This article was 1st published on our sister Site, Digital World Native.
Not wishing to be left out of the spate of bot & AI-related announcements from major tech players, chat app company Kik just announced the launch of a new bot store. While Kik already has its own bots available in its text-based chat app, the company has partnered with Vine, H&M, Sephora, Funny or Die & a bunch of others to add engagement & personality to its chats.
Kik’s bots allow users to converse with them over its text chat platform, as well as use them as agents to retrieve info, & have them do fun things like get makeup tips. The model is similar to that of a conventional app store, helping you find the chat bot that best suits you from a variety of third party providers. Kik also wants to kickstart the availability of quality offerings in its store by partnering with developers Sequel, Massively & Imperson.
As we mentioned recently in an earlier DWN post, chatbots are currently all the rage, with Microsoft’s Bot Framework leading the charge by promoting development with its own open source environment, with Cortana & Skype as the main targets. Other providers have been getting massively into the bot craze: Google, Facebook, Amazon… With the wide acceptance & use of chat platforms by millions of users, this is making chatting the most popular online app, & is used both for chatting with friends & for interfacing with ever more sophisticated AI-inspired smartbots that can do things like ordering food & consumer goods & do chat automation.
Recent advancements in AI tech, especially related to natural language processing, has made it possible for the new wave of mobile & Web chatbots that understand complex social situations, to move into chat platforms in a big way. This has helped fueled the trend of users who are abandoning traditional communications options like phone calls or email & relying more & more on chatting apps, greatly enhancing these already rich chat experiences.
Companies like those partnering with Kik in the bot store, are finding an affordable & powerful opportunity to engage potential & current customers in their marketing efforts with these bots that will undoubtedly steer people to their products & services. Another reason for the take-up of this type platform by marketers is to achieve better marketing automation, allowing marketers to do large scale personalized communication.
Kik Interactive is based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, & the Kik app is free & can be downloaded for Android devices here & for the Apple iOS platform here. The bot store can be accessed from inside the app.
Image Credit: Kik
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