9 ms·

The Kik Bot Platform

60 points by kkouddous 10y ago

reustle 10y ago
Just don't open source your bot and put it on NPM :-)
- elsen 10y ago
  I was expecting a left-padding robot as a demo.
  - kmcgaire 10y ago
    leftpad.bot
    - rodion_89 10y ago
      http://kik.me/leftpad.bot http://kik.me/leftpad.bot
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  This is actually what I was thinking of when I read the emails with the prior kik (on npm) developer. An interface for people to write javascript chat bots or integrate it into websites. They'd, of course, want to be able to use their own product (and company) name when releasing this code.
rubiquity 10y ago
If your investor has to pimp your idea for you then that probably means it's a dud. The idea of Brand Bots seems really impersonal. I would want Bots for quickly getting through the things I hate doing (returns, troubleshooting) but not for getting coupons by scanning a "Bot sticker" (fancy QR code?).
- hammock 10y ago
  Coupons are more personal for you than troubleshooting?
  - rubiquity 10y ago
    You might be trying to connect two things that I wasn't. A bot is impersonal no matter what task you're doing so the perceived value of a bot would have to be speed or maybe accuracy of certain details. Speed is something I would want during troubleshooting.
- fredwilson 10y ago
  i pimp everything, so i guess that means everything is a dud. i am an equal opportunity pimper. i plan on pimping again tomorrow on AVC
  - rubiquity 10y ago
    I read your blog a lot. Thanks for writing it. But some of the conclusions you're trying to draw in this post feel forced. The "websites -> apps -> bots" deal especially jumps out to me as odd.
    - panabee 10y ago
      many websites, apps, bots conceptually share the same goal: to let users interact with a database. they represent different ways to read and write company data, and as such have different strengths and weaknesses. websites, for instance, are terrific for discovery/browsing activities while chat bots could be terrific for transactional activities (e.g., amazon, cancel my last order). today, the problem with bots is that natural language AI is extremely difficult, so many criticisms hold true: websites and apps are better than bots for most tasks. today. but that is similar to someone in 1994 saying that online shopping was worse than offline shopping. yes, it was. but technology improved to where online shopping -- for many cases, but not all -- became better than offline shopping. the real question: if you believe AI will evolve to where chatting with a company bot is indistinguishable from chatting with the company's top human employee/representative -- e.g., imagine the equivalent of jeff bezos personally handling your amazon queries and transactions -- would a bot become the more natural interface for many activities?
    - hammock 10y ago
      The "websites -> apps -> bots" deal was actually lifted from a recent Ben Evans (a16z) presentation. http://www.slideshare.net/a16z/mobile-is-eating-the-world-2016/69-69WebSmartphoneappsMessagingMaps_NowSiri_BotsNotificationsLooking_for_a http://www.slideshare.net/a16z/mobile-is-eating-the-world-20...
kkouddous 10y ago
We've been developing a bot with their platform for the last few weeks and it's a well designed API with features that can help sculpt a great bot experience e.g. allowing for controlling the amount of time the bot appears to be typing. Definitely worth a look if you're into bots (and as a team that recently developed an iOS app, boy is it great to be out of under the thumb of Apple's review process and developing on a platform where the UX is the copy).
devit 10y ago
Can anyone explain how a chat-based interface can possibly be generally successful except briefly as a novelty? Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do? In the restaurant use case, for instance, a QR code + text URL that points to a website where you can advertise the restaurant with whatever graphics and UI you want seems far better than some sort of text interface (which also requires them to be Kik users, know they can scan the code, etc.).
- dpflan 10y ago
  Perhaps it is the illusion of communication with a human (if the bots can handle variable expressions for the same concept - e.g. people can say the same thing many different ways) that makes this appealing. I don't have to click, which would mean I construct a concept in mind and I then convert that to the correct expression provided by the service. Integration of simple bot support is a first step as AI/ML + NLP evolves to support greater complexity.
- munificent 10y ago
  > Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do? A well-designed and well-implemented UI is better, yes. But I think where this could be useful is for the many customers who don't have the cash to make a decent app. A stripped down chat interaction could end up more usable than what they'd build from scratch.
  - lfowles 10y ago
    The value is in making a legitimate platform for the lowly CLI app then. I like it :)
- hammock 10y ago
