WhatsApp is finally making the move towards business to consumer communication. Does this mean they will open the door for developers any time soon? My initial bet would be no, but who knows.
A very good overview about this same newsletter’s main topic and why the author believes 2016 will be the year of conversational commerce. Ranging from discovery and distribution to how this paradigm allows to “just flow”: nothing to install, nothing to configure.
WhatsApp will “test tools” to allow users to communicate with businesses. And they will no longer charge the annual fee, which shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Most likely they will introduce paid business services.
Xiaoice is on a one-year internship in DragonTV. She not only presents the weather, but has replied to more than 40 million texts from viewers. The bot remembers how users are feeling, and follows up with them. Xiaoice translates to “little Bing”.
A bot that forces your team to exercise at work. That’s it. It’s not for everyone, but it seems to resonate very well with some company cultures. Simple but powerful.
While chatting with you, this bot forks your repo, pushes to docker and registers webhooks. As far developer/devops tools go, Beep Boop is pretty unique.
Meekan quickly finds common free times in your team for meetings in Slack. Handles rescheduling and reminders. Once they do meeting notes, they will have the whole meeting loop.
