TELEGRAM AND BOTS

Are you still using Whatsapp? That is old school and there are good reasons to switch to another service. Telegram Messenger for example. After Facebook bought Whatsapp, the chances that your privacy was endangered, were increasing. Of course Facebook created a possibility for users to opt out, that is Facebook had no access to the whatsapp data…. For the moment. The first reason for me to look into Telegram was, that it is completely cloud based. You login to your Telegram account with a mobile phone, a tablet, or your laptop, using an app or just the browser. Secondly Telegram offers more possibilities for including files to your message. Not only pics but audio, video, or text files can be attached. Nice but that was not compelling for me to switch. That was the possibility or using bots and also creating your own bot.

How does it work? Installing the messenger service is a piece of cake. Download the app and subscribe. A pin code is end to your phone to login; done. In your contact you can see who is already using Telegram. Others you can send an invitation.

Store

Installing a bot in your account that is were the fun is. Go to the bot store, and get blown away; there is enormous choice of bots, mostly created by private persons, but also by organizations, in particular media. Try for example the bots from the BBC, or New York Times, get the latest headlines. Try the weatherman to get the sunshine in any place on earth. Most of these bots are using a kind on RSS feeds. Install the Feed Reader Bot from the store and install your own selection of feeds.

BotFather is a service available on Telegram to create your own bot. Click on the icon of the BotFather and type on the command line /start and follow the instruction or read the manual.

Bot

Now you have bot, with a name and avatar etc, but it is not working yet. To turn the bot into an interactive service you have create menus and responses to questions or commands from users. There is service to do this: install Chatfuel from the store. Look at the tutorials and howto’s Chatfuel is offering for creating a bot service; type /help and choose a tutorial. To create service for your own bot, click on the icon of your bot and type /chatfuel. Now you can create menus or create a response to commands. Finally advertise your bot, in the bot store and get subscribers, read the faq for bots.