The Kik Bot Platform

At least they're internet famous among developers for being the guys who blew up NPM, so maybe now everyone will be excited to start working with them?

Would like to note that kik is the company that threatened to go after an open source developer and get accounts terminated because he wrote a library with the same name. https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the-breakin...

> Simple/well understood things like "call an Uber" I think will be pretty DOA if you try to shoehorn a chatbot into the middle - users will prefer the actual UI over it any day of the week.

I completely disagree when it comes to texting (voice is dif.). I have no interest in waiting for my uber app to load, get me a quote and than order me a ride... I would much rather use a chatbot to look up quick and easy things.

If it's a one off piece of information that I can ask in 1-2 queries/interactions with a bot...I would much rather that over opening an app. Especially, if I can look something up quickly without leaving the current UI i'm using.

I also think you are ignoring all the many use cases that are made possible that were never before possible (i.e. the ability for chatbots to augment humans to achieve access at scale), and the many business models that can shave off 20-30% of their labor costs with well executed chat bots.

I also think it's important to think about the bots calling other bots use case, which might become even more important. Just because you can't envision a human preferring a bot over an app with simple/well understood things...doesn't mean there wont be many use cases where a current bot you are using talks to other bots on your behalf, so the UI choice is never made by you. Finally, and most importantly, if chat bots start replacing parts of discovery, search and research, it will become crucially important to make sure your brands are found and used by bots and people over your competitors brands and bots.

Think of doing SEO in 2002. If you got it right, you banked tens of millions with minimal effort.

I can't predict the future, but viewing chat bots as a UI alternative limits its actual scope.

fair point, not withstanding what these bots can know/learn about you and your preferences.

More importantly though, the general bot would have to connect to all those APIs...however, if each theater has their own bot, than perhaps the general bot can query those bots without integrating with them. So, I guess the question becomes, are bots useful to other bots..if so, than everyone will need their own bot to be found by general bots.

many websites, apps, bots conceptually share the same goal: to let users interact with a database. they represent different ways to read and write company data, and as such have different strengths and weaknesses. websites, for instance, are terrific for discovery/browsing activities while chat bots could be terrific for transactional activities (e.g., amazon, cancel my last order).

today, the problem with bots is that natural language AI is extremely difficult, so many criticisms hold true: websites and apps are better than bots for most tasks. today.

but that is similar to someone in 1994 saying that online shopping was worse than offline shopping. yes, it was. but technology improved to where online shopping -- for many cases, but not all -- became better than offline shopping.

the real question: if you believe AI will evolve to where chatting with a company bot is indistinguishable from chatting with the company's top human employee/representative -- e.g., imagine the equivalent of jeff bezos personally handling your amazon queries and transactions -- would a bot become the more natural interface for many activities?