Yahoo! Building Bots for the Messenger App

Published in

ProductHired Blog

7 min readJun 2, 2016

Context

Yahoo is currently at a very interesting stage in its lifecyle. They have amassed over 700 million users into their world of services like Mail, Finance, Fantasy Sports, Messenger and more. They have been chasing search ad revenue and Google for the past decade. More importantly Yahoo has started to focus on mobile as their core growth engine which in my opinion is a smart move. There is still potential in this giant with a few refinements in their mobile division. I believe they have an exciting opportunity in their messenger application that is still in its early years on iOS.

After some brainstorming and the current state of bots in the market, Yahoo should improve the messenger app using bots. The main benefits of bots would be to improve user engagement of the application, but also bring more people into the Yahoo Ecosystem.

Main Goal

With the recent media about bots and Slack (bots for enterprise), I see an interesting opportunity to capture the essence of bots for their Messenger consumer application to increase user engagement with their iOS/Android applications, but also the bigger Yahoo Ecosystem.

Current Competitors

Slack

Slack is a team communication application providing services such as real-time messaging, archiving, and to search for modern teams. It offers one-on-one messaging, private groups, persistent chat rooms, and direct messaging as well as group chats organized by topic. All content inside Slack is searchable from one search box and it integrates with a number of third-party services.

Facebook Messenger

Messenger is just like texting, but you don’t have to pay for every message (it works with your data plan). Not just for Facebook friends: Message people in your phone book and just enter a phone number to add a new contact. Update: Facebook launched a bot platform April 12 2016.

WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. WhatsApp Messenger is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia — and yes, those phones can all message each other! Because WhatsApp Messenger uses the same internet data plan that you use for email and web browsing, there is no cost to message and stay in touch with your friends. WhatsApp will have a bot store if Facebook Messenger is successful.

Metrics

For this particular product spec, the feature will focus on the Yahoo Messenger user. Public metrics about the usage and rankings from App Annie will give us a clear indicator as to how the application is functioning and its potential uses. Looking at App Annie downloads, Yahoo Messenger is a Top 100 contender in the Social Category. Over the past year, the ranking has been steady at 78. With the new feature, we can increase Yahoo’s social ranking and lead users to Yahoo’s other mobile apps.

App Downloads from App Annie, Current Social Ranking 88

Success Metrics To Measure for this Feature

% increase in ad revenue on mobile customers
% increase in user engagement for Messenger and existing Yahoo Ecosystem

User Stories

User Story#1: As a user of Yahoo Messenger, I want to send finance news to my friend instead of getting the link from Yahoo Finance App.

The user must have a registered account with Yahoo to use messenger. They must have at least one contact to message for this feature to work.
In Settings, Enable Bots in conversation.
Turn on slash commands for specific words like finance.
User selects with messages tab, and start a conversation with the person.
An auto-complete textbox will show available options to send finance news.
User types “/finance-stock” and selects a specific stock news item from your portfolio in the Yahoo Finance App.
User chooses an article to send the other user.
User doesn’t leave the app to find the link; the bot generates the link.
User opens the link in their default mobile browser.

User Story#2: As a user of Yahoo Messenger, I want to send tomorrow’s weather to my friend for our biking trip instead of sharing from Yahoo Weather App.

The user must have a registered account with Yahoo to use messenger. They must have at least one contact to message for this feature to work.
In Settings, Enable Bots in conversation.
Turn on slash commands for specific words in the Yahoo Weather App.
User selects with messages tab, and start a conversation with the person.
An auto-complete textbox will show available options to send tomorrow’s weather.
User types “/weather-tomorrow”
User sends the weather from Yahoo Weather to her friend.
User doesn’t leave the app to find the link; the bot generates the link.
User opens the link in their default mobile browser.

User Interaction

Design — Mobile Mockups

The following mockups are designs I have created to show the user flow within Yahoo Chat. Yahoo Chat will have a bot installed within it to access financial information from Yahoo Finance.

Development — Building a Yahoo Bot

Now for the fun part. Let’s build a bot to demonstrate the above functionality. Keep in mind the actual development for this feature would be extensive and take longer than a day to complete. For this specific feature, I will build the Yahoo Bot within a third party tool called API.ai.

Limitations

Yahoo does not have a bot development in place, so bot will be built within Slack.
This feature is a MVP to showcase what can be done with bots

Pictures

Basically, the bot pulls information from Yahoo Finance depending on if I ask it for Google news or Yahoo news.

Timeline & Release Planning

Phase 1: Validation

Identify the users who use multiple Yahoo Services on both mobile platforms.
Observe those users actions, and decide which commands will be used in the Messenger App.
Collect metrics from app engagement — check daily usage, number of bots activated, usage of bots.

Phase 2: Stepped Phases

In order to make bots a reality, experiment with a few notable apps in the Yahoo Ecosystem: Mail, Finance, Fantasy Sports.
For every Yahoo App in Yahoo Ecosystem, create a list of commands so that when users are conversing they have the ability to access other apps.
Create an in-app tutorial to teach users the simplicity of bots.
Create a dashboard in the back-end to track which apps are used the most in the app ecosystem.
Adjust the process based on metrics — A/B Tests, mobile usage, ratings and reviews.

Phase 3: Release Phase

Engage Top Users of Messenger — make them feel part of the product’s success
Blog Post — “Introducing Yahoo Bots for Messenger”, post on ProductHunt, Techcrunch, Inc, Recode
Yahoo User Email List — Send a message to each user
App Store Description — Show the new features, provide an in-app tutorial to explain bots to users.

Phase 4: Roll-out and A/B Testing

Onboard existing super users(top 30%) of Yahoo Messenger
Test/Improve the Chat UI where bots live

TODO: User testing with mockups to gauge feedback.

Conclusion

A Bot system for Yahoo Messenger would increase user engagement and increase a user’s time spent in the entire Yahoo Ecosystem. This will indirectly cause a subtle increase in advertising revenue as more users will use Yahoo Products.

Tools used in this Spec

Sketch — Design the screenshots

Scrumblr — Brainstorm sessions on the web

App Annie — Analyze the competitors and understand company data points

Crunchbase — Analyze the competitors

API.ai — Create bots for different applications

Slack — Running the sample Yahoo Bot

Special Thanks

Jason L. — Thanks for helping edit this draft.

Tristan H. — Thanks for helping me understand the PM culture at Yahoo.

Elizabeth I. — Thanks for editing this draft.

**I don’t work for or represent Yahoo. I’m just a product guy who loves to help companies make better products. I’m currently a PM at WeBeam, started Open Product Management on Github, and developed 4 iOS Apps.