Enter The 2016 Innovation By Design Awards now through May 5! At F8, Facebook's massive annual developer conference, the big news is bots—specifically bots on Messenger, Facebook's messaging app. Messenger now boasts 900 million users per month, which presents a tantalizing user base for companies eager to get their wares in front of customers. That's where the bots come in. Facebook is turning Messenger into an open platform, and any company can now build a chatbot that users can talk with. If you're an airline, you can build a chatbot to book tickets; if you're OpenTable you can build a chatbot to take reservations. "To me it's about bringing back all the best parts of the interaction between people and businesses," David Marcus, vice president of messaging products at Facebook, says in an interview. "What we're trying to build with bots are rich conversational experiences. That's what we believe will be the future of interactions and services." The chatbots are designed to guide you through a lightweight user flow that doesn't leave you guessing about what to do next. All Roads Lead to Messenger Chatbots seem like a new fad in software design: Microsoft just announced its own suite of bot-building tools; Kik, the messaging platform massively popular among teens, announced one as well. But there are deep reasons why chatbots make sense. The app model has stalled out: People don't use a ton of apps, and they don't download many either. The reason is simple:... Continue reading at 'Fast Company'
[ Fast Company | 2016-04-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with:
#popular stories
Barnes & Noble catches up to Amazon and Google with a Web-based ebook service. Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2012-07-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#read books
We'd say it's about time. Although it's almost two years late to the party, Barnes & Noble is responding to Amazon's Kindle for the Web with Nook for Web. Much like its counterpart across the virtual aisle, the Nook web edition lets readers browse free samples and whole books entirely from a... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2012-07-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#full circle
#barnes noble
#online store
#native apps
Led by big dollar gains at Amazon and Walt Disney Co., the Publishers Weekly Stock Index rose 16.7% in the first six months of 2012, almost triple the increase posted by the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-07-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#industry stocks
#walt disney
The top 10 publishers in the world had their lowest combined market share last year in the Livres... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-06-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
Sony has decided to join the web-based shopping party, launching an online reader store for its e-inked devices and companion apps. Any e-Books purchased will arrive ready-to-read on the Reader app or other suitably wireless device, with titles also working on any Adobe DRM-supported apps and... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2012-06-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#android app
#reader app
Ebook-maker Inkling, which had previously confined its books to the iPad, is moving to the Web - a move the company has been promising for some time. The move means Inkling's books should be available on most laptops, though the company says it will work best on Google's Chrome and Apple's... Continue reading at AllThingsD
[ AllThingsD | 2012-05-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
For publishers and content creators, Tumblr exists at the heart of one of the Web’s great dilemmas. On the one hand, the micro-blogging social network can act as force-multiplier that expands the reach of content, in the same way that aggregator sites and Facebook and Twitter do. But that’s... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2012-05-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#content creators
#copyrighted material
#original publisher
At the new Pop-Hop Books & Print in Highland Park, a pair of print aficionados believes that others, like themselves, cling to the page in the age of ebooks.Like a bad love affair, they kept it a secret from their families as long as they could. Because in 2012, who can admit the thing they... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-05-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
A “high-profile defeat” for publishers is how Brandon Butler, director of public policy initiatives at the Association of Research Libraries, described the May 11 verdict in Cambridge University Press et. al. v. Mark Becker et. al., a closely watched copyright case involving the use of... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-05-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#research libraries
#higher education
The top three titles on Sweden’s fiction list in April were all in new positions, including Kristina Ohlsson’s Hostage. Ohlsson published her first book in the U.S. in February 2012 with Atria—Unwanted, a mystery cited for “superior prose, plotting, and characterization” in its starred review... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-05-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#top title
#fiction list
#starred review
Two New York meetings—the annual Book Industry Study Group (BISG) Making Information Pay... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-05-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#big data
The Financial Times is preparing to kill off its iPad and iPhone app for good, signalling its final conversion from executable-app to web-app publishing. The news publisher launched a HTML5 web app and pulled its iOS app off iTunes Store in mid-2011 ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2012-05-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#ios app
#iphone app
#itunes store
Kobo will launch its self-publishing platform this quarter and plans on expanding to “a... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-04-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#self-publishing platform
The Justice Department has formally decided to sue Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillian, Penguin and Simon & Schuster over alleged ebook price-rigging. Apple and Macmillian have already denied any wrongdoing, saying that the agreements were enhancing competition in an industry... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2012-04-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#sell books
#previously believed
#favored nation
#fascinating reading
E-book price fixing will cost consumers more than US$200 million this year, and U.S. antitrust authorities should take action against Apple and a group of... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2012-04-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#$200 million
#antitrust authorities
While 2011 saw fewer announcements of layoffs and buyouts in the newspaper industry than previous years, attrition continued quietly and relentlessly, with the nation’s biggest newspaper publishers trimming their combined work forces by 7.2 ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2012-04-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#newspaper industry
#previous years
#combined work
To coincide with its one-year anniversary on April 18, the Los Angeles Review of Books is re-launching its website in a multimedia platform that will include video, drop-down menus, and new feature articles. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-04-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#one-year anniversary
#multimedia platform
#include video
#feature articles
It was a big evening for independent publishers at the National Book Critics Circle Awards this year. Copper Canyon Press, Graywolf Press, and Lookout Books scored wins in poetry, criticism, and fiction, respectively. Edith Pearlman, whose story collection Binocular Vision took home the fiction... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-03-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#graywolf press
#edith pearlman
#fiction prize
#big night
#independent publishers
#lookout books
#debut author
Before his death in October of last year, one of Steve Jobs' last big moves was Apple's foray into electronic books. The company announced the platform in March 2010, but the method in which Apple handled its deals with publishers has caught the eye of regulators. The Justice Department plans to... Continue reading at Betanews
[ Betanews | 2012-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#electronic books
#steve jobs
#big deal
#company announced
#raise prices
Ars Technica has many things, from an audience of nearly 8 million monthly uniques to an affluent, educated readership of engaged hard-core techies. What it hasn’t had—until now—is a dedicated advertising staff. Founded by Ken Fisher in 1998 and bought by Condé Nast for a reported $25 million... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2012-03-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#mac os
#sales staff
#big plans
#long-form journalism
#ad clients