Media sector

N. Name Market Chatbot

1 Corriere della sera Media https://www.facebook.com/corrieredellasera/ 2

Gazzetta del

Mezzogiorno Media

3 La Repubblica Media https://www.facebook.com/Repubblica/ 4 Il sole 24 ore Media

5

Quotidiano

nazionale Media

6 Il fatto quotidiano Media

7 La stampa Media 8 Il messaggero Media 9 Corriere dello sport Media 10 Il giornale Media 11 Avvenire Media 12 Gazzetta dello

sport Media https://www.facebook.com/LaGazzettaDelloSport/

13 Il giorno Media

14 Tuttosport Media

15 Libero Media https://www.facebook.com/liberonews/ 16 Italia oggi Media

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17 Il gazzettino Media 18 Il secolo XIX Media

19 Il tirreno Media

20 Il mattino Media

21 Il giorno Media

22 Huffpost Media https://www.facebook.com/HuffPostItalia/

23 Rai Media

24 Sportitalia Media 25 Calciomercato.com Media

26 Fox sports Italia Media https://www.facebook.com/messages/t/FoxSportsItalia

27 La7 Media

Corriere della sera

The conversation starts without any real interaction with the chatbot, anything you type, the chatbot just asks you if you want it to do the work it has been developed for: providing you with the daily news.

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If you say “No” it tells you are no longer going to receive any notifications, if you say “Yes” it tells you are going to receive every morning the daily news and you can deactivate the notifications. It seems the chatbot does not work as a chatbot and this limited initial approach does not stimulate the user in further interactions.

If you ask it “What’s happening in Rome”, it quickly replies it does not understand and suggests you to click on one of the available categories: “Le ultime news”, Video Corriere TV”, “Altre Categorie”, “Notizie Locali”, “Impostazioni”.

56 “LE ULTIME NEWS”: You receive the last three articles published and when you click on it you are redirected to their website to read the news.

“VIDEO CORRIERE TV”: You can see the last five videos available among the news and you are redirected to their website by clicking to play the video.

“ALTRE CATEGORIE”: There are ten available categories “Economia”, “Politica”, “Sport”, “Tecnologia”, “Spettacolo”, “Motori”, “Scienze”, “Scuola”, “Cucina”, “Innovazione”

For each category, the last three articles are shown.

“NOTIZIE LOCALI”: You can select a city within a limited number: Milano, Roma, Napoli, Bari, Belluno, Bergamo, Bologna, Brescia, Caserta, Catania, Firenze, Foggia, Lecce, Padova, Palermo, Rovigo, Salerno, Treviso, Venezia, Verona, Vicenza.

Once selected the preferred city, again, you can see the last three articles published.

“IMPOSTAZIONI”: You can set up the number of times per day you want to receive news (1, 2, 3 or Off)

The chatbot shown has been developed on Messenger but the same version exists on Telegram with exactly the same tree you go through when engaged in an interaction on Messenger; the only

difference is that the preview of the three articles after selecting the categories, do not show any picture with the title, just the title of the news.

For both the solutions, the possibility to type a keyword or in general a sentence and receive the latest news related to that keyword/sentence is not available, thus, the chatbot is just an

informational one, not a pure chatbot. On the left, Messenger chatbot, on the right, Telegram chatbot.

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La Repubblica

You start the conversation typing your greetings, you quickly understand it is not a pure chatbot but an informational one.

In fact, it just offers you the possibility to select one among the three options:

“BREAKING NEWS”: You receive one single article, without any chance to select a category, and clicking on it you are redirected to their website.

“ULTIME NOTIZIE”: You receive the last three articles of the day.

“CONDIVIDI”: It is the alternative always available both in the main menu and under each article, you can share the chatbot or the article with friends on Facebook.

If you try to interact with the chatbot or at least to get news using simple questions or just keywords, the chatbot does not understand and it does not even reply: I tried to ask “What is

happening in Rome” and also just “Rome” but it did not work, it did not even restart the funnel with the main menu with the three options. The only solution was to say “Hello” to him to start over with the initial main menu:

58 The informational nature of the chatbot is confirmed by the existing chatbot on Telegram where you cannot type any word and make any choice from a menu, you can just join the group and receive the latest news when the chatbot takes its own initiative:

La Gazzetta dello Sport

The chatbot starts working only if you give it your greetings or you type “Inizia”, asking for news would not work and the reply is highly explicative:

It states it was just born and it is still learning and it does not know what we just wrote, however, we just typed “football news” that is probably the very first thing you have in mind when thinking to the famous newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport. Furthermore, it tells you that for any information you can use the contacts available on their website.

After the greetings, the chatbot asks if you agree to receive the latest news about football, basket, motors and other sports and reminds you that even if you accept you can always unsubscribe and stop the push notifications about the news.

From the available menu when interacting with the chatbot you can select three alternatives:

ULTIME NEWS: You get four posts, two about the last news, one about a game “Fantasy football”, another one directly landing to the official website.

59 VIDEO: You get the latest three videos published but as always on these chatbots, you are

redirected on their website, it is never played on Facebook messenger

MORE: It is here that you can select the categories of interest; at a first level you have “Football” or “Other sports” then by clicking on the latter, you get a list of all the available sports:

Under each category you can select the news you are interested in or navigate through typical contents like Tables and Calendars.

If you are interested in Live results of any sport, there is a dedicated button in the menu that redirects you on the live webpage.

Here you can also enter the “Setting” section where you can decide:

-the frequency to which you want to receive news and it follows exactly the same structure of the chatbot Corriere della Sera:

You can decide among 1,2,3 or no daily updates.

