Artificial Intelligence powered Facebook bot for sports

When Mark Zuckerberg announced in April that Facebook is launching Facebook’s Messenger Platform a service that enables developers to build custom bots on Facebook messenger, Tech world went wild thinking of potential applications.

In less than 4 months since the announcement more than 11,000 bots have been released on Facebook, but India has been slow to embrace the technology. SportsCafe(sportscafe.in) an emerging media and gaming startup group looked at Facebook bots as a way to promote its content and is now the only sports news portal in India to develop a Facebook bot.

“Currently there are only a handful of Facebook bots in the world including SportsCafe that provide live sports news and match scores” says the CEO of SportsCafe Yashashvi Takallapalli. Facebook bots are a revolutionary way for consumers to enjoy the content offered by Sportscafe while on Facebook. Sportscafe’s bot was developed by ChatMechanics (chatmechanics.com), an Artificial Intelligence startup specialising in chatbots.

How interaction with the bot works:
Users can start their interaction with a bot by typing a simple message such as “hi” or “hello”. The bot allows SportCafe to provide a user friendly platform for their viewers to customise their sports news feed by receiving news only about their favorite sports or sportspersons.

Put simply, users can type in "news about Sania Mirza" and the bot will show them the most current news surrounding Sania Mirza. Users can also get a quick summary of the article on the facebook messenger itself through the bot.

Soon, the bot will also act as a crowd sourcing platform where people can give their opinion on matches and contribute to SportsCafe’s news feed through comments, videos and photos. And starting next week, users who have subscribed will receive a daily digest of exciting news.