s one of several analysts who say they believe consumers would prefer talking to a business within the messaging app they\u2019re already using, rather than download a separate app and create another user name and password for each business.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s already a popular model in some Asian countries, where people use China\u2019s WeChat, Japan\u2019s Line and other texting services to schedule doctor\u2019s appointments, pay for meals, order merchandise or send gifts to their friends.<\/p>\n

Facebook Inc. is also releasing a host of other tools for developers to build apps that work with its services, including software for streaming video from drones and other gadgets. The company showed off a special camera designed to take \u201cimmersive\u201d 360-degree video.<\/p>\n

Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said Facebook doesn\u2019t plan to sell the camera to consumers but will share its designs to encourage other firms to find new uses for 360-degree video.<\/p>\n

The new video push is part of Facebook\u2019s effort to compete against Twitter, SnapChat, YouTube and other rivals that are also vying to serve video-hungry viewers. While it doesn\u2019t sell ads for live video streams \u2014 not yet, anyway \u2014 analysts say Facebook has seen early success with other types of video commercials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Facebook says people who use its Messenger chat service will soon be able to order flowers, shop<\/a> for shoes and talk with a variety of businesses by sending them direct text messages. And soon, if you haven\u2019t \u201cchatted\u201d with those businesses on Messenger in a while, they\u2019ll be able to send you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-30967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30967"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}