[mercer]

Chat API's usually offer inline keyboards and regular custom keyboards. At least in Telegram you can even replace inline keyboards based on interactions, meaning you could trivially construct a pretty elaborate UI specifically for stuff like ordering pizza's.

And even better, the pizza joint can update the conversation with status updates, special deals if you so desire, and you automatically have a history of previous orders that you could simply repeat at a later time.

A chat bot strikes me as the perfect UI for these types of things, and at this point, with Messenger, Messages, and Telegram supporting all this, a large number of your users already have 'your' app installed!

[jkaptur]

Right, I think that WeChat basically exemplifies this too. But at that point, is the user really interacting with a "bot", or is the chat platform just an app delivery mechanism like an OS or a web browser?

I'm honestly asking, and I think the pizza example is really illuminating - how DO people order somewhat-customizable food via these platforms?

[mercer]

> Right, I think that WeChat basically exemplifies this too. But at that point, is the user really interacting with a "bot", or is the chat platform just an app delivery mechanism like an OS or a web browser?

I'm assuming the latter. I mostly avoided WeChat as an example because i haven't used it myself. But from what I understand WeChat goes much further than just chat interfaces, which kind of is out of the scope of what I'm really interested in for now (but still curious about).

EDIT: I'd add that many of the advantages that come with using chat-apps as a platform are still there even in apps that don't offer all of what WeChat does.