In the same way that we wonder how we used to get to places without Google Maps, at some point we’ll ask ourselves: how did we plan trips without that bot that helps us find and book flights, hotels and activities right from our group conversation?
Slack added support for voice calls, video support is coming soon. Microsoft is pretty worried about this. Slack has 2.3M daily active users and 570K registered teams, and has a very active ecosystem. We use Skype for videoconferencing in our team, and once Slack releases video calls, migrating will be a no brainer.
We’re all waiting for it. “April’s going to be a hot month”, according to the head of Messenger at Kik. “It’s huge”, by the CEO of Gupshup. Everyone is looking forward to the F8 conference on April 12, where Facebook is expected to make the move and open Messenger to businesses.
Customer acquisition for mobile apps is expensive ($4.73 average CPI), and retaining those users is difficult (95% don’t come back after a month). On the other hand, messaging apps are the most adopted ones. From there, the author reasons why we’re entering the age of chat bots.
The author reasons about how the human-machine interactions could evolve, given the key differences of chat interfaces from traditional UI/UX: they are pretty much untestable but easy to debug, every user interaction is like a survey about what they want the interaction to be like, and they are a great interface for the Internet of Things.
The slack team provides some tips how to make your bot pass the “Beer Test”, which is much less demanding than the Turing Test. Essentially, how to make your bots feel more approachable and friendly.
