This month, September, seems to be a month for delivery of pregnant innovations (an accomplishment of overdue expectations) for many in the technology industry.
Facebook Messenger, just like its counterparts in the Social Networking Ministry (Instagram, Twitter, amongst others), has updated its app to incorporate two essential features in the US and may roll them to other countries if tested well.
Vote in or out a person from a meeting through group chat, without having to physically raise a show of hands.
"Polls", one of the new features, lets you write a question and suggest answers, send them to everyone in a group chat, and keep tabs on how your friends vote.
This was Facebook’s original Polls feature from 2007, which was later scrapped. Facebook scaled the feature back to only appear in Events and Groups. Now it’s coming to chat, accessible from the message options bar above the composer, or inside the More drawer, below payments, location and ride requests.
Why physically approach your debtor when you can mildly request your debt in a more professional way?
“Chat assist”, the second feature, is for payments. This will suggest users pay their friends within a chat when "IOU" or another variation of the phrase is used, like “You owe me $5” or “Send me $18 for dinner”. Any of these related words will trigger Messenger to insert a payment button like “Pay $18” below the message. Friends can then decide whether to click and quickly send money from a debit card number you enter or have previously connected to Messenger.
Facebook explains it in this way:
if you use the phrase 'IOU' when communicating with someone, chat assist may helpfully offer an optional link below your message that allows you to easily pay your friend back.
Also, Facebook writes that “We look at this chat assist function with polls and payments as just another example of offering help to make Messenger users live easier – like offering a ride with Uber, for example.”
These features could hasten decision making, help a creditor recover his money from a debtor in a mild manner and more importantly, encourage an organised voting system.
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