ChatBottle is Launching the 1st ChatBottle Awards
Published in
6 min readJan 10, 2017
1st ChatBottle Awards is opened now. 37 chatbots were selected for travel, productivity, social, entertainment, e-commerce and news categories. Vote for the best chatbots of the year by the link: https://chatbottle.co/1st-chatbottle-awards-2017.
The ChatBottle Awards Idea
The first “the Year of the Bot” is over. You’ve probably noticed that there are more than 900 chatbots built for Facebook Messenger, Slack, Skype, Kik, Telegram and other platforms.
Right in the middle of December 2016 we came up with an idea of the 1st ChatBottle Awards. But after pitching the idea to our friends we decided to postpone the launch. Thanks Stefan Kojouharov and Fabricio Teixeira for the advice. It was Christmas time and at that moment many people already left their offices and started celebrating the holidays.
How the bots were selected
We decided to ask bot experts and influencers for the candidates. We received 80+ bots for the following categories:
- travel
- productivity
- social
- entertainment
- e-commerce
- news
Here is the list of people who kindly provided us the best chatbots made in 2016. The order is random. The comments provided by the bot celebrities are preserved (if any).
- Spencer Yang (https://keyreply.com)
— Jessie’s Humani Story — rich story dialogue, like a non playing character in a RPG by PullString
— Whitehouse bot on Messenger — the power of connecting people to government services
— Burberry Bot on Messenger — rich experience, maze, almost like a game
— Growthbot on Messenger — easter eggs, business education
— Wolfram on Telegram / Siri — powers knowledge
— Google Assistant — “Take a selfie” actually works - Peter M. Buch (http://www.swell.wtf)
— Travel: Hipmunk
— Productivity: Pepper.ai
— Social: Poncho by Greg Leuch and Kuan Huang (not too Social, but worth the nomination)
— Entertainment: icon8
— e-commerce: Epytom
— news: theScore - YuHsuan Chao (http://www.botimize.io/)
— travelling: trabble (FB), BusUncle (FB)
— Productivity: ROCCO (slack)
— Social: NearGroup (FB)
— E-commerce: BlingChat (FB)
— News: CNN (FB) - Andrei Sabanskiy (https://botmakers.net/)
— 1–800-Flowers bot for Messenger — one of the best available e-commerce bots
— news: NewsBytes — focused mostly on Indian local news but really great UX, by NewsBytes App
— entertainment: Trivia Blast
— productivity: Yala bot for Slack by Gary Levitt
— Skyscanner and Mica the Hipster Cat by Barbara Ondrisek — travel
— social: Foxsy by Jin (Hitoshi) Tanaka and Sensay - Stefan Kojouharov (https://chatbotslife.com/)
— For entertainment: — Swelly by Peter Buchroithner
— Productivity: — Poncho and Trim
— E-commerce — none yet but about to play with Burberry
— Travel — Altera by Sergei Burkov
— News — NYT Politics Bot (was live during election)
— Social — NearGroup - Joe Toscano (https://www.rga.com/)
— News: Quartz for iPhone, Purple, HBR within Slack
— Travel: Pana, The Hipmunk
— Social: GoVoteBot, UNICEF’s U-Report
— Productivity: Uber
— Entertainment: COD Lt. Reyes
— e-commerce: H&M on Kik - Pratik Jain (https://morph.ai)
— News — m.me/cnn, m.me/Chatbotsfeed, m.me/mancity
— Entertainment — m.me/pokemonGoBot, m.me/textandchill
— E-com — m.me/epytom, m.me/tommyhilfiger
Here are the bots top on my list that I use, it does contain some of our own. I couldn’t collect suggestions for other categories, though. - Jakob Reiter (http://theventury.com)
— travel: airfy.com and Austrian Airlines Bot (disclaimer: my company build the bot — had to do it ;D)
— productivity: Statsbot
— social: Duolingo-bots
— entertainment: Swelly
— e-commerce: eBay ShopBot and H&M Kik Bot
— news: Wall Street Journal and CNN - Jin Hitoshi Tanaka (http://www.tastexpresso.com)
— My vote is Poncho The Weather Cat. There are three reasons. Firstly, Poncho is leading service in this industry. Secondly, it has a good notification system or personalization. Lastly, Poncho figures out why users need to use this service instead of native app and web service. It provides a good heads-up notification to users. I think the rest of service are not succeeded so far in terms of user’s retention and engagement.
— Travel is Hipmunk, They have a good UI and UX.
