DATA: A massive, hidden shift is driving companies to use A.I. bots inside Facebook Messenger

A huge, hidden shift is taking place in the way companies use Facebook to talk to customers.

In the old days, companies used to deal with customers' complaints publicly, on their Facebook walls or on Twitter. But in the last couple of years the majority of "social customer care" has gone private - inside the direct messaging channels of Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Whatsapp, and others.

Now, 10,000 companies are already developing artificially intelligent chatbots to handle those private conversations.

Socialbakers, the social media management company, did a study of 256 companies, looking at 3.1 million private messages and 1.5 million Facebook wall posts. The question we wanted to know was: How big is the potential market for A.I. chatbots inside Messenger and other apps?

Business Insider presented the findings to roughly 1,000 attendees at Engage 2016, the big social media conference in Prague hosted by Socialbakers.