Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg wants to change the way people interact — with each other and the world around them.

For now, his plan includes getting users to talk to artificially intelligent bots on Facebook’s Messenger mobile-chat application. In the longer term, he sees people interacting with virtual representations of physical objects, Zuckerberg said in a speech on Tuesday at the social network’s annual F8 developer conference at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.

“A lot of the things we think about as physical objects today, like a TV, will actually just be a $1 app in an app store,” Zuckerberg said.

More than 2,500 developers and partners attended the annual event, where Zuckerberg outlined his 10-year road map. The plan for all of Facebook’s products, from messaging to virtual reality, will require building an audience, and then getting developers to build an ecosystem of businesses that communicate with that audience.

He encouraged businesses to build bots for Messenger, which has more than 900 million users. He said communicating directly with customers via the chat service will replace downloading businesses’ apps on phones. Zuckerberg said 60 billion messages are sent daily via Facebook’s products, three times the volume of SMS text-messaging systems.

“People love to interact with businesses and services inside of Messenger,” David Marcus, who leads messaging at Facebook, said at the conference. “It also makes the product a more central part of people’s daily lives.”

Subscribe Today to Mobile Strategies 360 and receive exclusive data. Not only will you get the latest information on the rapidly changing mobile industry, you will also receive Mobile Market Insights a free monthly overview on the market. These fact sheets are filled with data and statistics to help you identify opportunities and get a jump on the competition. Mobile Market Insights is available only to Mobile Strategies 360 subscribers. Once you enter your free subscription, click on the link for your free download.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn and be the first to know when new Mobile Strategies 360 content is published.

Favorite