BotCube

I have a lot of buzzwords for you today, guys. Most of you probably knows the bot called Sensay - a bot that connects users with other people for anonymous advice. They decided to monetize their bot by creating their own cryptocurrency based on Ethereum - SENSE. Today, advice givers can receive tips in the form of tokens, and roughly 20 million coins have been awarded already. Once SENSE becomes available, “coinholders will be immediately rewarded on a 1:1 basis”. The currency may be made available to bots, apps, and services beyond Sensay in the future. SENSE is the second cryptocurrency launched for the bot ecosystem in recent months. This spring, chat app Kik also announced plans to create its own cryptocurrency, called Kin. I love this trend when you can transform your virtual coins/tokens inside the app/bot into a real cryptocurrency. I think it will help a lot of products to solve the monetization issues. https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/12/sensay-advice-bot-to-launch-ethereum-based-cryptocurrency/

What is the best platform to build a Facebook Messenger chatbot without coding? That’s quite hard to say. But there are definitely 2 leaders in this field - ManyChat and ChatFuel. But what’s the difference? Pros and cons? Unique features? Article below evaluates both platforms with a list of 14 criteria. Super comprehensive, right? The main purpose of the article is to help you pick the platform that works best for your business. It covers everything from pricing and plans to AI/NLP support and payments integration. Guys, it’s a golden gem that will save you days of work. Enjoy! https://www.thinktuitive.com/comparison-manychat-vs-chatfuel/

Hey folks, I think I need your help right now. I curate one of the biggest resources containing everything about bots - https://github.com/BotCube/awesome-bots. But the main part of it was created about 3-4 months ago and I see that many of you have created a plenty of useful services, tools, frameworks, articles helping to build great bots during this time. So I need your help to add the content I've missed. Please share any piece of value related to bots you've created and I'll add them to the list. It can be anything from guide to bot building platform. You can contact me here - @maximabramchuk. Let's go!

Have you ever bought sex online? A new bot built by Microsoft employees in their spare time is designed to discourage you from doing that. The chatbot lurks behind fake online ads for sex posted by nonprofits working to combat human trafficking and responds to text messages sent to the number listed. It initially pretends to be the person in the ad and can converse about its purported age, body, fetish services, and pricing. If a would-be buyer signals an intent to purchase sex, the bot pivots sharply into a stern message. Quite an interesting use case for a chatbot, right? To be honest, every day while researching the internet for a new content for the channel I come across plenty of different ways to use chatbots. What’s the most interesting you’ve seen so far? Let’s discuss in our chat - @botcubechat. https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-chatbot-trolls-shoppers-for-online-sex/

How do you imagine a typical voice assistant user? A 20-something-year-old millennial spending the whole day with his phone or laptop? 👨🏻‍💻 That’s not true. According to the research, the average user of personal assistant apps is a 52-year-old woman. Interesting, right? More of that, voice-activated apps become integral to assisted living communities. For example, a community of San Diego retirees is using the personal-assistant gadget to listen to audiobooks, keep current with family news, and control home appliances. The majority of the people in this Alexa focus group are in their late 80s, some use walkers to get around, and some have visual and/or hearing impairments. They can make calls via voice commands using Amazon’s Alexa-to-Alexa calling service, send and receive text messages and much more. In a few weeks, this organization will connect the residents’ Echoes to smart plugs and thermostats so they can adjust their lights and room temperature via Alexa. If all goes well after that two-month test, the company will explore possible deployments of Alexa devices to its other communities. https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/05/why-the-typical-voicebot-user-is-a-52-year-old-woman/ More info about retirees using Alexa: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608047/the-octogenarians-who-love-amazons-alexa/

Hey bot makers, We are in Riga for 3 days, would love to meet up to discuss bots! Message me here: @flreln

