[palakchokshi]

Let's take an example of a general personal assistant chat bot experience and compare it to a brand chat bot experience. Remember in both cases we are typing our conversation not speaking it

General/PA chat bot Me: What movies are playing tonight?

BOT: HBO has XYZ from 8PM to 10PM, UVW from 10PM to midnight. Starz has ABC from 7:30PM to 10:00PM, DEF from 10PM to 12:30AM

Me: No I mean what movies are playing in theaters tonight?

BOT: AMC at Location 1 near you is playing blah blah blah, Century Cinemas at Location 2 near you is playing blah blah blah, (lists off 3 other theaters with movie times)

Me: I want 2 tickets to blah blah at AMC tonight

BOT: Ticket price at AMC.com is $22. Reply with AMC to buy them. Ticket price at Fandango.com is $23. Reply with FAN to buy them.

ME: AMC

BOT: Here are your tickets. http://amc.com/tickets/23BDK532KDJF93434

BRAND CHAT BOT EXPERIENCE ME: What movies are playing tonight?

AMC BOT: At an AMC near you, ABC is playing at 7:30pm, DEF is playing at 7:00PM, GHI is playing at 8:30PM, ABC iMax is playing at 9:00PM

(I switch to the Century Cinemas bot)

ME: What movies are playing tonight?

CENTURY BOT: At a Century near you, XYZ is playing at 8:00PM, ABC is playing at 8:30PM, GHI is playing at 8:30PM

(I switch to another theater's chat bot)

ME: What movies are playing tonight?

BOT: Movie 1 is playing at 9PM, Movie 2 at 9:30PM, Movie 3 at 9:30PM .....

So in the end a general chat bot will be more user friendly than going to each individual brand's chat bot. That basically means developer's not associated with a brand will be building aggregate bots for specific verticals because building a general BOT that addresses any query is impractical for any single developer. Then what happens when multiple developers all target the same vertical? The BOT marketplace becomes littered with duplicates and becomes like the Android marketplace. So basically BOTS = APPS but with a chat interface and some rudimentary NLP rather than a UI.

[davemel37]

fair point, not withstanding what these bots can know/learn about you and your preferences.

More importantly though, the general bot would have to connect to all those APIs...however, if each theater has their own bot, than perhaps the general bot can query those bots without integrating with them. So, I guess the question becomes, are bots useful to other bots..if so, than everyone will need their own bot to be found by general bots.

[palakchokshi]

to have a bot be available to other bots is the same as having an API and letting a general purpose bot connect to the API. The only advantage a BOT would then have over the API would be NLP and some personalization data and device sensor data. No matter how I look at it general purpose bots prevail but they require connecting to all those APIs like you mention. Personally I don't think BOTs in chat is the future of chat.

[davemel37]

what do you think the future of chat is?

I am not an engineer, so I don't know enough about integrating with APIs, but I would think a bot could use natural language to talk to another bot without integrating or even know about the other bot prior to the user needing it. Essentially, the user is talking to one bot that is finding and passing along the message to the other bot and vice versa.

Bot A > finds bot b > adds bot b as friend > asks bot b for a list of a commands > forwards bot b commands to user or interprets the users natural language in a way that maps to bot b's common commands> returns any results or errors and shares whatever relevant data, acting as middle man between user and bot b.

To me this sound simpler to create than a bot that needs to map to every APIs functions, etc... Even with a middleware tool...It still needs to hook into it. However, if those APIs have conversational interfaces, than users can interact with everything magically.

Maybe my lack of tech knowledge has me imagining a utopia that isn't technically feasible...but to me this sounds like a solution that can replace 30% or more of my web and app interactions completely and simplify another 20%.

[palakchokshi]

Bot A finds bot B via (marketplace search, keyword search, published functionality search or manual settings?) This is very difficult to do accurately especially when there are 100 other bots that provide same functionality as Bot B.

Let's assume user selected Bot B to be added as friend for Bot A.

Bot A asks Bot B for a list of commands > This is essentially making an API call or Bot A sending a chat message to Bot B "Please send me all your public commands" (which is a simplified NLP API call)

However Bot B might not want to expose all its NLP command keywords (that is after all their Intellectual property) or it is too complex to send all commands because of myriad of ways an NLP query can be structured.

I like your idea of a conversational API. Maybe there is a better way to do that and definitely something worth thinking about.

Regarding the future of chat, the problem is these chat apps are trying to become task help apps. What is the purpose of chat/group chat? Communication, discussion, planning, sharing between "friends/contacts" (not between me and a bot) Communication with a friend or contact does not require a bot. Discussion with a friend, group of friends or contacts does not require a bot Sharing content with a friend, group of friends or contacts does not require a bot.

The only thing that requires a bot is planning an outing, trip, dinner, etc. with a friend or group of friends or contacts. For that I think it is better to have a general purpose bot. Here's how I envision that use case with a bot called JEEVES.

ME: Hey have you guys watched Zootopia yet?

FRIEND 1: Nah I want to but didn't have the time. I'm free tonight if you want to go.

FRIEND 2: Yeah count me in too

ME: JEEVES find us a movie theater close to us that's playing Zootopia tonight.

JEEVES: There are 3 theaters close to all of you that's playing Zootopia tonight. Theater 1 at (map)Location 1 is playing it at 9PM, Theater 2 at (map)Location 2 is playing it at 8:30PM, Theater 3 at (map)Location 3 is playing it at 10:PM

ME: you guys wanna get dinner before the movie?

FRIEND 1: Sure

FRIEND 2: Nah having dinner with GF's parents today.

ME: JEEVES find us some chinese restaurants near Theater 3.

so on and so on.

JEEVES can then book tickets, make a reservation, put the event on calendars, send restaurant location to just the 2 people who agreed to have dinner, etc.