Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened?
Oh, how the headlines blared: “…the 2016 bot paradigm shift is going to be far more disruptive and interesting than the last decade’s move from Web to mobile apps.” Chatbots were The Next Big Thing. Our hopes were sky high. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, the industry was ripe for a new era of innovation: it was time to start socializing with machines. And why wouldn’t they be? All the road signs pointed towards insane success. Messaging was huge! Conversational marketing was a sizzling new buzzword! WeChat! China! Plus, it was becoming clear that supply massively exceeded demand when it came to those pesky, hard-to-build apps. In fact, the only significant question around chatbots was who would monopolize the field, not whether chatbots would take off in the first place : “Will a single platform emerge to dominate the chatbot and personal assistant ecosystem?” One year on, we have an answer to that question. No. Because t...