There is a lot of hype about chat bots but let's not confuse that for usage. Tell me what chat bot you use on a regular basis?
To me, chat bots seem like a step backward, at least for the use cases I've seen them applied for.
How Kik Predicted the Rise of Chat Bots
11–20 of 37 posts
Re: How Kik Predicted the Rise of Chat Bots
#12There is a lot of hype about chat bots but let's not confuse that for usage. Tell me what chat bot you use on a regular basis? To me, chat bots seem like a step backward, at least for the use cases I've seen them applied for.
Kik's a chat app and only a chat app (ie. they don't have a bunch of other properties that receive traffic like Google or Facebook) so this is what they've got, and what they have to work with. They can use them to keep people within their app and track where they go to afterwards.
They're gambling on the fact that bots will set their platform apart from all the other chat apps. Of course, now, everyone else also has bots. But the article is about how they did it first (out of the "western" chat apps).
Re: How Kik Predicted the Rise of Chat Bots
#13There is a lot of hype about chat bots but let's not confuse that for usage. Tell me what chat bot you use on a regular basis? To me, chat bots seem like a step backward, at least for the use cases I've seen them applied for.
I use a bot in Telegram called Nate. It's in a group chat and does all sorts of useful things, from Urban Dictionary lookups to wolfram alpha evaluations to spamming cat pictures.
Re: How Kik Predicted the Rise of Chat Bots
#14Huh? People have been working on chat bots since forever. I mean, especially on IRC, with Eggdrop. My favourite was always: https://github.com/jamesoff/bmotion Example: https://github.com/jamesoff/bmotion/wiki/Examples
Totally. IRC has has had eggdrop and other bots for over 20 years.
Can't wait for someone to "innovate" mIRC's scriptable client into their product.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggdrop
Slack has effectively re-created irc and bots in a modern client.
It's nice mobile messaging platforms are joining the past and present with the future, let's just not call it innovation.
Re: How Kik Predicted the Rise of Chat Bots
#15Huh? People have been working on chat bots since forever. I mean, especially on IRC, with Eggdrop. My favourite was always: https://github.com/jamesoff/bmotion Example: https://github.com/jamesoff/bmotion/wiki/Examples
The thing is, the Mobile Internet is rising, most people have phones, and old trends and concepts that are old to the Internet seem new and significant to the mobile platform. For example Flappy Bird was an ancient game on the web that existed and then it blew up, now you have many, many clones. Edit: Also consider how much information is on your phone, and how easy it is to access it than with a browser on your lapt…
>For example Flappy Bird was an ancient game on the web that existed and then it blew up, now you have many, many clones.
I'll give you a better example than that in Angry Birds. Crush the Castle was a staple of mine for at least a year or two LOOONG before Angry Birds showed up; ultimately the exact same format of a game except your projectile was a trebuchet and not a slingshot. Angry Birds showed up on the smartphone and ate Crush The Castle's forever remaining lunches.
Hell, if you want to go back farther than that I think it was a game called 'Armor', fire at thing, destroy thing, upgrade and fire again for points. But yeah, that first sentence nails it completely.
Re: How Kik Predicted the Rise of Chat Bots
#16I'm sorry but Kik didn't predict the Rise of Chat Bots. Kik basically looked at WeChat and said we should do that. Same as Facebook and the others. WeChat showed that micro-apps inside a chat interface worked for their target market. The key is to understand the needs of WeChat's target market and figure out the overlap with the US market then figure out the unique needs of the US market.
All of them probably looked at IRC bots.
Re: How Kik Predicted the Rise of Chat Bots
#17Twitter invented mentions, even tho IRC had them way before. Kik invented Chat bots, even tho IRC had them way before. Your next startup invented xyz, even tho IRC had them way before.
I always saw twitter as an inverted IRC client - where you address a @Person instead of a #Channel.
Re: How Kik Predicted the Rise of Chat Bots
#18Twitter invented mentions, even tho IRC had them way before. Kik invented Chat bots, even tho IRC had them way before. Your next startup invented xyz, even tho IRC had them way before.
Well everything this labeled "social media" is just a clone of either newsgroups or irc or both.
Re: How Kik Predicted the Rise of Chat Bots
#19Huh? People have been working on chat bots since forever. I mean, especially on IRC, with Eggdrop. My favourite was always: https://github.com/jamesoff/bmotion Example: https://github.com/jamesoff/bmotion/wiki/Examples
ELIZA was around in 1964: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
Re: How Kik Predicted the Rise of Chat Bots
#20Chat bots, the CLI going mainstream ... (?)