pwb [12.08.05 03:44 PM]

Why aren't more people making IM bots? This would seem to be a fantastic way to get stock quotes, traffic reports, weather, etc. ActiveBuddy seemed to be on to something but then went corporate.

  pt [12.08.05 06:21 PM]

pwb - i thought the same thing, it's a wonderful way to deliver information. i met with the activebuddy people maybe 4-5 years ago, used the sdk, i even pitched im-bots to about a dozen clients when i was at an ad agency...despite all the metrics and evidence no one seemed to believe how much people use instant messaging, so it never really got bought as an idea. but, now with blogs and rss, and tons of ways to make IM bots (for free) i think it might change.

  pwb [12.09.05 05:24 PM]

Creating bots the merely respond to commands should be trivially easy since they don't have to "do presence". I'm just amazed that IM remains human-to-human.

And going a step further, services could use IM to deliver notificaitons. For example, PayPal could deliver a payment notificaiton via IM if it sensed you were online.