Facebook M Archives - Argyll Free Press

After many years during which we had to pay $0.99 every twelve months, WhatsApp is finally free to use. The announcement was made by Jan Koum, CEO and one of the co-founders of the company during the DLD 2016 conference held in Munich. As a result, WhatsApp will search for new ways of getting in contact with the users.

Even though the cheap annual subscription fee was more symbolic, users will be relieved when they will find out they no longer need to pay it. However, in its place, the company might place adverts and sponsored messages, which might prove even more annoying. Fortunately, this is not the case as WhatsApp has reassured us. Not only would the application be a useless place for such ads, but there is no way the company could make them valuable. Since their communications are encrypted end-to-end, WhatsApp cannot scan for keywords which are used in adverts.

Furthermore, as the company was bought by Facebook in February 2014 for $19.3 billion, there are plans of integration between both platforms. However, data sharing is excluded and thus there will be no way advertisers can use Facebook likes to serve ads.

So what does WhatsApp plan? It seems the company will focus on the communication between users and certain businesses and organizations, for instance banks or airlines. You might soon be able to talk to your bank about a fraudulent transaction or with an airline about cancelling your flight. This is not the first time someone thought about this idea. Facebook is already testing this feature for its new app Facebook M, and Google is currently developing a similar application. We can expect Facebook M to be somehow integrated into WhatsApp.

Jan Koum had also made some references to the fact that the company is working on several improvements, such as video-calling. As a result, the application is expected to become a fierce contender against other services like Skype, iMessage, Google Hangouts and FaceTime.

WhatsApp is a communication platform working as part of a certain subscription business model. Its users can send various messages, images, videos, recordings and locations from their smartphones. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, WhatsApp has been growing the number of its users, thus reaching about 900 million in September 2015, and becoming the most popular messaging application worldwide.

While WhatsApp is finally free to use, it might take quite some time for other features to be released. Both WhatsApp and Facebook have a history of slow updates, but it will surely be worth the wait.

Image Source: 1

Facebook M has been unveiled yesterday. It’s a personal assistant currently in beta, and it’s being tested by about 200 totally random users in the Bay Area. Facebook M is quite unique, mainly because it employs human power. These trainers-of-the-M are capable of completing real day to day activities like buying an item or making a reservation.

We don’t know what the M will turn into, what we do know is that it won’t be your run of the mill personal assistant. Well, if it’s different it should be better, right?

Well, not exactly.

Digital assistants are pretty weak at the moment. Regardless, they are forced upon consumers. M seems to be a different kind of beast – seems to be. At the dawn of this millennium, when flip phones where introduced to voice control, people where in awe. It ended up being a gimmick that you could show off and laugh in its face.

Technology is growing exponentially, and tech industry behemoths are trying to revive it. It does have tremendous potential, but Facebook M will be found inside the Messenger app and it will be text-based. This is a huge mistake.

Why?

Cortana, Google Now and Siri are personal assistants, but they are quite different from one another. The only common ground is that all three of them live in their own ecosystem. Highly popular ecosystems which we carry on a daily basis.

Zuckerberg’s M doesn’t have its own home. Unless Facebook is planning on unveiling their own OS anytime soon, it’s not going to have it in the near future. Digital assistants need their own hardware in order to be fully integrated, and subsequently useful.

There are too many steps a user has to make to get to M. But, if they play their cards right, Facebook might just hit gold. The Messenger App is installed on almost every smartphone on the planet. Zuckerberg just announced via Facebook that on the 24th of August 2015, a Monday, one out of seven people tuned into the social media platform.

That’s approximately 1 billion people.

Facebook is looking a little bit naive with their promos. In the screenshot below, someone asks M what is the best burger joint in Chicago, and the DA replies with a link. Why would you need to use something else when you already have Google?

M stands for Mistake

Why would you use M in the first place? You need to type sentences in the Messenger App, coherent sentences mind you, so Facebook M understands what you are asking. You could just type keywords in Google and get the desired info.

If there’s a problem with the reservation then you either have to a) type more messages, or b) call the restaurant yourself. Why not do this in the first place without going through all this hassle?

Text-based is confusing, and more so annoying as hell. Phrases can be misinterpreted, and ladies, we’ve all had a ton of text-based fights with boyfriends or girlfriends. It’s not a pretty sight.

Image Source: 1, 2, 3

WhatsApp Is Finally Free to Use

Facebook M stands for Mediocre or Mistake, You Pick

Categories