In case you are following the latest tech trends, one that emerged recently is that of Chat bots. That is, software that can chat and deliver information autonomously via chat interfaces like Facebook Messenger or Telegram.

For instance, there is a Weather Bot for Telegram. You just need to send a location (city/country) to it and it will instantly reply with the 3-day forecast for that location.

The trend is growing quite fast, and there are even companies specialized in bot development popping up.

One segment that is starting to use bots heavily is media and online publications. For instance. CNN has a chat bot that will send you news or digests daily. Other sites and blogs like TechCrunch, the Wall Street Journal and so one are also starting to use bots to deliver content to and interact with users.

Upon playing (better say chatting) a bit with the TechCrunch bot, though, I discovered that it was made using a free platform called Chat Fuel. The platform allows you to create a chat bot for your website or business without any coding. They claim you can do that in 7 minutes. I suspect it’s going to take a bit longer, but it’s an awesome and useful idea anyway.

So making a chat bot for your site is easy. Now the question becomes: should you do one?

I am not so sure at this point, unless you have a very large website or publication. If you don’t, chances are that very few people will end up using your bot, and you will just have wasted time.

That being said, if I were you I would keep an eye on this trend. That are many people predicting that chat bots will substitute many kinds of mobile apps. For instance, it makes no sense to have to download a new app every time you go to a new airport to get information about flights. If instead you could simply message a bot to get information from all of them it would be much easier!

Here’s a quote from an interesting article on VentureBeat titled How chatbots and A.I. will change the future:

Getting things done when you are out and about will become seamless. No more waiting in lines. Just send your bot a message and order. When your item is ready, the bot will alert you, and you can simply pick it up.

You might end up chatting with a bot sooner than you think!

Original post: Does Your Blog Already Have A Chat Bot?