There are hundreds of bots, capable of doing anything from playing poker with you to helping you book flights.

This means the bot is installed and ready to use. When you find one that takes your fancy, you click the “Add To Telegram” button, and you’re redirected to the main app. They’re categorised based on areas such as games, news and education, and you can also flick through a chart of the best and most recently launched. The website is essentially a catalogue full of bots. For this, Telegram has a separateīot store. Once you get the Telegram app on your iPhone and sign up using your mobile number, you can think about adding bots. While they’re built straight into Facebook Messenger, you have to physically download them on to the Telegram app. The main difference is how you access the bots. Just like Facebook, it has developed a bot platform into its main IM service. Popular messaging app Telegram is in on the game, too. It’s a bit iffy with more obscure names, but it works for common locations. Send it your city or town name, and you’ll get the current weather forecast. Using CNN as an example, you can send its chatbot topical words and it’ll reply back with relevant news stories. Companies like Argos, CNN and the BBC are already using the platform, and more bots are yet to come. If you message it, you’ll get a reply pretty much instantly.

Once you click on one, you enter an IM window, just as though you were talking to a friend. Here, you’ll find bots that are available to use. Instead, to find a bot, you type a keyword in the search bar – which could be a company or function name – and you’ll get a sub-heading called “bots and businesses”. The platform is currently in the early days, and there isn’t a library of bots as such.

To access the bots, you simply need to be signed up toįacebook and have the Messenger app downloaded.

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