5 Chatbots We'll All Be Building in 2017

I've been thinking about bots lately (who hasn't?) and it occurred to me that the landscape is fairly confusing. Sure Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Kik have launched bot platforms, but a platform doesn't answer the questions: What type of bot is good for my business? And do I even need to build a bot at all? Luckily, with some help from a presentation by Josh Jacobs, the President of Kik,--one of the largest bot-platforms on the market--I was able to codify the types of bots that you'll be seeing a lot more of in 2017. Think of them as a non-fleshy friend that you can text back-and-forth with. Here's an example: rather than going to your favorite flight-aggregator app to find a sweet airline deal, savvy texters are asking travel bots to find them the cheapest flights from the comfort of their favorite messaging platform.