Can't stand ringing up a company only to be placed on hold for basically a year? Neither can Mark Zuckerberg. Which is why he has come up with a new piece of software to make such tiresome communication a thing of the past.
Talking at Facebook's annual developed conference, F8, the Facebook CEO revealed the social media business has launched 'Messenger Platform' – software that will allow businesses to use Facebook Messenger to communicate with customers.
How will they do this? Well, they'll give 'human' responses won't they – via the use of Artificial Intelligence.
'We’re excited to introduce bots for the Messenger Platform', Facebook wrote via their newsroom. 'Bots can provide anything from automated subscription content like weather and traffic updates, to customized communications like receipts, shipping notifications and live automated messages, all by interacting directly with the people who want to get them.'
They went on to explain that the Messenger Send / Receive API will support 'not only sending and receiving text, but also images and interactive rich bubbles containing multiple calls-to-action'. All developers and businesses will be able to build their own bots for Messenger, the company explained, but will have to submit them first to be reviewed.
How – times – change.
And that's not all. At F8, Zuckerberg also repeated his long-standing vision: to gift everyone in the world the power to connect with one another. One way in which he plans to do this, is via the use of solar-powered high-flying drones, which will send out internet signal to remote areas of the globe.
'If you'd have told me a decade ago Facebook would build a plane, I'd have called you crazy, but here we are,' he said.
We can't help but wonder what he might be thinking up next...
Spaceships?