  >Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do? The challenge of syntax discoverability can be mitigated in a text interface with smart autocomplete to guide people towards what they can say. It becomes harder with voice. Also one messaging app, Telegram, allows chatbots to present customized keyboards that change based on the context of the conversation, e.g. thumbs up/down or star rating system.
KayL 10y ago
Can I use the word "Kik" in my bots that connected to Kik?
rocky1138 10y ago
I have no idea why people use these programs over straight up SMS.
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  kik in particular? Or chat programs in general? 1: International SMS isn't free (US-centric viewpoint, what's the situation in other countries?). 2: No character limit. Which is bypassed with MMS. Which introduces its own limitations when sharing media (reduced resolution/quality of video and images, for example). 3: Potentially, depending on the particular client, not tied to your phone number in a way that others can access (that is, as a fellow user you don't know that my number is 555-555-5555). This can be gotten around by using something like Google Voice, which then loses the MMS feature (have they added that in yet?). 4+: Probably other reasons that I can't think of at the moment. --------------------------------------- It just occurred to me that by "people" you meant the companies that kik is apparently courting with this. They'd want to use this because their users use kik. It's one more interface for customers to interact with them, on a moderately popular chat network.
  - caffinatedmonk 10y ago
    Kik also downscales images last time I checked. It is still better than MMS though.
  - rocky1138 10y ago
    Chat programs in general, and the people that use them. I've never had a problem with SMS length as my phone splits messages into separate messages automatically. SMS is free as hell in Canada and USA. I didn't realize the situation wasn't the same worldwide. Why is it not?
    - Jtsummers 10y ago
      I believe it's free within most countries. What's not free is across most nation boundaries (particularly non-adjacent nations). It's mostly because you're dealing with the interaction of several different networks. Also, if a company has a lock on its customers, it'll charge them what it wants to charge them. Other problems with SMS: Message order isn't guaranteed. Message delivery isn't guaranteed. You receive no notice what state a message is in (in transit, delivered, viewed). It's an unreliable medium tied directly to your phone (short using a service like Google Voice) and only to your phone (ok, less true these days, at least in the Apple ecosystem, where I can see and send SMS messages through my Mac if my phone is on the same wifi network). Still requires the presence of my phone in that last example.
RGamma 10y ago
BTW: KiK (different capitalization, full name: KiK Textilien und Non-Food GmbH) is also a German fashion seller: http://www.kik.de/ http://www.kik.de/
- fooey 10y ago
  I'm conflicted. I think I want kik.de to sue these guys for trademark =\
  - rcfox 10y ago
    They're in very different product domains, so trademark doesn't apply. See: http://nissan.com/ http://nissan.com/
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    Poe's law at work. If you're serious, you don't. They operate in different domains and it doesn't make sense for kid.de to sue kik the chat company. Trademarks do make sense (most of the time), and the application that the chat company tried to apply it to with the NPM packages was proper. Reviewing the emails (posted by the offended programmer) they even came off as pretty generous. They wanted a name, a name they'd had for a while, for a project they were releasing to the NPM platform. As others said, part of the problem is NPMs naming scheme. It doesn't allow (by convention or implementation) for sensible naming like with libraries in other languages (com.kik.bot.authentication, com.kik.bot.blah). If you're generally opposed to trademark then I suppose you would want them to sue just to make a mess of things and eventually cause countries to get rid of it. But that's exactly why trademark law covers this issue already. Apple (computers) and Apple (music) were in different domains, consequently no problem. Once Apple (computers) got into music (via iTunes), Apple (music) had a case against them. It's also a bit more nuanced, down to locality as well.
palakchokshi 10y ago
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 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 10y ago
  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.
ISV_Damocles 10y ago
Would like to note that kik is the company that threatened to go after an open source developer and get accounts terminated because he wrote a library with the same name. https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the-breaking-of-the-internet-3d4d2a83aa4d#.antgfyl9b https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the-breakin...
jgalt212 10y ago
The comments on the AVC blog are full of an unbelievable amount of ass kissing. That being said, the content is solid and I read pretty much whatever Fred writes even though my focus is not on B2C.
vmorgulis 10y ago
Is it the same Kik as in the leftpad npm incident? http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm
- geoelectric 10y ago
  Pretty sure it is, yes.

