Facebook’s launched a new Discover section in Messenger for its Indian users, nearly 5 months after making it available in the US. The feature was initially announced back in April at the company’s F8 conference.
Discover mostly concentrates on bots, automated robots which users can chat with. There are hundreds of them on Facebook, eager to recite the latest news or give you sports updates. The brand wants to make it easier for people to find these little pieces of artificial intelligence, hence the special Discover tab.
It’s located at the bottom right corner of the Facebook Messenger app. Tapping on its will open up various options like Recently Used and Featured. The first will also include games, while the latter is a general overview of the bots and businesses available to be interacted with.
Facebook hasn’t mentioned which Indian brands will be joining it. The US version included names like CNN, Nike, The Wall Street Journal, and Spotify. There are also categories like Finance, Education, Travel, and Community to pick from.
The basic aim is to make it easier to get sports scores, keep up-to-date with the news, and book a vacation without having to leave Messenger. This sounds good in theory, but there are already ways to do all those things. Bots don’t appear to have taken off like Facebook initially hoped it would, so Discover is its way of encouraging users to explore.
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You can download the latest version of Facebook Messenger via the Play Store and App Store.