Skype is keeping the bot train rolling, today announcing five new bots that are coming to use from a variety of corporate partnerships. The new round up includes bots from the likes of Skyscanner and StubHub, even tossing a Spock Bot into the mix to coincide with the recent release of Star Trek: Beyond. If you've ever wanted to talk logic with the premiere Vulcan himself, now is your chance.
Emoji are about to become a lot more diverse and gender equal for women. The Unicode Consortium, the organization that oversees adoption and standardization of emoji, has approved a group of characters proposed by Google back in May, which includes depictions of women in new professions. There are 11 new emoji, such as a computer programmer, chef, scientist, graduate, and even a rockstar with David Bowie-like facepaint.
Facebook continues to embrace 3D Touch, with Apple's pressure-sensitive touchscreen tech now being added to Facebook Messenger. In an update to the Messenger app released for iOS devices today, there's now support for previewing contacts, conversations, photos, videos, stickers, links, and locations with a firm press on the iPhone 6s' display.
Google just can't make it up its mind when it comes to its messaging services. It adds apps, removes features, merges, apps, removes features, and introduces duplicate features and apps. The latest example of that flip-flopping is with the Hangouts app on Android. Starting version 11, the app, which was initially a purely instant messaging app, will no longer show SMS and Hangouts messages in a single conversation. Before you sound the alarm, though, you can still send SMS from the app. They just won't take up the same space as Hangouts messages.
Back at the end of May, we heard that Facebook may be rolling out encryption to Messenger sometime this summer. It looks like that day has arrived, as Facebook has announced that it will be testing end-to-end encryption in Messenger through a new feature called Secret Conversations. Not everyone will have access to Secret Conversations at first, but assuming the tests go well and Facebook doesn't need to make any big changes to the feature, it shouldn't be long before it rolls out to everyone.
Microsoft's messaging and video chat platform Skype has rolled out several new features this week, starting with a new browser tool aimed at small businesses. Called Skype Meetings, it's a free, web-based option for group video chats, along with a few of the collaboration tools from Skype for Business. In addition, Skype's standard existing apps now feature the ability to share files with users even when they're offline.
When iOS 10 was introduced at Apple's WWDC 2016 event last month, a number of changes and new features were introduced, but surprisingly the Messages app was one of things that given the most time and attention. It seems Apple is moving its text messaging app into the territory of Snapchat and Facebook messenger, adding not only stickers and animated emoji, but text bubble effects, handwriting, and an API for developers.
Back in April, Facebook announced it was opening up its Messenger service with an API and tools to create chat bots. While it's still not clear just how useful mobile users are finding these bots, it's obvious that developers think they are loved — or at least love making them — as there's now over 11,000 bots available on the platform. With that much saturation, Facebook needs to be on the ball about making sure bots are organized and easy to use. Thankfully an update with that in mind has been released.
Windows Phone users should probably be used to things by now. Microsoft promiseth and Microsoft taketh away. Although this latest official word from Microsoft does affect all Windows 10 users, it will be Windows 10 Mobile users who will most likely feel the biggest effects. In the past builds of Windows 10 leading to the Anniversary Update, Microsoft has been getting Insiders to test its Messaging Everywhere feature. But now with little over a month before the promised update, Microsoft is pulling the plug on that feature.
Unicode 9.0 is set to be finalized later this month, formally introducing a number of sure-to-be hit emojis, including bacon, selfie, face-palm, and more. Turns out, however, that a rifle was once in consideration for new emoji additions in 2016, but objection and pressure from Apple saw its removal. Apple, along with Microsoft and Google are voting members of the Unicode Consortium, which oversees the standardization of emoji.
Just before WWDC 2016 kicked off this week, one of the rumors that popped up was that Apple would announced iMessage for Android, allowing the free, encrypted messaging service to co-exist on both platforms. However, the WWDC keynote passed with the only focus on iMessage being new texting effects, stickers, and more. Now, as The Verge's Walt Mossberg explains, an Apple executive has revealed why iMessage is unlikely to come to Android anytime in the near future.
The Facebook Messenger app continues to see updates and changes this week, following the Android version's new support for SMS. The latest version of both the iOS and Android app introduces a Home tab, which, replacing the previous launch screen, basically acts like an inbox for the messaging platform. In addition to a list of recent conversations, this screen will show which contacts are currently online, upcoming birthdays, and the friends you chat with the most.
