If you’ve been hearing a lot about bots lately, there’s good reason.

A surge in popularity has some calling them “the new apps”.

And, just like apps, they’ve now got their own store: Botlist.

Rise of the Bots

In the wake of Microsoft’s Tay chatbot debacle, chances are that even your mum has now heard of these mysterious things called bots.

Controversial or not, bots are becoming a major component of our increasingly connected lives.

And the bot business is booming.

What is a bot?

A bot is any kind of software that allows you to automate processes that you’d normally have to do yourself – things like ordering a pizza or recording an appointment in your calendar. They streamline processes and improve efficiency, often within apps you already use.

Perhaps the most pervasive bots at the moments – despite the Tay furore – are chatbots. They might live on messaging apps or within social media, most often as the creation of companies using them to handle customer service queries.

Bot till you drop

With a growing variety of bots now existing for apps and platforms like Slack, Facebook Messenger, Kik, email and SMS, some enterprising folks have created an ‘app store for bots’: Botlist [https://botlist.co].

It looks and feels much like the app stores you’re used to, albeit without the instant-download-and-install simplicity.   

Want to add Dropbox to Messenger? There’s a bot for that. Want a bot that can use AI to schedule meeting for you? There’s a bot for that too.

To take a look for yourself, visit botlist.co.