The Austrian Chatbot Ecosystem
Hi guys!
My name is Dr. Barbara Ondrisek and today I'm going to give a
talk about the Austrian Chatbot Ecosystem.
Im the founder and CEO of the Chatbots Agency, an agency for
digital communications design that develops conversational
solutions aka chatbots.
Background
Ive been working as a freelancer and consultant for more than 15
years for different mostly big companies. I have a strong Backend
developer background and in the last couple of years Ive been
working as a Senior Backend developer with a disposedness to full
stack and mobile. I also love to play around with other
technologies - lately for the innovative netbanking system George
for the Erste Group, Austrias largest bank. However, I was working
as a freelancer and consulant for several years, but I was always
lacking this one super idea to found my own startup.And then
something happened...
Chatbots
What are chatbots?A chatbot is a service that enables you to
interact with a service or company through a conversational
interface. Its a computer program in a computer program that can
have an (intelligent) conversation with one or more human users.
Chatbots are also referred to as virtual assistants or
conversational commerce.Microsoft announced end of March at their
BUILD conference the bot-support on Skype. Two weeks later Facebook
announced at their F8 conference that they finally opened their
messenger API for bots and the first bots started to be approved by
Facebook. Only a few days later Hi Poncho, a Facebook Messenger
weather bot, raised 2M of funding.
So after Facebook announced to open up their Messenger platform
to bots I was eager to try their API and I created one of the very
first chatbots on Facebook and definitely Austrias first Facebook
Messenger and Skype chat bot: Mica, the Hipster Cat Bot.
Mica started as a spin-off of LIKE A HIPSTER, an app that shows
you trendy places in the vicinity.Mica, the Hipster Cat Bot is a
cat and a chatbot, that helps you discover the best places near
by.
Meanwhile I developed Mica, the Hipster Cat Bot for Facebook
Messenger, Skype, Telegram, WeChat, Line and KIK (the later three
are beta).
Messaging Apps
(c) Benjamin Keyser
Why are we doing this? One minute of three minutes spent online
is spent on mobile devices, but we see, that the usage of the
number of apps is dropping: 80% of mobile time is spent in only
three different apps but this does not concern messenger apps! The
current app trend is to go away from social media to
messengers.
This graph is already outdated, its from 2015...
Usage numbers
(c) Tosh
Facebook Messenger: 1 Billon monthly active users (MAU)
WhatsApp: 1 Billion MAU
QQ (ICQ China): 900 MAU
WeChat (WhatsApp in China): over 700 MAU
Skype: 300 MAU
Line App (Asien) : 220 MAU
Telegram: 100 MAU
Kik (USA): 300 Millionen registrierte User (gesamt)
Slack: 3 Millionen tglich aktive User
And others with several mio users such as iMessage (250 mio
users), Viber (784 million registered user), HipChat, Kakao, BBM,
VKontakte etc.
Platforms per region
(c) david pichsenmeister
Different messenger platforms are used in different countries.
Kik for instance is super popular in the US (especially for
teenages), Viber is very popular in Slavik countries, Central
Eastern Europe and South East Asia, Line is popular in Asian
countries. So if you decide to launch a bot in a certain region
take this regional differences in account.
The advantage of chatbots is that you attract the users where
they usually are: In messenger apps. Not download or install of
apps is needed, you can present your company on a channel where all
these people spend their time!
However, messengers are widely used, but what about Austria?
Commercial Chatbots from Austria
Mica
