Bots are Better Without Conversation

It has been four months since we launched the Kik Bot Shop and Facebook opened its bot platform for Messenger. It's been about the same time since the hype around bots was at its peak, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicting that bots would be as big as apps. Since then, the hype has cooled, with some people now wondering why bots suck and politely asking not to be exposed to them. At Kik, we remain bullish on bots, but we've noticed the same thing everyone else has: so far, there has been no killer bot. This is not yet the world that the early hype promised.