And now the news…via Facebook Messenger
ABC News is using Facebook Messenger to deliver news and engage with the audience. Head of News Digital Stuart Watt explains how the service operates and why the ABC needs to offer news on these types of new platforms as well as traditional ones.
By Stuart Watt
There has been buzz around chat apps being the “beginning of a new internet” for some time, but until recently these apps have been used as simply one-to-one, or sometimes one-to-several, communications tools.
That’s all changing. Since shortly before the federal election, ABC News has been experimenting with using Facebook Messenger to deliver news. On election night, the audience was able to ask our Messenger bot for live election updates on a seat-by-seat basis. Since then, we have been testing a broader news app and after testing on a small group it was public from Monday, October 31.
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There is ample evidence of the popularity of these apps. Much quoted analyst Mary Meeker called apps the second mobile home screen in her 2016 State of the Internet report. And the stats are compelling. In July, Messenger boasted 11.4 million users in Australia. With 60 per cent women and a similar proportion aged under 45, it shapes as a key channel through which to access audiences we have always found hard to reach (Nielsen DRM).
So, how do these apps work?
Airlines have been among the early adopters of chat app capability. They work like this. Once you’ve booked your ticket, the airline asks if you’d like to be kept up to date via Messenger. If you agree, the airline can send you information about your flight via the Messenger app. This information can include boarding passes, information about flight delays and information about partner services in the destination city – hire cars, hotels and so on.
But the magic happens when the communication flows in the other direction. For example, you could ask the app “Is my flight on time?”, “What’s my baggage allowance?”, “What gate do I leave from?” or even “What’s the weather like in [insert destination city here]?” and instantly get a sensible answer via Messenger.
Of course, this works particularly well where there is a relatively narrowly-defined relationship between the provider and the audience. The system can be set up to predict the sorts of questions travellers are likely to ask an airline, and the capacity to home in on these questions and provide meaningful answers can be built in.
Services like this are powered by automated services called chatbots (bots for short). They are a key part of a major shift in computing towards interactive services using artificial intelligence (AI)-based conversational interfaces using text or speech. Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have all announced major initiatives in messaging apps and the automation services that support them.
The ABC News Messenger bot pushes news to subscribers first thing in the morning. It offers them the headlines, a chance to choose more detail if they’d like it, and the option to tap through to the full story. It behaves in a very similar way to the acclaimed Quartz app.
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The morning offering also includes a rundown of the news “prospects” – a list of scheduled news stories we’ll be covering during the day.
When stories break throughout the day, subscribers are sent a message offering the same service. Users can also opt-in to be sent messages about stories on particular topics, like business, sport, same-sex marriage and the US election.
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People can also ask the bot questions about the news. This is tricky – a news Messenger bot is an altogether different proposition from an air travel offering – the audience could ask almost anything.
This is an area in which chat bots are still struggling – the ability to strike up a “conversation” with a person. But machine learning is driving advances in AI which means this ability is constantly improving, the disastrous debut of Microsoft’s “Tay” notwithstanding.
One of the key characteristics of our foray into messaging is the interaction with the audience that it allows. This could go in a number of interesting directions. For example, the natural behaviour in a messaging app is to reply to messages. This offers the prospect of us “harvesting” reactions to news stories which we can then incorporate into our coverage.
In a similar vein, we are already seeing people create Messenger groups to enable them to discuss news stories. A natural extension would be for us to become involved in those discussions, offering information to help answer key questions like “why is this important?” and “what happens next?”
While machine learning, AI, algorithms and metadata will be important in the performance of our bot, the humans who are involved are the secret sauce.
As is the case on every news platform, for this service to succeed, it needs to be tailored to the strengths of the platform. In this case, we are delivering news directly into the instant messaging app our audience uses to chat with their friends and loved ones.
So the tone of our comms is vital. It needs to be conversational, not formal. It’s a platform of emojis and gifs and, where appropriate, we are embracing this. It’s another example of the need for us to offer news via the channels that people are already using.
Sign up to receive the news via Messenger here. Need more help? Click here for a step by step guide.
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