Post-Alpha Feature: How would a MyHub chatbot work?

The Messenger chatbot on my example Hub is a pale imitation of what Beta users should get.

Today's pilot

I piloted a Hub-driven chatbot - a 'curatorbot' - in 2016, and wrote three articles for ChatBot Magazine as a result. From the first:

What’s a CuratorBot? The clue is in the name: it’s for people or organizations who bring value by helping others find useful stuff.
- How and Why to Add a CuratorBot to Your Content Strategy

Essentially, people feed the bot keywords, and it returns relevant stuff I Think, Like and Do.

I created the bot using Chatfuel in 2016, when my Hub was built using Diigo, IFTTT and Tumblr. When I launched MyHub.ai I simply tweaked the chatbot so that it sourced its content from myhub.ai/@mathewlowry, but I didn't improve it any further.

Tomorrow's MyHub chatbots

If Beta users like the idea, however, MyHub chatbots will be much more powerful:

• AI integration: users will be able to enter sentences, phrases or multiple keywords - the bot will translate it into a query and return all relevant results
• faceted search, just like the MyHub website's "Refine" feature, which helps visitors narrow their search - something I wrote about in my second post

instead of presenting users with reading relevant to one keyword, such a bot would walk users through refining their search, quickly drilling through mountains of content to find the diamond they need using no more than their thumb as they wait for a bus.
- Boosting CuratorBots with Faceted Search

With the days of chatbot mania fading from memory, however, whether we build the chatbot feature during or after the Beta phase - or perhaps never - will depend at least in part on MyHub.ai's Beta users.

For now, My Hub.ai is in Alpha phase, so sign up to get yourname.myhub.ai.

More:

• FAQ: What's with this "alpha phase"? What comes next?
• FAQ: What will the Beta version feature? And beyond that?
• MyHub.ai Home
• my Example Hub
• All MyHub FAQs