There are thousands more bots for Facebook Messenger in the works
Facebook Messenger will soon get a lot more crowded.
There are more than 10,000 developers building bots for Facebook's messaging platform, Messenger's head of product said in an interview Tuesday.
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Speaking in an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt on Tuesday, Stan Chudnovsky said there are "tens of thousands" of developers currently working on bots for the platform. That represents a huge increase from the few dozen bots that initially launched.
While it's not clear how many new bots Facebook's launched since last month's F8 developer conference, it would appear the social network is now ramping up the process for developer partners. Messenger's director of product management Peter Martinazzi previously told Mashable the company opted to take a slow approach initially in order to help protect against spam and other security concerns -- among other reasons -- but it makes sense Facebook would be looking to accelerate the process for developers now that they've had some time to learn from the early launch.
Despite the initial hype around Facebook's new bot platform, the first wave of bots were largely underwhelming. Many were buggy and came off as spammy.
But Chudnovsky said that early hiccups are inevitable when building out a new platform. When asked if there was something about the initial launch he would do differently, if given the opportunity for a do-over, he said the team would have liked more time to iron out some of the details.
But, he noted that updates and improvements are much easier to make once Facebook is able to start learning about how people are engaging with bots. "You have to get out there in order to start learning," he said.
The Messenger team is also "actively working on" creating an analytics system for developers so they can better track how Facebook users are engaging with their bots, according to Chudnovsky, though he didn't say when it might become available.
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Topics Facebook Social Media
Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @karissabe.
