Lock in a year of Digiday+ for 35% less. Ends May 29.
Lydia Polgreen is now running HuffPost’s Facebook Messenger bot
Add “Messenger bot curator” to HuffPost editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen’s job description. Last week, HuffPost said its Facebook Messenger bot, which was created to keep readers updated on Donald Trump, would shift gears to share HuffPost stories Polgreen picks herself.
On Friday, Polgreen shared stories about Senate Republicans’ failure to pass a “skinny repeal” of the Affordable Care Act, people’s views on the health care repeal effort and the Minneapolis police chief’s resignation after police shot and killed an unarmed woman.
The bot gives readers a two-sentence lead and if they choose, a paragraph summarizing the main point of the story. Readers can then read the full story on HuffPost and give feedback to editors.
HuffPost shifted the focus of the Messenger bot because it wasn’t driving enough engagement. Many subscribers were opening the chat to read the alerts, but not clicking through to read the stories, said Christine Roberts, HuffPost’s senior editor of audience growth and emerging platforms.
She and her team decided the bot should be more conversational, and, where possible, have a distinct personality. That led to the focus on Polgreen and the idea to let people leave feedback. That feedback idea sets HuffPost apart from most other publishers, which have used Facebook’s bots as a way to broadcast information, rather than take it in.
“The original bot was centered around push,” Roberts said. “This new experience is much more focused on pull.”
More in Media
Why Amazon and YouTube pitched operating systems, not just TV inventory at this year’s upfront
Negotiations over identity, infrastructure, AI-driven buying take place as much as programing.
The Economist prepares for a two‑track internet: one for humans and one for AI agents
The Economist is testing agent-readable versions of content that already sits outside its paywall, as it prepares for “two versions of the web.”
The case for and against clipping
Clipping is the creator growth hack of the year, but there are strong arguments for and against the practice. We break them down.