
How Kik Predicted the Rise of Chat Bots - wallflower
https://backchannel.com/how-kik-predicted-the-rise-of-chat-bots-2eaf9027b86e
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veb
Huh? People have been working on chat bots since forever.

I mean, especially on IRC, with Eggdrop. My favourite was always:
[https://github.com/jamesoff/bmotion](https://github.com/jamesoff/bmotion)

Example:
[https://github.com/jamesoff/bmotion/wiki/Examples](https://github.com/jamesoff/bmotion/wiki/Examples)

~~~
treve
ELIZA was around in 1964:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA)

~~~
j45
Cool read, thanks for sharing!

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dredmorbius
M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead

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palakchokshi
I'm sorry but Kik didn't predict the Rise of Chat Bots. Kik basically looked
at WeChat and said we should do that. Same as Facebook and the others. WeChat
showed that micro-apps inside a chat interface worked for their target market.
The key is to understand the needs of WeChat's target market and figure out
the overlap with the US market then figure out the unique needs of the US
market.

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j45
All of them probably looked at IRC bots.

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dcwca
As a lesson in how not to do it.

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j45
Everything is crap 5-10 years after it's written.

The leap forward wasn't the tcl code quality, but an order of magnitude
forward in what bots allowed to be possible in providing security to irc
channels along with a host of other solutions simply was unparalleled.

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igorgue
Twitter invented mentions, even tho IRC had them way before.

Kik invented Chat bots, even tho IRC had them way before.

Your next startup invented xyz, even tho IRC had them way before.

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chocolatebunny
Well everything this labeled "social media" is just a clone of either
newsgroups or irc or both.

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dalke
Whoo-hoo! I get to be "that" person. Take a look at the education computer
system PLATO.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)#Innova...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_\(computer_system\)#Innovation)
:

> Pad (general-purpose computer message board), 1973, the first such, and a
> few months later, system-defined Notesfiles, precursors to Unix Newsgroups,
> Digital DECnotes and Lotus Notes.

> Talkomatic (text-based) (6-room, 5-persons-per-room real-time chat room),
> 1973, precursor to Instant Messaging Conferences.

Plus, emoticons in the 1970s! [http://www.platohistory.org/blog/2012/09/plato-
emoticons-rev...](http://www.platohistory.org/blog/2012/09/plato-emoticons-
revisited.html)

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zaidf
There is a lot of _hype_ about chat bots but let's not confuse that for usage.
Tell me what chat bot you use on a regular basis?

To me, chat bots seem like a step backward, at least for the use cases I've
seen them applied for.

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AJ007
I think there is a two part thing going on here, besides a lot of PR hype
cycle echo chamber.

a) The anticipation that AI will be good enough to understand an instruction
set through sentences. In some cases it already is.

b) Text isn't so much the interface but audio-voice interfaces are. The stuff
from A) combined with voice recognition.

It is somewhat weird because Siri has been around for a while, Google voice
recognition/search has been around for a while and been really good. Maybe the
big aha moment was Amazon letting users actually input commands like ordering
a product rather than getting dumped on search results for the web page to do
it.

If the whole chat-voice-smart assistant thing is a winner takes all market,
that winner probably replaces Google in mass market use cases for search. That
is a really big deal and companies are salivating over the possibility.

Perhaps another factor is because other companies don't really have a
knowledge graph like Google's, they are letting third party developers plug
in.

So, the big tech companies have their products commercially available already
and are being used by lots of people, the small tech companies have stuff they
have been working on and are joining the hype cycle in hopes of being
acquired.

So in summary the larger story is "chat bot" really = AI voice assistant which
is plausibly the next Google eclipsing platform, and about as massive of a
deal for the tech industry as the smart phone and self driving car.

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pcmaffey
This is the theory. And I don't think you're wrong at all in analyzing the
motives/endgame here.

But there are reasons texting arose as a preferred alternative to voice. Audio
interfaces will win in cars, possibly homes and other well-defined private
spaces. But text is ubiquitous and visual interfaces are so much faster, as
audio is limited by its linear dimension.

No doubt, voice control will be a huge market, but I think the idea is more
alluring than the reality will prove.

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dkn
Same Kik here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11340510)

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assoteric
after all that drama I guess they didn't want to npm package kik/kik-starter
anymore...

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kikinteractive/kik](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@kikinteractive/kik)

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igorgue
Kik is also the #1 on spam bots, seriously their amount of spam (scammer
accounts) is worrying.

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mschuster91
yep and this is why I killed it off. Srsly the amount of junk I recieved is
ridiculous.

I mean, if it were actual "junk" (you get what I mean), I mighta be happy, but
it's all "come to my private webcam site" kinda crap.

This is, maybe, why Whatsapp is so hugely successful: the cost of SMS/phone
verification is too high for scammers.

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palakchokshi
The problem with Kik's version of bots is that they will face the same
problems as apps do right now. Discoverability of bots, 100 bots that do the
same small thing vying for user's time, bot overload, etc.

What Kik seems to have is essentially a web browser with a chat interface
overlay where instead of typing in a URL you "mention" (summon?) a bot and the
bot then gives you a "button" (link?) you can tap to open the web content.

One thing they do get right though is the idea that the bot should disappear
once done and not bother you, however keeping marketers from not abusing that
is going to require them to restrict that via code (e.g. session timeout)

Ideally I would want a single conversational chat bot that I can summon, ask
to perform a task (regardless of what service is chosen to perform the task),
select from the options provided, have the task performed. The bot can select
an app to perform the task (deep link) or if no app can do it then some bot
(if a bot exists to do that task) or a web link.

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niftich
Interesting article. Basically, Kik started off as just-another-mobile-
messenger, and they had to compete with Facebook, Google, SMS, iMessage,
WhatsApp, Blackberry, Skype, Snapchat, etc., so they figured bots would
eventually set them apart.

Since all links inside their app open in their embedded browser, they can
track click-throughs like Google, Facebook, and presumably the quirky 'bot
interface' will be popular with people who are already used to chatting. No
wonder everyone else is trying to maintain feature parity with them.

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walkingolof
Chat bots, the CLI going mainstream ... (?)

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pizza
Yo.