— Productivity is GrowthBot. That brings a good way and more productivity for the team on Slack. It’s useful for startup.
— Entertainment, Swelly or Icon8. Swelly is kinda eye-opener to provide a third opinion in order to make a decision easier. Also, it is very unique approach for Chatbot too. - Ekim Nazim Kaya (http://www.botego.com)
— Travel: https://www.facebook.com/WiFiManager/
— Productivity: http://www.askmyunclesam.com/
— News: https://getnewsbot.com/
— Social: https://storebot.me/bot/matchmaker_bot
— E-commerce: (You might exclude this if it’s not appropriate because this is our product that we spent 2 years on, and Shopify official blog says ‘it’s a must have for every ecommerce company’)
http://www.livechat24-7.com
— Nothing for entertainment, sorry for that. - Emanuele Capparelli (http://www.botcompany.it)
— Travel: https://www.messenger.com/t/Musement
— Productivity: https://www.messenger.com/t/zoomdotai/ by Matt Burns
— Social: https://www.messenger.com/t/swell.bot/
— Entertainment: https://www.messenger.com/t/streaktriviabot/
— E-commerce: https://www.messenger.com/t/chatshopper/ by Antonia Ermacora and Matthias Nannt
— News: https://www.messenger.com/t/outbrainchatbot/ - Ricardo Blumer Grobel (http://www.botsbrasil.com.br)
— travel : Kayak
— Entertainment: Zak Superplay
— News: Fox News
— Productivity: Growthbot
— social: Swelly
— ecommerce: BLANK, i didn’t see good bots in that area. - David Pichsenmeister (https://orat.io)
— travel: Foursquare inline bot on Telegram (telegram.me/foursquare)
— productivity: StatsBot (https://statsbot.co/)
— social: swelly (m.me/swelly.bot)
— entertainment: icon8 (icon-ai.com) on Messenger or Telegram
— e-commerce: chatShopper (m.me/chatshopper)
— news: TechCrunch (m.me/TechCrunch) - Matt Burns (http://www.zoom.ai)
— travel — hipmunk
— productivity — zoom.ai
— social — swelly
— entertainment — streak trivia
— e-commerce — eva
— news — quartz - Thomas Schulz (http://www.botscamp.co/)
— GuestBot
— Swelly
— fireflies.ai
— bots4health - Sandeep Chivukula (https://www.getbotmetrics.com/)
— travel — Hipmunk, Airfi
— productivity — Nestor, Pepper.ai, remindersyellow, Oscar
— entertainment — Dogbot
— e-commerce — Beatybot by Sephora - Greg Leuch (http://poncho.is)
— Productivity: I (and our whole team) have been a fan of PlusPlus++(Slack).
— Travel: Mica the hipster cat bot (Messenger). Very useful for finding coffee shops and restaurants when on the go. Marsbot (SMS/iOS) is a runner-up to this.
— Social: I don’t have any that I truly enjoy, but the best so far has probably been And Chill (Messenger) by Jake Cohn for the top Netflix recommendations.
— Entertainment: I loved the BFF Trump bot, built by Dexter for SS+K.
— ecommerce: Kip. They’ve been the only one I’ve throughly enjoyed.
— News: I’m all about the Quartz. I mostly enjoy it for the notifs-layer, but love diving in when a headline catches my interest.
Interesting facts
- 80+ chatbots mentioned for Messenger, Kik, Telegram, Slack and other platforms;
- 8 people recommended more than 1 bot for a single category;
- the most mentioned bots were: Swelly (8x), Poncho(3x), chatshopper (2x), Growthbot (2x), Hipmunk (5x), icon8 (3x), Statsbot (2x), H&M for Kik (2x), Burberry (2x)
- 4 people had troubles recommending entertainment bots;
- English is not a native language for one of the often mentioned bots (chatshopper);
- Half of the bots support more than one platform
- 6 people mentioned their own bots or the bots they are affiliated to. @Peter Buchroithner (Swelly) and Greg Leuch (Poncho) don’t 👍.
It’s time to vote
Okay, here is the link: https://chatbottle.co/awards/2017
Feel free to tweet and share the 1st ChatBottle Awards link with your friends, mom and neighbors.
The 1st ChatBottle Awards announcement was originally published on blog.botmakers.net.
Oleksandr Gamaniuk is CEO and Founder at botmakers.net, a chatbot marketplace focused on ManyChat and Chatfuel bot templates. Oleksandr is also created of JoPilot, a job search copilot.