60 points by kkouddous 10y ago

reustle 10y ago

Just don't open source your bot and put it on NPM :-)

elsen 10y ago
I was expecting a left-padding robot as a demo.
- kmcgaire 10y ago
  leftpad.bot
  - rodion_89 10y ago
    http://kik.me/leftpad.bot http://kik.me/leftpad.bot
Jtsummers 10y ago
This is actually what I was thinking of when I read the emails with the prior kik (on npm) developer. An interface for people to write javascript chat bots or integrate it into websites. They'd, of course, want to be able to use their own product (and company) name when releasing this code.

rubiquity 10y ago

If your investor has to pimp your idea for you then that probably means it's a dud. The idea of Brand Bots seems really impersonal. I would want Bots for quickly getting through the things I hate doing (returns, troubleshooting) but not for getting coupons by scanning a "Bot sticker" (fancy QR code?).

hammock 10y ago
Coupons are more personal for you than troubleshooting?
- rubiquity 10y ago
  You might be trying to connect two things that I wasn't. A bot is impersonal no matter what task you're doing so the perceived value of a bot would have to be speed or maybe accuracy of certain details. Speed is something I would want during troubleshooting.
fredwilson 10y ago
i pimp everything, so i guess that means everything is a dud. i am an equal opportunity pimper. i plan on pimping again tomorrow on AVC
- rubiquity 10y ago
  I read your blog a lot. Thanks for writing it. But some of the conclusions you're trying to draw in this post feel forced. The "websites -> apps -> bots" deal especially jumps out to me as odd.
  - panabee 10y ago
    many websites, apps, bots conceptually share the same goal: to let users interact with a database. they represent different ways to read and write company data, and as such have different strengths and weaknesses. websites, for instance, are terrific for discovery/browsing activities while chat bots could be terrific for transactional activities (e.g., amazon, cancel my last order). today, the problem with bots is that natural language AI is extremely difficult, so many criticisms hold true: websites and apps are better than bots for most tasks. today. but that is similar to someone in 1994 saying that online shopping was worse than offline shopping. yes, it was. but technology improved to where online shopping -- for many cases, but not all -- became better than offline shopping. the real question: if you believe AI will evolve to where chatting with a company bot is indistinguishable from chatting with the company's top human employee/representative -- e.g., imagine the equivalent of jeff bezos personally handling your amazon queries and transactions -- would a bot become the more natural interface for many activities?
  - hammock 10y ago
    The "websites -> apps -> bots" deal was actually lifted from a recent Ben Evans (a16z) presentation. http://www.slideshare.net/a16z/mobile-is-eating-the-world-2016/69-69WebSmartphoneappsMessagingMaps_NowSiri_BotsNotificationsLooking_for_a http://www.slideshare.net/a16z/mobile-is-eating-the-world-20...

kkouddous 10y ago

We've been developing a bot with their platform for the last few weeks and it's a well designed API with features that can help sculpt a great bot experience e.g. allowing for controlling the amount of time the bot appears to be typing. Definitely worth a look if you're into bots (and as a team that recently developed an iOS app, boy is it great to be out of under the thumb of Apple's review process and developing on a platform where the UX is the copy).

devit 10y ago

Can anyone explain how a chat-based interface can possibly be generally successful except briefly as a novelty? Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do? In the restaurant use case, for instance, a QR code + text URL that points to a website where you can advertise the restaurant with whatever graphics and UI you want seems far better than some sort of text interface (which also requires them to be Kik users, know they can scan the code, etc.).

dpflan 10y ago
Perhaps it is the illusion of communication with a human (if the bots can handle variable expressions for the same concept - e.g. people can say the same thing many different ways) that makes this appealing. I don't have to click, which would mean I construct a concept in mind and I then convert that to the correct expression provided by the service. Integration of simple bot support is a first step as AI/ML + NLP evolves to support greater complexity.
munificent 10y ago
> Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do? A well-designed and well-implemented UI is better, yes. But I think where this could be useful is for the many customers who don't have the cash to make a decent app. A stripped down chat interaction could end up more usable than what they'd build from scratch.
- lfowles 10y ago
  The value is in making a legitimate platform for the lowly CLI app then. I like it :)
hammock 10y ago
>Surely an UI with controls specific to the task at hand is much better than having the user guess what the bot responds to and what it can do? The challenge of syntax discoverability can be mitigated in a text interface with smart autocomplete to guide people towards what they can say. It becomes harder with voice. Also one messaging app, Telegram, allows chatbots to present customized keyboards that change based on the context of the conversation, e.g. thumbs up/down or star rating system.

