A Rising Tide Lifts All Bots
Navigating the blue oceans of chat bots
A tide is rising in your mobile experience. Messengers are the new operating system and bots are the new apps. Here’s how the space breaks down:
7 Seas of Bots
1. Results Bots: Bots that replace search (FB messenger will monopolize, unless in WeChat) Facebook M grows up to be this as a response to Google machine learning algorithm tweaks
2. Utility Bots: Do discrete tasks for you, e.g. manage your calendar (fragmented, low margin — picked off by messengers, Google)
3. Turk “Bots”: Staffed call centers masquerading as AI (most walk the plank, some pivot to utility bots or pure service model — machine learning is the new SEO)
4. Tchotchke Bots: Games and distractions (Koi Pond and Fart Button bots)
5. Bot Builders: Arms dealers (commerce, AI “agent” frameworks, workflow, UX and analytics APIs, absorbed and/or crushed by messengers, Amazon)
6. Push Bots: Ads (the Internet’s original sin). Here come the marketers so bon voyage, inbox zero. Snapchat will own most of this, combined with Results Bots
7. Pull Bots: Help you discover things when you need, both discovery of stuff (fragmented space until e-commerce giants proliferate across messengers) and discovery of humans not in your social graph (high margin, future of “work” — Sensay rules these waves)
What’s on the horizon?
Many waves in the messenger space, including:
Universal Inbox becomes a thing. Google stays in the game and Apple competes here too.
It’s all Messaging! …Email, SMS, DM, Messengers and Push
Twitter Adrift on the doldrums of decreased engagement becomes a news bot that Snapchat rescues.
Facebook Boards Kik and overpays to avoid losing the young user pools to Snapchat (yet again).
International Waters: Tencent (WeChat) buys Line and Kakao. Telegram (a year ahead of its time) tacks to true AI in the Bot Builder platform space, flying its own flag.
Ghostly Canal: Snapchat opens up it’s platform to developers to facilitate innovation from the outside, especially around payments and P2P commerce. Commerce is the next level after ad sales growth crests in social media. Unclear which partners sail thru and which disappear here.
–Ariel Jalali, Captain of the S.S. Sensay
