Say hello to Quartz for Messenger.
It’s a totally new way to get our journalism, built and written specifically for Facebook Messenger. You can chat with Quartz about our obsessions, participate in fun projects that stretch your worldview, and catch up on the latest news. As we get to know each other, we’ll shape the experience to you and your habits.
Tap here to start, and see where the conversation takes you.
Quartz for Messenger is a personal experience—your friendly, culturally curious, well-rounded guide to the new global economy. We run on your schedule, picking up cues on whether you have time to go deep on a subject or just scan the headlines, and remembering your preferences over time. We want to fit into your day, however you prefer.
When you start chatting with us, we’ll offer:
- Obsessions: These are deep dives into the most fascinating corners of the global economy, inspired by our new daily email. How do UN interpreters do their jobs? Why did LaCroix get so popular? We’re ready to obsess along with you.
- Projects: From time to time, we’ll ask if you want to go on an adventure with us, from embarking on a 12-day mindfulness challenge to experimenting with new recipes. We promise to keep things fun and surprising, with projects designed to make your days easier and more interesting.
- News: Our journalists will get you caught up on important and interesting news from around the world. It’s the same chat-based writing from our app for iOS and Android.
- Messages: We try to be smart about what and when you hear from us. Our messages should be a delight to receive, and the better we know each other, the better they will be.
We built Quartz for Messenger because we believe messaging is an important and enduring new habit for the audience we aspire to reach, just like email and the web. Our award-winning app taught us that many people love getting our journalism in a conversational format, and over the past two years we’ve learned a lot about writing for that kind of interface.
That’s why we started the Quartz Bot Studio, which builds experiences for messaging and voice platforms. Over the past year, we’ve tried a variety of approaches to bot-based journalism, from tests on Messenger to tools for Slack to skills for Amazon Alexa. We applied the lessons from those experiments to this new product, our biggest yet. The Bot Studio has been funded in part by a grant from the Knight Foundation. Get in touch with us at bots@qz.com.
The interaction designer and editor of Quartz for Messenger, and the human behind its voice and character, is Emily Withrow. The developer and technical architect is John Keefe, and the designer is Elan Kiderman. We’ve had writing, production, and coding contributions from Eunice Lee, Susan Howson, Jordan Friedman, and Maxine Whitely. Adam Pasick and many other Quartz journalists contributed to the project, as well.
Here, again, is the link to say hi. We’re looking forward to meeting you.