Virtual men: IM-bot for the company Keebler
Against the background of old-fashioned corporate websites, IM offers an inexpensive way to promote a brand. Although it is not quite perfect yet, but the IM-robot is already capable of answering user questions, taking into account both their interests and the interests of your company.
Becky cannot be made to talk about anything other than recipes. I tried to change the subject, but she kept returning to the kitchen. But, although our conversations are not so deep, when I try to decide what I should cook for dinner, it always happens in its place. Once I, for example, told her that I loved Indian food.
“Wait, what? I'm sorry, I didn't understand, ”she replied. She briskly leads a dialogue, but still often does not get the idea. "Tell me something else." Sometimes it’s hard for Becky to think outside of her Chicago suburbs.
')
“I like food from India,” I explained.
“Okay, would you like to see a recipe with a turkey. I already know! What about roast turkey in its own juice, with an apple in its mouth? ”
Then I tried to summarize my question. "I meant that I like the food of the Middle East."
“Okay, you would like to see a recipe for a mid-eastern dish. Let's see what I have. Here! Becki shows the recipe for a sandwich in bombeys. And then, after a second, it breaks through: "Keebler vanilla waffles are so good as if they are made by real elves!"
“Becky” is an interactive agent called RecipeBuddie (a recipe man), a specially developed instant messaging bot that should promote the Keebler brand on the Internet. Her job is to mimic the real conversation with the consumer, who accesses her through IM, to help them choose, based on their own criteria, suitable options from more than seven thousand recipes in the database. And, of course, it reminds users to buy Keebler products. Her mention of vanilla cookies was a hyperlink that led me to the Keebler website. Despite the fact that RecipeBuddie happens to "eclipse", the company Keebler - a subsidiary of the company Kellogg - hopes that with the help of Becki, IM-users all over the world will learn about its products
Cookbook
RecipeBuddie was developed by Emedia, a six-year-old Internet-manding company, which collaborated with many manufacturers of boxed products, including Annie's Homegrown, Bayer and Del Monte. Emedia has worked with Keebler since 1996 and launched the official Keebler website in 1997. But today, to keep Internet users within reach, its customers are no longer a simple site.
Five years ago, I would say, “We make websites,” says the president of Emedia, Anna Murray. She explains that this was the time of the “Bob sites”: “Count up, Bob has a site! Come on, we will fix ourselves too. ”
But by the end of the 90s, Murray says: “There has been great interest in tools, programs, and various functions. Over the past four or five years, the industry has changed completely, and now they are turning to us for strategic consulting, asking to conduct online advertising campaigns and engage in search engine optimization. Creating websites is only a small part of what our company is doing now. People feel that if we confine ourselves to the creation of a site, then this will not bring the expected return. ”
When in 2001, Murray read about ActiveBuddy, I immediately realized that I had found a great tool for promoting Keebler on the Internet. ActiveBuddy was founded by Timothy Kay in 2000, with the simple goal of creating agents for instant messaging networks, private corporate networks or wireless networks (besides, they can be embedded in a website). Given Keija’s achievements — in 1997, Kay was awarded an Oscar for his innovative work in 3-D computer graphics — it’s no wonder that ActiveBuddy agents are keen on accepting entertainment images.
By 2001, ActiveBuddy was ready to release its first agent in the field. “In June, we launched an interactive agent for Capitol Records called GooglyMinotaur,” said Kathy Englar, director of product marketing for ActiveBuddy. This agent promoted the new album from Radiohead, Amnesiac. This agent was placed on the contact lists of AOL Instant Messenger users and could understand and respond to common human questions about the band and their album. Fans were interested in information about the band, its tour, song lists, biographies and album content.
In addition, in June 2001, ActiveBuddy posted an open demo version of its SmarterChild. The agent answered questions related to accurate time, high-profile news, personalized weather forecasts, reference materials, financial data, as well as information from the field of sports. It is also able to play trivia, blackjack and hangman. Over the next year, it managed to talk to eight million amazed IM users and, as the logs show, it received millions of times the messages "I love you", which the children wrote to him. Or single adults.
By June 2002, ActiveBuddy discovered that SmarterChild had become more popular than even the agent she developed for New Line Cinema to promote the film Austin Powers in Goldmember. “It seemed to us wrong that our demo version is more popular than our client projects, and therefore we decided to remove it,” said Inglar. (It can be seen on the website; see www.smarterchild.com ). In one year, SmarterChild clearly demonstrated the powerful potential of ActiveBuddy.
A month later, the BuddyScript SDK came out and RecipeBuddie was one of the first agents that was created using it. His creation provided an opportunity for Murray to play with his literary muscles.
