Mica, the Hipster Cat Bot — Four Month After The Launch
Amazing things have happened since the launch of Mica, the Hipster Cat Bot. But first, what are bots and why all the fuss?
What is a Chat Bot?
A chat bot is an interactive program that talks to you. Bots are also referred to as “virtual assistants” or “conversational UI”. They answer naturally to requests to mimic a conversation. Their scope can be anything, like weather forecasts, online-shopping, or hotel reservations; In my case, it’s venue recommendations.
Advantages
The idea (and opportunity) behind chat bots is the lack of barriers to use them: Apps have to be installed separately, bots are integrated in the apps people use regularly. App stores, passwords, free device space and fast downloads are just some of the obstacles in getting your app delivered.
Conversely, billions of people worldwide are already using messengers and chat bots can reach all of them. They integrate seamlessly into the chat infrastructure. Since Facebook also launched messenger.com as a separate website, you can even use bots in a browser.
Bots could support or replace service hotlines or FAQs with massive cost savings.
Why a chat bot and not an app?
One billion monthly active users of Facebook Messenger and 300 million users of Skype can request coffee shop and restaurant recommendations: No app needed. They can just ask Mica.
A big barrier to the adoption of apps is going into app stores to download them — To many people, a complicated and tedious process. Some people don’t even use any apps other than pre-installed ones or which other people helped them to install.
Building on top of the Messenger platform removes this barrier.
Another key learning for me is that most people are still quite unfamiliar with the idea of a bot within chat platforms (yet). They expect to download an app and are surprised that they can just send messages to Mica. I’m curious how fast bots will become mainstream.
Is it only a hype?
Microsoft recently announced bot-support on Skype. Soon after, Facebook announced to open their messenger API for bots and approved the first ones. Only a few days later, Hi Poncho, a weather bot, raised 2 million in funding.
At Google I/O, the innovative chat platform Allo was presented, which will also support bots. Just recently, Google introduced their Cloud Natural Language API as a Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning framework. IBM also released their NLP framework Watson. So all the big players are adopting bots.
I believe a “hype” is an imbalance between publicity and actual value. For bots, however, the potential is definitely there:
Users worldwide using messenger platforms
- WhatsApp: 1 billion monthly active users (MAU)
- Facebook Messenger: 950 million MAU
- QQ („ICQ“ of China): 877 MAU
- WeChat („WhatsApp“ of China): 762 MAU
- Twitter: 310 MAU
- Skype: 300 MAU
- Line App (Asia) : 220 MAU
- Telegram: 100 MAU
- Kik (USA): 200 million registered users (total)
- Slack: 3 million daily active users
Ease of use
No installations, platform-independent, seamless updates, familiar interface.
Chat bots are not a hype, they could well be the future of conversational commerce!
Meet Mica
Mica, the Hipster Cat, is among the first bots approved by Facebook. She helps you discover hip venues. Mica is an interactive chat bot, meaning that anyone can text her like a real person.
To start a conversation, scan the code in the Messenger app or message the Facebook page. You can also send a message on Skype. The bot can get you suggestions for coffee shops and restaurants in any city: Just send your GPS location or the name of a city, like “Vienna, 1070” or “San Francisco”.
The recommendations are always up-to-date, retrieved from data sources such as TripAdvisor, Foursquare or Yelp. Via their APIs I look for certain criteria to present only the best results. Mica, who lives the Zeitgeist, stands for quality!
If Mica doesn’t find a venue in the vicinity, she sends you a funny cat picture to entertain. You can also suggest new restaurants by simply typing “I suggest …”. Also, Mica is polite and responds accordingly to “Hello!”, “thank you” or “bye”. She has basic conversation skills.
Why did you write Mica?
I love fancy coffee shops and restaurants! I thought it would be great fun to have a chat bot that shares this love and can be asked for recommendations worldwide. Whenever I travel somewhere, I can rely on my trusted companion.
Since I have always been eager to try new stuff, Mica, The Hipster Cat Bot, was born.
What has happened since the launch?
I underestimated the Product Hunt community’s enthusiasm for cats and coffee! Within four months:
– More than 55.000 messages were received
– Almost 50.000 location recommendations were given
– About 20.000 funny cat pics were sent
– #1 on Product Hunt with Mica on Facebook, Skype, and Telegram
– A lot of PR and conferences
– I founded the Chatbots Agency
Building one of the first bots is exciting. It feels like building the first mobile applications when the app stores where still empty. I’d encourage you to try some bots and ponder what bot you would build.
About me
Barbara Ondrisek is an enthusiastic senior software developer with 15+ years of experience. She works mostly as a freelancer at web projects (lately George / Erste Bank) or builds apps.
