Facebook: How Bots Are Changing Our Lives

Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) disclosed that it now has over 11k chatbots on its FB Messenger platform and over 23k developers have signed up for the platform's bot engine. This is very impressive given that the chatbot function was only introduced several months ago and recent conversation with third-party developers in sports, life, ecommerce and local entertainment verticals suggests that the bots are driving engagements higher as users seek info via FB Messenger bots. This is certainly a positive for FB and a critical component of the overall FBM ecosystem. I have often argued that FBM's biggest potential lies in its ability to replicate the Wechat model to retain users and build an ecosystem featuring search, ecommerce, payment, advertising, gaming and social networking. Long-term implication could be a negative to Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) if additional developers are enrolled on the FBM chatbot network and the quality of results increase.