Hey Telegram community, Today’s #botoftheweek shows the perfect example of how to create a captivating product on Messenger. Forksy is a bot that keeps a food diary, tracks calories, and provides basic nutritional tips based on your eating habits. “But there are dozens of similar products for nutrition, why the hell did you choose this bot?” They are not good enough. Why? Read the full review here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IgETqbjM39bSxqdGkqYxVBU-UzFAb2n8-EX_ARwE-qU/edit

Shopify is entering chatbots and voice assistants game. It wants for their 500,000 merchants to be able to run their business almost entirely through the use of bots or voice apps like Alexa. The ability to run a business through a conversational interface at Shopify began with Kit, a text-based marketing virtual assistant Shopify acquired in April 2016 a day after the launch of the Facebook Messenger platform. “We have a vision of really simplifying the way a merchant starts their day like getting up, having a cup of coffee and just being able to ask: What is the context I need to know to start my day off well, and how many orders do I need to fulfill right now? What are those products, and how many sales did I have the day before?”. The company will also consider the launch of services on other text or voice bot platforms such as a Google Assistant action or Cortana skill. https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/04/shopifys-plan-to-let-400000-merchants-run-their-business-via-alexa-and-bots/

I used to hate Skype even before it was acquired by Microsoft. It was buggy, ugly, old-fashioned and completely unreliable. We've moved our internal team communication to Slack about 2 years ago. But I see a lot of positive changes there for both common users and chatbot developers. Microfost is really pushing Skype in chatbot direction with new releases of Microsoft Bot Framework, web chat plugin, releasing a separate tab for chat extensions and plenty of other stuff. And right now they're adding a new feature there - payments. The feature is pretty similar to what Facebook Messenger released a couple of months ago together with PayPal - you can easily split any bill across a number of people via chat extension. Skype’s choice to partner with PayPal was a smart one, as it’s an established name many people have already signed up for. Considering many business sessions happen via Skype too – like tutoring or singing lessons – it could make it easier to collect payments from clients. I hope Microsoft will continue pushing Skype in this direction so I can start using it for some of the business communications again 🙏🏻 https://thenextweb.com/apps/2017/08/02/skype-now-lets-send-money-via-paypal/

When we were launching our first chatbot project I was building the whole system from scratch manually. I was coding about 12 hours a day. Our only competitors were doing the very same thing using Chatfuel. "They won't be able to scale. If they need to add some custom functionality - they're dead" - I thought. That project hasn't worked out. Our competitor's product is still alive and acquiring top clients. You don't always need a custom solution, you can start from using bot building platforms to build the prototype or MVP. Here is the list of about 50 bot building platforms with the detailed comparison. Here you go: https://goo.gl/Z4SXuo

Smart speakers market is growing rapidly. Google and Amazon have already sold millions of their smart speakers in the last year. Xiaomi, Alibaba, Microsoft, Apple and many others have already launched their own smart speakers recently. Facebook doesn't want to miss the opportunity. Their research lab is reportedly working on a device about the size of a laptop for video calls, similar to Amazon Echo Show, and a separate smart speaker. The devices could be available as soon as spring 2018. Something big and completely new is coming. Amazon Echo has only 15000 skills, Google Home has something around 400 and Microsoft Cortana has only about 70 apps available. Can you imagine that App Store, for example, has only 70 apps available? That's crazy. Don't miss the train, it's going super fast. https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/01/facebook-is-reportedly-developing-a-video-chat-device-and-smart-speaker/

Oh, sh*t. That’s the Hook Model! Have you ever spotted a popular framework in action? It’s a strange yet reassuring feeling! Realising someone has implemented a strategy, textbook perfect. Nir Eyal would be proud. Well that happened to me yesterday when I was reviewing Champ for our #botoftheweek series. Champ has stormed to success in the last couple of months, processing over 25 million messages on Messenger, here's my review as to why. Full review here, made by Matthew, one of our BDDM community admins: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E1FPlwEF4ZBFFe8NonVbiPPySM0rZne4E4fsggeV1pg/edit?usp=sharing