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You can now share Kik bot experiences with friends

An oft-repeated statement among chatbot early adopters is that the industry has yet to discover its killer app — the runaway breakout hit — but a new Kik feature might help the service surface bots with potential.

Invites, a feature launching today on chat app Kik, lets users invite friends to experience bots and allows them to use bots together for things like ordering movie tickets, playing a game, or scheduling an event.

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The feature goes live today first on the Zombie Invasion bot.

“If this works, it’ll give bots the potential to go viral on Kik (think about friends sharing with friends, instead of mostly independent discovery),” a Kik spokesperson said.

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Kik now has about 300 million users.

Roughly 70 bots are now available in Kik’s official Bot Shop, up from 16 when Kik opened its platform to developers in April. However, more than 6,000 additional bots have been created by independent developers on the Kik platform outside the Bot Shop, where bots are limited to serving up to 50 users at a time.

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