At the Facebook’s Developer conference F8, Mark Zuckerberg announced that chat bots would be coming to Facebook Messenger. This just increased the volume of chatter and excitement around innovation around bots.
For those of you not familiar, a chat bot is like texting or messaging with someone. But, you’re not messaging with someone. You’re messaging with an app.
The problem is most of the applications that I’ve seen to date have been REALLY lame. On Facebook, I can ask the WSJ for Apple’s stock price or get news alerts. I can ask for the weather from a cat. Meh.
Slack is another platform that’s super popular and has been a hub of bot innovation. The landscape of anything break through is pretty similar to Facebook. Meh.
So, will there be a breakthrough killer bot app? Will there be an app that will take bots mainstream? Or will bots live in and die in SF/SV?
Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp's blog 