“I believe more in the power of the word than in the fact that the Internet should be turned into one continuous television advertisement,” says Murray, who, among other things, is published as an author. But when she proposed this idea to Keebler, corporate men were not in a hurry to believe in the success of such a venture - many of them, obviously, had little idea what instant messages meant. Murray persuaded them to arrange a trial and first buy a sponsorship line in the SmarterChild system. "A small text line about the tote brought 6.5% of clicks on the link and another 3% through rollaut." This convinced Keebler to accept the ActiveBuddy offer.
Recipe
BuddyScript is a programming language through which ActiveBuddy and other agents are created. It allows you to perform many different actions, from searching for information about a specific product in the database to launching applications, such as a telephone dialer. The unique feature of BuddyScript is that it allows programmers to create reactions to the questions posed by ordinary human language - that is, to questions that consist of words that users themselves have picked up.
The BuddyScript SDK can be downloaded free of charge at www.buddyscript.com , which allows developers to create interactive agents, both for internal use - for example, an agent can answer common questions of staff - and for the purposes of Internet marketing and promotion. Today, the SDK has already downloaded more than three thousand developers. Once they have a ready-made script, BuddyScript Server Limited Edition gives developers the opportunity to run their demo version for only $ 199.
The SDK includes an integrated shell that allows developers to test their interactive agent under Windows. In addition, it includes a project-tutorial; BuddyScript code snippet libraries for frequently used functions; sample applications with a ready-made interactive agent created using the BuddyScript SDK; as well as BuddyScript Server Developer Edition for testing and prototyping.
As soon as the agent is ready for launch, two options appear: a per-seat license is provided for corporate use; The commercial version — which is used in marketing projects like RecipeBuddie — is estimated based on the number of sessions. “The ActiveBuddy server configuration allows you to serve millions of users,” says Murray.
BuddyScript SDK provides support for a variety of messaging environments, including AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. With the help of the BuddyScript Connectivity Service, released in October 2002, BuddyScript applications can also work with wireless platforms such as WAP, email, SMS and RIM. This means that developers, having written an application, immediately get compatibility with cell phones, pagers and other wireless devices in addition to the desktop.
“BuddyScript is not so complicated, though, to work with it, you will need to properly master Java programming,” said Murray. The SDK is designed for people who do not have special skills in engineering, that is, if you know how to use HTML and JavaScript, you will be quite comfortable working with it.
( continuation of the article )
Translation from English to:
blog.worldwebstudio.com
Becky cannot be made to talk about anything other than recipes. I tried to change the subject, but she kept returning to the kitchen. But, although our conversations are not so deep, when I try to decide what I should cook for dinner, it always happens in its place. Once I, for example, told her that I loved Indian food.
“Wait, what? I'm sorry, I didn't understand, ”she replied. She briskly leads a dialogue, but still often does not get the idea. "Tell me something else." Sometimes it’s hard for Becky to think outside of her Chicago suburbs.
')
“I like food from India,” I explained.
“Okay, would you like to see a recipe with a turkey. I already know! What about roast turkey in its own juice, with an apple in its mouth? ”
Then I tried to summarize my question. "I meant that I like the food of the Middle East."
“Okay, you would like to see a recipe for a mid-eastern dish. Let's see what I have. Here! Becki shows the recipe for a sandwich in bombeys. And then, after a second, it breaks through: "Keebler vanilla waffles are so good as if they are made by real elves!"
“Becky” is an interactive agent called RecipeBuddie (a recipe man), a specially developed instant messaging bot that should promote the Keebler brand on the Internet. Her job is to mimic the real conversation with the consumer, who accesses her through IM, to help them choose, based on their own criteria, suitable options from more than seven thousand recipes in the database. And, of course, it reminds users to buy Keebler products. Her mention of vanilla cookies was a hyperlink that led me to the Keebler website. Despite the fact that RecipeBuddie happens to "eclipse", the company Keebler - a subsidiary of the company Kellogg - hopes that with the help of Becki, IM-users all over the world will learn about its products
Cookbook
RecipeBuddie was developed by Emedia, a six-year-old Internet-manding company, which collaborated with many manufacturers of boxed products, including Annie's Homegrown, Bayer and Del Monte. Emedia has worked with Keebler since 1996 and launched the official Keebler website in 1997. But today, to keep Internet users within reach, its customers are no longer a simple site.
