Messenger-based services, bots, agents, AI. It looks like app fatigue has led us to look to these for the next green field, something new for VCs to plough their money into, something that feels different.
From time to time technology comes full circle and here we are again using something like IRC, in the UX slam dunk that is Slack, and setting loose upon it an army of bots… again, like we do/did with IRC. Of course both of these things are significantly evolved from their forebears; the semi-public messaging platform (albeit, now less suited for massive audiences) but also the bots, who once were relegated to performing simple tasks like running file shares or hosting quizzes for a handful of geeks, are now powered by significant “AI” resource and connected to millions of people and myriad services from Uber to Dominos.