Microsoft to expand Bot network directory, and more on their big bot plans

VentureBeat: So it’s a mistake in social software that you don’t want to repeat in bots?

Cheng: I don’t know if it was a mistake but that’s just how it played out, and I think we weren’t as intentional about making things interoperate.

Things will be different just because systems are different, but you know there are way more chat apps than there are web browsers or mobile platforms. So should you be writing a bot for Kik or Telegram or Slack or Facebook or Skype or Skype for Business or web chat or your mobile app? There’s so many channels.

You want the innovation to be in the bot you’re creating, not in figuring out how to make it work across all these different systems. So my dream would be that we could work with a lot of the other people and say ‘Let’s standardize the way we do cards or the way we’re understanding buttons or the way we’re thinking about authentication mechanisms or identification’, just so people don’t have to worry so much about that.”