Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) power the world in a couple of years into the future? A question raised due to the fact that everything is moving towards some aspect of AI. Your closest messaging app, Facebook messenger is climbing an upward hill with M; Messenger’s new Bot!

Who is M and what does it do?

As I mentioned earlier, M is Messenger’s AI feature which offers suggestions to make your messenger experience more useful, delightful and seamless. The main intention of M is to expose people in a conversation to the latest unknown features in Messenger. M pops up to an ongoing conversation and suggests relevant content to enrich the task of messaging.

But where does this fabulous AI come into play?

Imagine you are in a normal conversation with a friend on Messenger and the conversation is directing towards an instant plan to hangout. M recognizes the requirement and helps to coordinate the plan. It can suggest you to share your location to help your friend pick you up and it even suggests you to continue your interactions through stickers by sticker suggestions. It does not stop there! M identifies when people are in a conversation about exchanging money and gives options to easily send and request money. (only applicable to US in the present context)

We often face difficulties in making decisions in group chats. But not anymore! With M around, quick suggestions to create a poll in group conversations are taken care of. Isn’t M making our lives easy?

However, if you does not require the assistance of M, you could always mute M from its settings. Messenger offers M to aid you at your convenience to enrich your interaction with your friends like never before.

Is that all?

No, it’s not! Facebook announced a vast variety of cutting edge upgrades during the past couple of months and most of these were released at the Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference held in April 2017. Chat extensions, group payments (applicable to US), messenger codes, a new discover tab and many more were among those.

Let’s have a look at these cool features!

Use Messenger even if you are not on Facebook

Did you know that now you can use Messenger even if you are not on Facebook? Yes, you read it write. You can! Messenger gives you the option to use it as a normal messaging app to your contacts, deviating itself from being a mere chat application for Facebook. You also have the capability to send a message through Messenger to a phone contact who is not on Facebook by adding it as a new contact to Messenger.

Live Location Sharing

Live Location Sharing is one of the most prominent latest updates released by Messenger. Earlier, you could share your static location with your friends and family. Many messaging and chat applications provides this facility. But what if you are moving? How would you let your friends and family know where you are?

Messenger has solved this problem by allowing you to share your live location real-time, for 60 minutes at a time. This way, even if you are traveling, your friends and family would be able to locate you when necessary. Messenger gives the option to stop sharing the location at any time as well, at your convenience. You’ll even see how much time left, out of the 60 minutes to continue to share your location.

Messenger Games Updated

New games including “Words With Friends” and “EverWing” has been added to the Messenger games list and allows you to engage in numerous games with your friends. Messenger has taken chatting and messaging to the next level through this update.

Message Reactions and Mentions

React to a particular message with an emoji and share your thoughts instantly in a lightweight manner. This is the story behind message Reactions. Reactions were developed by Messenger(similar to reactions on posts on Facebook), to enhance the messaging experience through improved involvement and interaction.

Particularly in group chats, Mentions make everyone’s lives much easier as you can directly point out a message to a certain person. Further message reacts come into play in groups chats by letting the group members express their preference or thoughts on a particular message and the number of people who have reacted with respect to each reaction can also be viewed by tapping the small emoji next to the message.

Add to your day

Finally, feel like sharing how your day was with your friends? Crowning the technic of Snapchat, Messenger has developed the Story of Your Day feature to connect people more via a messaging app. While some never post this story of the day, some always take the first step to share every tiny detail of their day! No matter how appealing this feature is, sharing your day with the outside world should be done wisely. The story of the day deletes after 24 hours and you can share it with all your friends or selected users!

Facebook Messenger has taken a high leap with its latest updates. These cool features will enrich your messaging experience because chatting got a little more entertaining with all these additions. Chat extensions, M improvements (AI in messenger), games to connect with your friends, live location sharing and much more are among these new upgrades. Try it out today if you weren’t aware and please feel free to share any I have missed!

Stay tuned for more updates.