KayL 10y ago

Can I use the word "Kik" in my bots that connected to Kik?

rocky1138 10y ago

I have no idea why people use these programs over straight up SMS.

Jtsummers 10y ago
kik in particular? Or chat programs in general? 1: International SMS isn't free (US-centric viewpoint, what's the situation in other countries?). 2: No character limit. Which is bypassed with MMS. Which introduces its own limitations when sharing media (reduced resolution/quality of video and images, for example). 3: Potentially, depending on the particular client, not tied to your phone number in a way that others can access (that is, as a fellow user you don't know that my number is 555-555-5555). This can be gotten around by using something like Google Voice, which then loses the MMS feature (have they added that in yet?). 4+: Probably other reasons that I can't think of at the moment. --------------------------------------- It just occurred to me that by "people" you meant the companies that kik is apparently courting with this. They'd want to use this because their users use kik. It's one more interface for customers to interact with them, on a moderately popular chat network.
- caffinatedmonk 10y ago
  Kik also downscales images last time I checked. It is still better than MMS though.
- rocky1138 10y ago
  Chat programs in general, and the people that use them. I've never had a problem with SMS length as my phone splits messages into separate messages automatically. SMS is free as hell in Canada and USA. I didn't realize the situation wasn't the same worldwide. Why is it not?
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    I believe it's free within most countries. What's not free is across most nation boundaries (particularly non-adjacent nations). It's mostly because you're dealing with the interaction of several different networks. Also, if a company has a lock on its customers, it'll charge them what it wants to charge them. Other problems with SMS: Message order isn't guaranteed. Message delivery isn't guaranteed. You receive no notice what state a message is in (in transit, delivered, viewed). It's an unreliable medium tied directly to your phone (short using a service like Google Voice) and only to your phone (ok, less true these days, at least in the Apple ecosystem, where I can see and send SMS messages through my Mac if my phone is on the same wifi network). Still requires the presence of my phone in that last example.

RGamma 10y ago

BTW: KiK (different capitalization, full name: KiK Textilien und Non-Food GmbH) is also a German fashion seller: http://www.kik.de/ http://www.kik.de/

fooey 10y ago
I'm conflicted. I think I want kik.de to sue these guys for trademark =\
- rcfox 10y ago
  They're in very different product domains, so trademark doesn't apply. See: http://nissan.com/ http://nissan.com/
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  Poe's law at work. If you're serious, you don't. They operate in different domains and it doesn't make sense for kid.de to sue kik the chat company. Trademarks do make sense (most of the time), and the application that the chat company tried to apply it to with the NPM packages was proper. Reviewing the emails (posted by the offended programmer) they even came off as pretty generous. They wanted a name, a name they'd had for a while, for a project they were releasing to the NPM platform. As others said, part of the problem is NPMs naming scheme. It doesn't allow (by convention or implementation) for sensible naming like with libraries in other languages (com.kik.bot.authentication, com.kik.bot.blah). If you're generally opposed to trademark then I suppose you would want them to sue just to make a mess of things and eventually cause countries to get rid of it. But that's exactly why trademark law covers this issue already. Apple (computers) and Apple (music) were in different domains, consequently no problem. Once Apple (computers) got into music (via iTunes), Apple (music) had a case against them. It's also a bit more nuanced, down to locality as well.

palakchokshi 10y ago

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 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 10y ago
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.

ISV_Damocles 10y ago

Would like to note that kik is the company that threatened to go after an open source developer and get accounts terminated because he wrote a library with the same name. https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the-breaking-of-the-internet-3d4d2a83aa4d#.antgfyl9b https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-discussion-about-the-breakin...

jgalt212 10y ago

The comments on the AVC blog are full of an unbelievable amount of ass kissing. That being said, the content is solid and I read pretty much whatever Fred writes even though my focus is not on B2C.

vmorgulis 10y ago

Is it the same Kik as in the leftpad npm incident? http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm

geoelectric 10y ago
Pretty sure it is, yes.