Bots are taking over the world. That sounds like the theme of a sci-fi flick but that’s the reality of the world today. Companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft are pouring their energies into developing chat bots that can interact intelligently with people because people spend much more time on messaging apps than on websites or social networks.
Find out why…
According to Business Insider’s messaging app report, the largest services have hundreds of millions of monthly active users (MAU). Falling data prices, cheaper devices, and improved features are helping propel their growth. Popular Asian messaging apps like WeChat, KakaoTalk, and LINE have taken the lead in finding innovative ways to keep users engaged.
Newly released evidence by a Forrester Research study shows that people spend 85% of their time on just 5 apps. Those five apps will vary from person to person; for some, it will include social media and gaming, while for others it may mean instant messaging.
What this means is that even if they download your app they may not engage with it, if it is not in their top 5. The single most useful reason to have a chat bot on the platforms where your customers are as well on instead!
Instead of going on a ‘favourited’ site to buy a pair of shoes, you could simply communicate with a chat bot on Twitter that would help you find the perfect pair for you. The interactions would be quite like speaking with a store attendant and it would save you the stress of having to leave Twitter to search a website. The best part about this is that chat bots are free and as better and better algorithms are written and as more powerful processors are made available, the interactions will become more lifelike.
Learningonline.xyz and Eton Institute have seen this trend and teamed up with Microsoft to create the Language Learning Bot that means you can learn a language from the same communication tool you probably use the most to connect with people around the world – Skype! Bots can engage in question and answer sessions to help with rote memorization, and then engage in simple dialogues that take the memorised material and turn them into conversational pieces to help with fluid language learning. The latter possibility is very crucial because it’s one of the downfalls of language learning.
For example, when one tries to learn French outside France without constantly having conversation with native speakers in real life situations, the language is never fully learned. Outside of classroom settings it can be quite difficult finding someone to converse with to practice your pronunciation and fluency. The Language learning Bot, delivering lessons over Skype with a new ‘bot’ feature, aims to fill this gap and things can only get more exciting as Microsoft and Eton Institute continue to improve the capabilities of the bot.
Media companies, and marketers are still investing more time and resources into social networks like Facebook and Twitter than they are into messaging services.
That will change as messaging companies build out their services and ‘bots’ bring our services together in one place.
Get ready for your bot – learn a language through video and microlearning with a choice of 160+ languages.
Ginika
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