Kik Interactive, creator of the chat network known as Kik, has opened its platform to third-party developers with the launch of the Bot Shop.
“Bots provide a low-friction way of delivering fun, engaging, and useful services through chat,” according to a statement emailed to MAW on Thursday. “Now anyone can build a bot for Kik, which has more than 275 million registered users. Approximately 40 percent of U.S teens use the app.”
Kik’s Bot Shop currently has three categories: entertainment, lifestyle, and games. There are now 16 bots, including Funny Or Die, H&M, J-14, Riffsy, Sephora, Vine, and The Weather Channel.
“Kik has also named three launch partners – impression, Massively, and Sequel – that will be tasked with helping developers and companies build bots. Kik is inviting all developers to start making bots via its bot API, available at dev.kik.com,” notes the Kik crew.
Ted Livingston, the founder and CEO of Kik, says he and his colleagues want users to have more fun and engaging experiences in Kik without having to leave the app.”
“We’ve been innovating in chat in the last few years and have found that the best results come from low-friction experiences that don’t hurt the simplicity of chat. Bots deliver that,” Livingston adds.
Kik’s Bot Shop couldn’t come at a better time. Trends suggest the market is ripe for chat bots.
“When we built the Funny Or Die bot on Kik in 2014, we were able to focus on building a great experience for our fans without worrying about user acquisition, and within the first three months, we were chatting with 1.5 million Kik users,” said Patrick Starzan, head of marketing at Funny Or Die. “We’re looking forward to continuing to push the boundaries of chat as it becomes central to mobile computing.”
To coincide with the Bot Shop launch, Kik will release three new chat bots features: web bubbles (“wubbles”) for sharing rich media content in conversation threads; suggested responses to help expedite text input; and a mention feature that allows bots to participate in conversation threads involving multiple parties, including groups, according to a news release from the company.
To see what this bots business is all about, click here.