The Washington Post launched its first chatbot today on Facebook Messenger. It’s one of the most prominent American newspapers to do that.
The Post‘s bot shares the latest articles, recommends certain articles, and will provide relevant information on the 2016 Olympic Games in August and on Election Day in November. Personalization options will arrive in the future.
“As users increasingly engage with the bot, we can tailor stories based on reading history or topics they specifically inquire about,” Joey Marburger, director of product at the Post, said in a statement on the news.
Other notable news organizations using bots to deliver the news include CNN, Quartz, TechCrunch, and the Wall Street Journal.
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At the same time, many news organizations have started to use bots from certain cloud services for their own internal purposes, including Zapier, Trello, and Slack.
The newspaper will introduce an SMS version of that chatbot in the fall.
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