Facebook Messenger ditches Discover, demotes chat bots – TechCrunch

Chat bots were central to Facebook Messenger's strategy three years ago. Now they're being hidden from view in the app along with games and businesses. Facebook Messenger is now removing the Discover tab as it focuses on speed and simplicity instead of broad utility like China's WeChat. The changes are part of a larger Messenger redesign that reorients the People tab around Stories as Facebook continues to try to dominate the ephemeral social media format it copied from Snapchat. The People tab now defaults to a full-screen sub-tab of friends' Stories, and requires a tap over to the Active sub tab to see which friends are online now.