These days there are apps that help us on everything, and now Facebook’s Messenger brings out a new one into the game: Chatbot that streams interactions between the customers and businesses.

This new tool will allow retailers to earn more money and keep your loyalty to them. These chatbots have been thrust into the spotlight recently among the outbreak of experiment about how the companies will use the chatbots. H&M and Taco Bell are the first ones that jumped into the game; H&M launched a chatbot on the message app Kik to help shoppers browse and buy their product while Taco Bell released TacoBot so their customers can order their meal from the message app Slack.

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Mark Zuckerberg is expected to invite more developers and businesses to build bots for Messenger. Credit: AP Photo/Eric Risberg

This Tuesday Facebook announced that they have created a new platform to allow companies to develop their own bot that might be running into Facebook’ Messenger app – used by about 900 million users worldwide.

How does a bot might have an advantage against our traditional web browsers? The Web browser might have been our front door to the Internet and apps before, and until today they have that use, but experts say that bots could become soon our new and primary digital gateway, leaving the browsing beside.

Bots are the new App

Actually, the smartphone users have proved that they are only willing to download and spend time on certain apps, so what should companies do? They must offer and try to connect with their customers using apps, that means that bots will potentially provide a greater convenience than apps and web searchers since bots can understand natural speech patterns, making it easier to users.

Bots are usually designed for a one-to-one conversation experience, but they may find their most logical home in messaging apps to help them grow in users and also being the main digital communication channel for all those generation Z users. About 76 million people from the United States in 2014 uses instant messaging apps, from Kik, Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger. Now it’s figured out that up to 113 million users were registered last year and this could grow even more – about 177 million by 2019.

Beerud Sheth, who is the chief executive officer at Gupshup, a company that offers a bot-building platform said that “The web or the app world, they forced humans to behave like computers. In messaging, computers have to behave like humans.”

Source: USA Today