There's a lot of discussion here about hype, but I think many are overlooking exactly why expectations were so high.

Downloads of new mobile applications have been decreasing in growth steadily for years now[0]. Instead, user's spend more time inside their existing applications, particularly messenger applications. Take a look at just a few of their user bases:

  - Facebook Messenger - 1.2B+ [1]
  - Whatsapp - 1B+ [2]
  - Kik - 300m  [3]

Considering that writing a single bot that was capable to connecting to all of these platforms was trivial, it gave the developer access to a new and very significant user base.

Add to this the fact that Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Slack and others, with a combined market cap in the trillions, were simultaneously contributing to the support of chatbots in one way or another.

It's a classic rendition of the Hype Cycle[4]. We're probably somewhere in the "Trough of Disillusionment", but give it a few years and we'll get to the "Plateau of Productivity", and chatbots will probably make their way to a more useful purpose.

[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/29/forget-apps-now-the-bots-t... [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/12/messenger/ [2]: https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/1/10889534/whats-app-1-billi... [3]: https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/11/kik-already-has-over-6000-... [4]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle#/media/File:Gartner...