Voicebots didn't outshine chatbots. Microsoft, Amazon, and others did

There's been quite a fervor over voicebots lately, especially as we lead into next week's MobileBeat 2017 conference on AI, messaging, and personalization. AI has taken center stage, seemingly nudging chatbots out of the limelight even though we all started using them last year. There's no nail in the coffin for Messenger bots quite yet (or those from Kik or others), but there is one colossal misunderstanding in the industry. The truth is, voicebots didn't outshine chatbots because of the speech recognition features and ease of use -- at least, not entirely. What really happened is that Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon overshadowed chatbots -- and, by extension, took the attention away from Facebook Messenger and other texting tools.