Facebook Messenger Gets KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Bot

Facebook Messenger has announced that it has a new bot that is running in some locations with a wider rollout coming in the following days. The bot is the first for an airline partner and that airline is KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. To use the bot when you book a ticket with the airline, you have to choose to receive info via Facebook Messenger.

If you choose to receive information that way, the bot will send you information on your flight including itinerary, boarding pass, check-in confirmation, and delay notifications via the app. That bot will also allow you to talk to a human staff member if you need. Facebook had previously offered select developers access to the Messenger SDK to allow them to build chatbots, presumably this bot is one of the results of that access.

Chatbots will become more common on popular messaging services in the future for US users; they are already common in messaging apps in Asian countries. Skype will get the ability to offer chatbots in the latest version. Facebook is working hard to make messenger better and to lure more users to take advantage of the app.

A few days ago, code was discovered in Facebook Messenger that hints that in-store payments might be coming to the app. The social giant is also developing ways to help uses secure their Facebook profiles from hackers that want to steal data and spam your friends list. One of the ways that Facebook is looking to improve security is with impersonation alerts. Impersonation in the eyes of Facebook is when one person creates an account claiming to be another person. Once the person being impersonated agrees that an account they are notified of is impersonating them, Facebook will take it down.

SOURCE: Engadget