Conversational commerce is suddenly the hottest topic in tech. It combines popular messaging apps with emerging AI to make for a sexy topic that everyone is eating up. But despite the hype cycle, we believe it has real legs for local commerce.
For those unfamiliar, conversational commerce brings messaging apps from social use, to a means to converse and transact with businesses. Chatbots take it further with AI-fueled dialogues (think: Siri) to automate customer service.
Amplifying the discussion this week was Facebook’s bot developer tools for Messenger, announced at F8. That follows similar moves by Microsoft and Kik over the past few weeks, and we expect lots more bot action in the coming weeks.
For your Friday enjoyment, below is the F8 clip where Mark Zuckerberg discusses his vision for chat bots and conversational commerce. He gives some good local examples. The video is teed up at the right spot…just hit play
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Related: We’ll take this discussion to the stage next month at BIA/Kelsey ENGAGE with a day-2 panel featuring Kik, Pingup and a growing list. Use code ENGAGEMB for a discount.
https://youtu.be/STm_Lu1X3HY?t=11m25s
