Will Millennials Want to Go Shopping With Facebook Messenger Bots?

Here's a vision of the Facebook shopping future: You’re chatting with a friend on the company's Messenger service about plans to go to a concert, and one chat bot chimes in to offer help purchasing tickets while another hails a car service.

Speaking at the company’s annual F8 developer conference on Tuesday, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg envisioned Messenger’s more than 900 million users turning to this bot-enabled purchase model. If successful, the model would essentially eliminate the need to open a third-party app for a broad range of transactions. It’s understandable why Facebook wants to control more of the multibillion-dollar e-commerce market, but there’s no guarantee shoppers will share the enthusiasm.