You may have seen this week’s headline about Facebook Messenger bots now having the ability to serve as standalone storefronts. (In fact, there are more than 30K bots right now in Facebook Messenger alone — albeit mostly non-brand related.) With marketers now asking, “is a bot right for this brand experience?” we’d like to share an overview of the burgeoning bot space.

For starters, the term ‘bot’ is oversimplified.

In its most basic form, a ‘bot’ is an interface design that uses conversation — instead of UI — to connect people to what they want or need.

In a nutshell, a bot creates a human user experience employing dialogues as the next-generation interface. And by integrating information from our social media profiles, browsing and shopping history, geolocation, available smartphone sensors and even our behavioral biometrics, the experience can feel that much more personal.

At the core of a bot is the use of conversation — to search, to transact, to understand.

Instead of clicking around apps and websites or typing keywords into search boxes, you get to what you need through conversational threads. “Interactions must be quick. If a conversation with a bot takes more than a handful of messages, it almost certainly would have been quicker and more efficient using a touch-based Web or app interface. The fewer the number of back-and-forth exchanges, the better suited a task is to a bot interface.” Recode, April 2016.

Bots are signaling a behavioral shift.

Earlier this year, Facebook’s Sam Lessin concluded that “conversational experiences” represented a fundamental shift that is going to change the types of applications that get developed and the style of service development in the valley, again. “2016 is being declared the year of bots. And it feels like there is a broad shift in the developer ecosystem away from traditional point-and-click apps, towards chat-based user interfaces.”

Bots will eventually deliver app experiences.

There’s been a gradual shift in the way we use apps, wherein we now prefer a single platform to communicate and also share images, videos and other content, over multiple apps. The most recent Forrester report points out that an average smartphone owner spends 88 percent of their app time on just five downloaded apps. We want fewer apps doing more work, accompanied by a few important notifications. Bots will make this possible.

The long term implications of bots will eventually impact how we search, how we discover, and how we interact with brands. “It’s more of a cultural shift,” says Mike Roberts of Kik. “Users are now so used to chatting with their friends via SMS and messengers that they feel comfortable with that same interface delivering an app experience.”

Bots aren’t just a social media thing.

You’re like hearing a lot about social bots because social apps like Facebook Messenger and Kik are investing heavily in their bot API’s. But bots are going to appear everywhere — in apps, in browsers on websites — wherever they make sense.

“[Bots] will be happy to co-exist on people’s smartphones with websites, apps and other things yet to be invented. The mobile world will keep changing, but will always be a mixed affair.” The Economist, January 2016

Bots have a myriad of use cases.

In the near term, bots hold great potential for brands who don’t yet have an app, lack scale of use in their app, or want to capitalize on a new platform behavior (like Facebook Messenger). And bots don’t necessarily need to serve as replacements for websites or apps. They can offer parallel or additive experiences.

As an example, look at 1-800-Flowers. They have a website, an app, and a Facebook Messenger bot. All of them allow people to order flowers. Some people — like frequent buyers — prefer the ease of the mobile app. Others — like impulsive or last-minute buyers — will land on the website after searching, “best places to order same-day flowers” or after opening Facebook only realize that it’s their friend’s birthday.

The types of branded bots currently in play generally fit into the following four categories: utility, commerce, news/information, and entertainment/games. Here are some examples.

Utility:

- Vi, the first Ai personal trainer, has raised over $1.6MM on Kickstarter. It lives in biosensing earphones and coaches you in real time.

- Need local tips on where to eat, shop, etc? Message Kik’s @sensay bot your location and what you’re looking for, and you’ll instantly be matched with a local who can give you tips.

- “Do Not Pay” is the world’s first robot lawyer that has successfully contested over 160,000 parking tickets in New York and Los Angeles.

- Digital teaching assistant, Jill Watson, was created by a College of Computing Professor with the goal of answering 40% of all student questions by end of 2017.

Commerce:

- Taco Bell’s Taco Bot lets you order anything from their menu without leaving Slack.

- Sephora uses a personal assistant bot to interact with customers on Kik and provide them with personalized makeup tips, reviews, and product recommendations.

- The Skype Skyscanner Bot lets you search for individual or group flights, return pricing information and route options.

News/Information:

- @MassBudgetBot tweets when Massachusetts state budget earmarks are approved.

- TechCrunch launched a personalized news bot that allows you to stay on top of topics you care about.

Entertainment:

- The Fify bot on Facebook Messenger is an intelligent fashion discovery bot. Fify will first talk only about Fynd Fashion and eventually do all sorts of things related to fashion — discuss trends, alert you about new arrivals, and even gossip about the latest fad of a movie star.

- The Hello Barbie bot is a companion chatbot built into the Wi-Fi-enabled talking Barbie doll “Hello Barbie.”

Not all bots use artificial intelligence and/or machine learning.

Artificial intelligence refers to any program that performs self-directed human-like reasoning tasks. Artificial intelligence applications can (but don’t need to) implement machine learning as a computational method, and conversely not all machine learning applications would qualify as artificial intelligence.

Clockwise, starting top left: Jill Sherman, SVP, Social Media Strategy (North American Social Capability Lead); Andre Alguero, SVP, Digital Products and Services Technology; Ronald Ng, Chief Creative Officer; and Jonathan Tatlow, SVP, Connections & Brand Experience Planning