A conversational interface that delivers news has been the main highlight this week. Quartz new app is an experiment around messaging, mobile, bots and notifications that is very well executed, fresh and innovative. Kudos to the team.
As with every innovative product, skepticism arrives. And that is positive, too. You may think consuming news as a conversation with a bot is weird. It’s worth trying, though. It will be exciting to see what they do next: bringing it to Messenger? Add relevant people to the conversation?
An overview about the Kik bot platform and its similarities with WeChat. Payments inside messaging platforms open a whole range possibilities for both consumers and brands. Kik is wildly popular among US teens, and is well ahead in the space of bots.
An email conversation between two bots, Clara Labs and x.ai, talking to each other in order to schedule a meeting. Just that. Exciting stuff, if you ask me.
The founder of x.ai, a personal assistant who schedules meetings for you, talks about the complex process of building a serious AI engine. It’s insightful to see how much work goes into such a seemingly simple product.
Later this year, Telegram will release a wallet SDK that bot developers can use. Similar to WeChat Wallet. They move fast and their bot platform is truly amazing. Very interesting playground to experiment with ideas, at the very least. I built some experimental bots in Telegram, and they’ve been growing a lot organically, it was a great learning experience.
Facebook Messenger had SMS support, then it was removed, and now it may come back. Facebook Messenger wants to be the hub of all your communications in mobile. Quick tip: open Messenger from an Android device, open any conversation, type @. You can already see where this is going. At the moment, there are only two bots: @fbchess and @dailycute.
Time tracking application built with Slack as main interface, similar to NikaBot. Many companies are revamping tools that have existed for a long time with a Slack mindset: Slack as an acquisition channel.
