Facebook announces winners of its First Bots for Messenger Developer Challenge
Facebook has finally unveiled the winners of its Bots for Messenger Developer Challenge for developers across the Middle East and Africa. The 3 winners were part of the 60 finalists shortlisted for the contest to reward developers who create the most innovative new bots on Messenger.
Commenting on the winners, Emeka Afigbo, Facebook’s Head of Platform Partnerships for the Middle East and Africa said they were incredibly impressed with the bot submissions they received and the commitment to excellence that all the contestants have demonstrated, since the launch of the contest.
”We congratulate all the winners, wish them luck and thank all of the participants for making the Bots for Messenger Challenge a success! We look forward to seeing these bots continue to evolve into strong services for their communities.” he said.
Below are the winners in the different categories:
Gaming and Entertainment
Winner: Trivoxx from Morocco, winner of gaming and entertainment category, is a bot that allows one’s or a group of friends test their trivia on sports, science, and cities in three languages: Arabic, French, and English.
Runner-up: Mastermind Games Bot from Egypt is a collection of five interactive games to solve codes based on various combinations of logic and memory. Every time a user guesses the correct code, a cave safe will open to obtain a diamond. Users can share games with their friends as they vie for the top scores.
Productivity and Utility
Winner: If you like to read books, then you’ll agree that Mr. Ink from Egypt is the winner in the Social Good category. Users can either type a book name, or snap a photo of the book cover, to obtain information about the book including its author, rating, and book description.
Runner-up: Evii from Jordan helps customers order and pick up food via its bot. Evii seize the opportunity to expand by building more end-to-end customers tools.
Social Good
Winner: MathHook from Egypt, is the winner in the Social Good category. It brings math into everyone’s life by helping users to solve complex math problems and search for math courses on YouTube across 3000 math videos. There’s also a chat function to connect users with teachers or other students to solve math problems. MathHook is also a student submission to this Challenge.
Runner-up: Adam (9 months) from Egypt aims to create community for pregnant women via tools and guidance, and safe communication channels between community members. Adam utilizes additional features such as location services to let users search for nearby pregnancy care, baby or maternity places. It also has an analytics tool to log user actions in custom events with custom parameters to better understand community perspectives.
The 3 winners won a prize of $20,000 USD and three months of Facebook mentorship. In addition from the Middle East and North Africa, three runner-up teams won $10,000 and three months of Facebook mentorship.
