The 7 best chatbots of 2016, by popular vote

ChatBottle (the search engine of bots) announced the results of First ChatBottle Awards.

Earlier, more than 15 chatbot industry experts from U.S., Europe, and Asia provided the list of 35 bot nominees for categories like travel, productivity, social, ecommerce, entertainment, and news.

The contest went viral and, starting from January 9 to January 18, more than 2,500 people from 65 countries voted 5,373 times for the best Facebook Messenger, Kik, and Slack chatbots.

And the winners are…

1. The best travel bot :  Instalocate

Created by: Ankur Jain and Pallavi Singh

Instalocate is a chatbot for Facebook Messenger that tracks flights by flight number and notifies travelers about delays.

2. The best productivity bot: Meekan

Created by: Matty Mariansky, Eyal Yavor and Lior Yavor

Meekan for Slack is a cross-vendor calendar scheduling platform, enabling you to connect with everyone, on any calendar, hassle-free. As an advantage, Meekan understands human-readable requests.

3. The best social bot: Foxsy

Created by: by Jin (Hitoshi) Tanaka

Foxsy is your personal matchmaking chatbot for Facebook Messenger that allows finding a beautiful and meaningful connection with the right person.

4. The best entertainment bot : BFF Trump

BFF Trump bot was created by creative agency SS+K and Dexter to bring attention to the hateful rhetoric of Donald Trump with the goal of engaging people to vote their values in the 2016 election.

5. The best ecommerce bot: ChatShopper

Created by: Antonia Ermacora and Matthias Nannt

The first ecommerce fashion and shopping chatbot for Facebook Messenger, ChatShopper asks users about their fashion taste and replies back with the product suggestions.

6. The best news bot : TechCrunch

Created by: TechCrunch

The TechCrunch chatbot for Messenger helps you stay on top of the topics and stories you care about. You can subscribe to different topics, authors, or sections of the site, and the bot will send you news articles from TechCrunch about the things you are interested in the most.

7. Editors’ Choice Award: Swelly

Created by: Peter Buchroithner

Swelly is a social network for making decisions with your friends. Vote for cool stuff and help other people with their daily decisions. A swell contains a question and 2 options. A or B? This or That? High Heels or Sneakers? Hot or Not? The chatbot recently crossed 1.8 million registered users.