Official reason
M discontinued; some automation remaining in Messenger.
Meta · AI Assistants
Facebook M
RIP
2015–2018 · 3 years in market
A concierge inside Messenger staffed by humans plus AI. Unit economics of a hotel butler.
Launched
Aug 1, 2015
Discontinued
Jan 8, 2018
Cause of death
Cost / unit economics
What actually happened
Human-in-the-loop assistants do not scale to a billion users at Messenger’s price of zero.
Lesson
Do not staff a consumer chatbot with people unless the user is paying concierge rates.
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