-the categories for which you want to be updated by choosing your favorite football team and activating the latest news from football, transfer market, latest news, Serie A, motors, NBA, Serie B, cycling, other.

Libero

The chatbot has been developed on Messenger as an informational both, not supporting any conversation with the user but providing him with daily news by chat.

The interaction starts when clicking the button “Inizia”.

After that it is asked the user to select the categories he would like to receive notifications for. There are four categories: “Politica”, “Economia”, “Italia”, “Sport”:

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Once you select the categories you are interested in, you are asked to choose the time- lapse when you want to receive the notification with the last news:

By your choice, you can select morning, afternoon or night within a predefined window of hours: Morning from 8 to 9 am, Afternoon from 12 to 14, Night from 19 to 22.

They are automatically activated, you can de-activate the period of time when you do not want to receive the updates.

You can always unsubscribe from the notifications by starting over a conversation and deselecting the category of interest; in this case the chatbot tries hard to keep you linked to the service by asking you if you are unsubscribing because of the high number of notifications disturbing you and proposes you a reduction in the number of news from daily to 1 or 2 per week by clicking the button “Solo importanti” to receive only the 2 most important news of the week:

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If you restart the conversation with the chatbot, a new category of news, named “top news” have appeared in your menu to let you unsubscribe even from the 1 or 2 weekly most important news:

Other than selecting the categories for which you want to receive updates and the frequency of notifications, you also have a menu on the bottom of the chat with four alternatives:

CAMBIA ORARI: Change the period of notifications;

MESSAGGIO PRIVATO: Send a private message to Libero; GUIDA: Consult the Guide;

ULTIMI ARTICOLI: Receive the last articles;

Once the environment has been set up, you can read the news by clicking on the one you are interested in among those received by updates and, automatically, you are redirected to their website.

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Here I just typed the keyword “Parliament” and I received a list of articles containing the word. The chatbot has been powered by the agency “NoiBot” specialized in the development of chatbots on Messenger, Telegram and Whatsapp. They do not personalize the chatbot for the business customer they are developing the solution, in fact the description of the service offered is exactly the description we gave of the Libero’s chatbot: up to six news updates in a single notification with the possibility to group them under different categories and a general one for last news; all of them landing on the proprietary website of the media company that posted the news.

The chatbot is not intelligent, only a flow of news well categorized and sent to the users by messages thus having almost hundred percent of visualization rate.

Huffpost

This chatbot is optimized for smartphone and tablet Android or Apple, in fact, the first information you get by clicking on “il mio huffpost“ is that you can get a personalized experience by opening the chatbot on your mobile, thus suggesting you to download Messenger.

However, the only difference during the interaction on Mobile or Laptop is that, when clicking on your profile section while using the mobile, you are redirected to a personalized page on the Huffpost website (the picture on the left), instead it states that is impossible to load your profile when using the desktop version (the picture on the right)

63 You can start your conversation by saying “Ciao” to the chatbot and it will give you its greetings, but there is no way to communicate with it; in fact, texting both a “Ciao” and anything else, you would be answered with the list of existing categories.

There are seven main buttons to start the interaction, six categories: Politica, Economia, Esteri, Culture, Cittadini, Blog + the Profile button.

Clicking on “profile” you can personalize the news you will periodically receive by setting as favorite some categories.

For example, I click on Profile, I select Politica, I receive the list of news available under this category, I can set the category as favorite by clicking on the yellow thumb-up.

You can always come back to the menu section, by clicking on Menu, where you start over selecting the category or, alternatively, you can enter a flow of trending news by choosing one of the available related tags (i.e. Flick Raggi, Giovanni Maria Flick, Raggi ecc.).

The chatbot has been developed by Indigo.ai an Italian company creating chatbot not just

specialized on news but tailor made for several businesses and services like customer assistance, online payment directly from chat.

Fox sports Italia

It is an informational bot, you cannot have a real conversation with it, you can just select the existing categories and continue through the related articles and subcategories or receive updates about your favorite football team.

The main menu is divided into three categories

SPORT: By clicking on it you get the last ten news about sport that you can read or share; to read the news you are redirected to their website. At the same time, it is shown a list of sport categories Here it starts the path along the information tree, under the category “Calcio” you get the main football championships around the world

64 Spain, Germany, England, Italy, France, Deutschland, Brazil, USA, Europa;

Under these subcategories, for each of them is available Calendar, Results and Rankings but you cannot see the historical data, only the up to date results and rankings.

The subdivision in subcategories of each national championship by country and in sub-

subcategories showing Calendar, Results and Rankings for each of them, is available only for the Football category thus showing more interest in this sport.

GUIDA TV: By clicking on this button it tells you what is now on air and what is going to start after that on the tv channel. Three more buttons appear asking you if you are interested in the list of programs today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow

Then, once selected the day, you can express your interest in morning, afternoon, evening or night

MORE: Three buttons under the category More give you fast access to “Results”, “Your favorite football team”, “Help”.

The first is a fast access to the list of results by championship, the second asks you to digit the name of a football team in order to receive updates in real time about that football team:

The third one explains you how the chatbot works telling you can navigate through categories of sports, tv guides and set up your favorite football team to receive the notifications.

The chatbot has been powered by kframeinteractive.com, a creative digital agency, offering consulting services for web and digital marketing and also developing software tailor made for the digital solution required by the company. Not a bot specialized company but a signal that the digital revolution considers the chatbot a valuable instrument for reaching the customers.