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A Chatbot Helped a Vinyl Records Startup Make $1M in 8 Months

49 points by uptown 11y ago

seibelj 11y ago
Bot / human hybrids are so obviously the future, not bots only, as the experience they provide is shit except for specific things which are easier done with menus.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  NLP is improving so that won't always be the case.
  - dexterdog 11y ago
    It is improving but it is still way off in my experience. They said the same thing about voice control and when Apple got behind it I thought it must be solved, but I still hate using it even today.
    - rblatz 11y ago
      I felt the same way until I got an Amazon Echo. I no longer feel like I have to string together a magic set of words in the exact right order. As long as I get all the keywords in there somewhere it figures out what I mean.
- erikpukinskis 11y ago
  They are best for interactions with a time component. A UI doesn't work for things that should happen in the future because you won't be in the app in the future. A chatbot can just chat you. Notifications require an app install and add a lot of engineering complexity.
  - seibelj 11y ago
    Reducing the complexity of app notifications is worth forcing your users to interact with you like a bash terminal? There is a reason we have modern UI widgets, windows, buttons, etc.
    - erikpukinskis 11y ago
      There is no generic answer to your question. That's no how design works. Sometimes the tradeoff is worth it sometimes it's not. It depends on your goal. In an app that is 100% notifications I could imagine it being a quite good tradeoff.
blakes 11y ago
Super interesting idea, I'd even try it if I was currently purchasing records. Had to slow down on that habit. I wonder if they are just using Amazon referrals and what not. It would be super cool if they could actually sell things from say, Discogs.
pimlottc 11y ago
This is what they're calling a chatbat these days? It's just a text interface responding to keywords, with a fall-through to a human rep. I was expecting at least some sort of lightweight AI. Okay, so there's a recommendation engine behind it, but I wouldn't really consider that part of the "chatbot", it could just as easily be hosted on the web.
- visarga 11y ago
  There are many kinds of chatbots, one distinction between them being if they are generative (A.I.) or template-based. Another distinction is if they are narrowly limited into a domain (like the one selling music in this article) or general (like Microsoft's Tay). The current situation is that it's hard to make generative chatbots create long replies that are also coherent. These A.I. based bots are only good for simple discussions, yet.

49 points by uptown 11y ago

Bot / human hybrids are so obviously the future, not bots only, as the experience they provide is shit except for specific things which are easier done with menus.

Houshalter 11y ago
NLP is improving so that won't always be the case.
- dexterdog 11y ago
  It is improving but it is still way off in my experience. They said the same thing about voice control and when Apple got behind it I thought it must be solved, but I still hate using it even today.
  - rblatz 11y ago
    I felt the same way until I got an Amazon Echo. I no longer feel like I have to string together a magic set of words in the exact right order. As long as I get all the keywords in there somewhere it figures out what I mean.
erikpukinskis 11y ago
They are best for interactions with a time component. A UI doesn't work for things that should happen in the future because you won't be in the app in the future. A chatbot can just chat you. Notifications require an app install and add a lot of engineering complexity.
- seibelj 11y ago
  Reducing the complexity of app notifications is worth forcing your users to interact with you like a bash terminal? There is a reason we have modern UI widgets, windows, buttons, etc.
  - erikpukinskis 11y ago
    There is no generic answer to your question. That's no how design works. Sometimes the tradeoff is worth it sometimes it's not. It depends on your goal. In an app that is 100% notifications I could imagine it being a quite good tradeoff.

blakes 11y ago

Super interesting idea, I'd even try it if I was currently purchasing records. Had to slow down on that habit. I wonder if they are just using Amazon referrals and what not. It would be super cool if they could actually sell things from say, Discogs.

pimlottc 11y ago

This is what they're calling a chatbat these days? It's just a text interface responding to keywords, with a fall-through to a human rep. I was expecting at least some sort of lightweight AI. Okay, so there's a recommendation engine behind it, but I wouldn't really consider that part of the "chatbot", it could just as easily be hosted on the web.

visarga 11y ago
There are many kinds of chatbots, one distinction between them being if they are generative (A.I.) or template-based. Another distinction is if they are narrowly limited into a domain (like the one selling music in this article) or general (like Microsoft's Tay). The current situation is that it's hard to make generative chatbots create long replies that are also coherent. These A.I. based bots are only good for simple discussions, yet.