Facebook Messenger ditches Discover, demotes chat bots

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.

Source: consent.yahoo.com

At the beginning of this week, Facebook began rolling out a new update of its Messenger app. The update brings a much simpler design to the app, by removing the “Discover” tab and hiding chatbots, along with businesses and games. Users will now only be able to find chatbots by searching for them specifically in the app. Before, you could find business and bots in the Discover tab, but now that is long gone. That also means businesses will no longer be able to promote themselves through Discover and may now be limited to advertising through Stories and other paid marketing channels to promote their company and get users to communicate with their bots.