Search
  • Home
  • About
  • The Verge
  • Longreads
  • Newsletter
Close
Menu
Search
Close
  • Home
  • About
  • The Verge
  • Longreads
  • Newsletter
Menu

Casey Newton

April 18, 2016

Facebook Messenger's David Marcus on the rocky rollout of bots →

by Casey Newton


My chat with the man who leads Facebook Messenger about the rollout of bots, which many have found underwhelming: 

One thing I’ve observed in the last few hours — and I know things are still rolling out — but with Poncho, it’s been more than a half hour and it hasn’t told me the weather yet. I’ve seen other people mentioning the issue of "bot latency." What should be our expectations around how quickly these things interact with us?

It should be less than five seconds. We picked Poncho because we like the thing, because it’s a really cool experience. But maybe their server’s just slammed with people trying the weather cat. I have no idea what’s actually happening, but I’m assuming that might be the case.

So bot makers are going to have to think about some of these infrastructure challenges.

Yeah, and that’s a very important point. But not only for making bots, but making tools and developing services for bots. And you know, it’s day one of a brand new ecosystem, so it’s going to take a little bit of time.

You’ve got 24 hours, Marcus.


  • Previous Post
    Facebook considers ...
  • Next Post
    Facebook's epic F8
Home RSS