Five years ago, I would say, “We make websites,” says the president of Emedia, Anna Murray. She explains that this was the time of the “Bob sites”: “Count up, Bob has a site! Come on, we will fix ourselves too. ”
But by the end of the 90s, Murray says: “There has been great interest in tools, programs, and various functions. Over the past four or five years, the industry has changed completely, and now they are turning to us for strategic consulting, asking to conduct online advertising campaigns and engage in search engine optimization. Creating websites is only a small part of what our company is doing now. People feel that if we confine ourselves to the creation of a site, then this will not bring the expected return. ”
When in 2001, Murray read about ActiveBuddy, I immediately realized that I had found a great tool for promoting Keebler on the Internet. ActiveBuddy was founded by Timothy Kay in 2000, with the simple goal of creating agents for instant messaging networks, private corporate networks or wireless networks (besides, they can be embedded in a website). Given Keija’s achievements — in 1997, Kay was awarded an Oscar for his innovative work in 3-D computer graphics — it’s no wonder that ActiveBuddy agents are keen on accepting entertainment images.
By 2001, ActiveBuddy was ready to release its first agent in the field. “In June, we launched an interactive agent for Capitol Records called GooglyMinotaur,” said Kathy Englar, director of product marketing for ActiveBuddy. This agent promoted the new album from Radiohead, Amnesiac. This agent was placed on the contact lists of AOL Instant Messenger users and could understand and respond to common human questions about the band and their album. Fans were interested in information about the band, its tour, song lists, biographies and album content.
In addition, in June 2001, ActiveBuddy posted an open demo version of its SmarterChild. The agent answered questions related to accurate time, high-profile news, personalized weather forecasts, reference materials, financial data, as well as information from the field of sports. It is also able to play trivia, blackjack and hangman. Over the next year, it managed to talk to eight million amazed IM users and, as the logs show, it received millions of times the messages "I love you", which the children wrote to him. Or single adults.
By June 2002, ActiveBuddy discovered that SmarterChild had become more popular than even the agent she developed for New Line Cinema to promote the film Austin Powers in Goldmember. “It seemed to us wrong that our demo version is more popular than our client projects, and therefore we decided to remove it,” said Inglar. (It can be seen on the website; see www.smarterchild.com ). In one year, SmarterChild clearly demonstrated the powerful potential of ActiveBuddy.
A month later, the BuddyScript SDK came out and RecipeBuddie was one of the first agents that was created using it. His creation provided an opportunity for Murray to play with his literary muscles.
“I believe more in the power of the word than in the fact that the Internet should be turned into one continuous television advertisement,” says Murray, who, among other things, is published as an author. But when she proposed this idea to Keebler, corporate men were not in a hurry to believe in the success of such a venture - many of them, obviously, had little idea what instant messages meant. Murray persuaded them to arrange a trial and first buy a sponsorship line in the SmarterChild system. "A small text line about the tote brought 6.5% of clicks on the link and another 3% through rollaut." This convinced Keebler to accept the ActiveBuddy offer.
Recipe
BuddyScript is a programming language through which ActiveBuddy and other agents are created. It allows you to perform many different actions, from searching for information about a specific product in the database to launching applications, such as a telephone dialer. The unique feature of BuddyScript is that it allows programmers to create reactions to the questions posed by ordinary human language - that is, to questions that consist of words that users themselves have picked up.
The BuddyScript SDK can be downloaded free of charge at www.buddyscript.com , which allows developers to create interactive agents, both for internal use - for example, an agent can answer common questions of staff - and for the purposes of Internet marketing and promotion. Today, the SDK has already downloaded more than three thousand developers. Once they have a ready-made script, BuddyScript Server Limited Edition gives developers the opportunity to run their demo version for only $ 199.
The SDK includes an integrated shell that allows developers to test their interactive agent under Windows. In addition, it includes a project-tutorial; BuddyScript code snippet libraries for frequently used functions; sample applications with a ready-made interactive agent created using the BuddyScript SDK; as well as BuddyScript Server Developer Edition for testing and prototyping.
As soon as the agent is ready for launch, two options appear: a per-seat license is provided for corporate use; The commercial version — which is used in marketing projects like RecipeBuddie — is estimated based on the number of sessions. “The ActiveBuddy server configuration allows you to serve millions of users,” says Murray.
BuddyScript SDK provides support for a variety of messaging environments, including AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. With the help of the BuddyScript Connectivity Service, released in October 2002, BuddyScript applications can also work with wireless platforms such as WAP, email, SMS and RIM. This means that developers, having written an application, immediately get compatibility with cell phones, pagers and other wireless devices in addition to the desktop.
“BuddyScript is not so complicated, though, to work with it, you will need to properly master Java programming,” said Murray. The SDK is designed for people who do not have special skills in engineering, that is, if you know how to use HTML and JavaScript, you will be quite comfortable working with it.
( continuation of the article )
Translation from English to:
blog.worldwebstudio.com
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/30924/
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