Facebook Messenger is all set to receive its new set of updates with brand new features.
The chat app will now help you and your friends in deciding where you could possibly go for dinner or which movie to watch in a group chat by creating in-chat polls, and will also smartly detect and use machine learning to remind you to pay back to your friends.
Chat Assist to Help Pay Debts
The Messenger app from Facebook will now make sure that you remember to pay back to your friend, even if there is a chance that you might have forgotten it, with a new feature called the Chat Assist. The Chat Assist feature is still in its testing stage. Its uses machine learning to recognize words and to prompt a relevant action in a conversation. So, if your friend now messages you on Messenger and reminds you to repay a certain amount of money, the Chat Assist will respond with a payment link prompting you to make the payment of the amount that you owe.
The recent launch of the online payment service of Facebook Messenger has been followed by the new Chat Assist feature. You can now make payments that you owe to your friends directly through the Messenger. The payment system was launched for Facebook Messenger so that business brands can sell their products directly to the customers.
Facebook says that the Chat Assist feature is completely automated and is optional.
Create Polls in Group Chats
Confused whether to have Chinese or Italian for dinner? Make a poll on a Facebook Messenger and then decide! How easy is that! Polls are where you ask a question and give the possible answers, send in a group chat, and see the popular choice and make plans together.
Facebook Messenger now allows creating polls so that you and your friends can take decisions based on the interest of a majority of the people. The chat polls are available right now only for group chats on the Messenger since it requires more than two people in a conversation for voting in a poll. All you have to do is look for the ‘More’ button and then tap on the icon for Polls. You can now type in a query and give appropriate options in the message for others to answer and vote in the Poll. According to Facebook, the polls do not have any time limit. So if you find a poll that has been created a few weeks back, you can still answer them.
Facebook says that they see at the chat assist function with payment mode and poll creations, as an example of how they are offering help to make lives easier for the Messenger users, similar to an easy Uber Ride.
If these features are not yet seen on your Facebook Messenger, then make sure that the app is updated with the latest version. These two features are available for both Android and iOS users in the US alone. However, if the test results are satisfactory, it is expected to be rolled out to other countries also very soon.