now anyone can write their own Messenger bot with the help of the Conversagent BuddyScript SDK.

SMS is available… whenever the phone is within range of a tower. GPRS data service is sketchy at best, and timing scheduled updates via IM over GPRS is iffy, especially when dealing with phone calls that knock you off the data service. SMS messages, on the other hand, come in while you’re on the phone, and even get queued while your phone is off (at the movies) and/or out of range. Turn on your phone or come back into range and you get the message. Most carriers queue messages up to 72 hours.

The biggest problem for content providers is cost and complexity when dealing with carriers. However, there is another way to deal out content to mobile subscribers without having to mess with carries… txtGroups, the company I’m working on launching in the US in just a few months will allow content to be published to mobile subscribers, without needing to mess with carriers. We’re adamant about putting together an API that is accessible to as many developers as possible – https://api.txtgroups.com – We’ve put together an XML, plain-text, and JSON format API, and are currently working on SOAP and REST API interfaces as well.

The service is not launched yet, however I felt it was ok to jump the gun a little and post this info. While it is a blatant plug for txtGroups, it’s still info that is relevant to this article.

give it anywhere a demo where anywhere can see it in action?

I’m glad that you’ve found bots running on IM to be a natural and wonderful interface.

Conversagent (fka Activebuddy) pioneered IM bots pulling content from various web services and presenting information in a conversational thread back in early 2000. We’ve got a number of bots running that do many of the things you describe.
Of particular interest is SmarterChild. This agent has talked to over 20 million unique IDs (IM screen names or mobile numbers) since 2000 and is currently responding to 10′s of millions user queries per day.
You can try it as:
- “smarterchild” on AIM
- “smarterchild@hotmail.com” on MSN
- wap.smarterchild.com/xhtml/ for mobile phones with a browser but no IM client.

One of the Smarterchild deployments does include Google AdSense ads, with individual user activity driving the ads that each user sees. This scheme of running AdSense in IM conversations was developed in early 2004, but it took quite a bit longer to finally do so in a sanctioned way with all partners involved.

We have also developed for Microsoft an agent named encarta@conversagent.com on MSN that accesses the Encarta Encyclopedia.

As for the challenge of opening a new web browser to activate links (in a mobile environment), we don’t regard this as a challenge, but rather as an opportunity for thinking beyond current UI conventions. There is no reason that activating a link cannot mean simply returning a response in the “conversation” that accesses the data underlying the “link”. So a click doesn’t have to mean spawning a new browser, but instead means instructing the bot to present the content related to the “link”. The bot system (and properly implemented web services behind it) will do the work of accessing the content behind the link and returning it as a response in the message thread.

We’ve got lots more cooking. Watch this space.

Stephen Klein

OFF THE RECORD:
Hello John. The same Stephen Klein of iballs, Dawntreader Ventures, etc.
Good to see you back in the fresh news business.