SmarterChild

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SmarterChild is a chatterbot available on the AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, and ICQ networks. The entity is the property of Colloquis (formerly ActiveBuddy), a company that develops IM based "automated service agents"(TM). Microsoft purchased Colloquis on October 12, 2006^[1].

ActiveBuddy launched SmarterChild in early 2001 as a showcase for its newly developed Buddyscript language and platform. The original intent of SmarterChild was to demonstrate the power and flexibility of the scripting language as well as give potential advertisers a sense of potential opportunities to monetize instant messaging. By 2001, instant messaging had become one of the most popular Internet-based applications among American teens, yet no one had been able to build a product to generate revenue from this rapidly growing audience. Unlike previous and contemporary chatter bots that mimicked human conversation (see ELIZA, PARRY and A.L.I.C.E), SmarterChild uses a combination of complex pattern recognition and simple natural language recognition to take user questions and comments and translate them into database queries. SmarterChild was, first and foremost, a data retrieval tool, giving its users access to various topics in a conversational format. ActiveBuddy licensed content from weather, news and movie times to stock quotes and sports scores and also included basic information and tools to help teenagers with homework (encyclopedia entries, world facts, dictionary, translation, calculators, etc.)

The rapidity with which ActiveBuddy added features to SmarterChild and improved its ability to converse in a variety of scenarios (user conversations range from the philosophical to the perverse) made it an incredibly popular application with usage quickly growing to over 10 million unique users despite little effort to market the product. Offshoot products geared to specific niche markets soon followed including GooglyMinotaur (Radiohead fan bot)^[2], Austin Powers (to promote the Austin Powers Goldmember film), RingMessenger (for the Lord of the Rings films), ElleGirl (for Elle Girl Magazine), AgentBaseball (sports focused content), dnLFlipIt (to promote a new 7up drink), TheSportingNews (promoting the magazine's fantasy football game) and others.

SmarterChild displays some degree of intelligence, remembering where its users are from (eliminating the need to repeatedly enter the same zip code when searching for news, weather, etc.). It also has more sophisticated learning where it forms opinions of people based on the opinions of the rest of its user base. If a number of people claim that they do not like Osama Bin Laden, for example, SmarterChild will mimic that opinion. SmarterChild also insists that its users engage in polite conversation, demanding apologies for harsh language and, if necessary, refusing to engage in conversations with a user until they change their tone. However, if you send it a message with sexual innuendos or suggestions enough times, it will agree and go along with you - sometimes even asking for "favors."

Broadcasting messages over the instant messaging networks of AOL (and to a lesser extent Yahoo and MSN Messenger) required accommodation, however, as AOL had never envisioned one of its members needing to hold 250,000 simultaneous conversations. As a result, ActiveBuddy developed a close relationship with AOL in which AOL changed its infrastructure to enable the new technology. In exchange for this, AOL wanted access to the revenue generated by SmarterChild and the other agents now "living" on its network.

Initially, ActiveBuddy wanted to sell advertisements within the content delivered via SmarterChild's conversations, using the context of the conversation as a means to deliver highly targeted messages. Because SmarterChild knew what types of conversations each user engaged in, ActiveBuddy would theoretically be able to send advertisements catered to their unique preferences. SmarterChild would also learn more about its users the more time it engaged in conversation, remembering information like birthdays, addresses, pets' names, favorite colors, etc. in the name of creating a more genuine artificial friend. Increased familiarity would, of course, also mean a better way to target advertising.

AOL's involvement in the advertising sales process actually hampered ActiveBuddy's ability to see any real revenue from SmarterChild, however, as limits were placed on ActiveBuddy's own sales team, forcing them to focus only on companies that were existing AOL advertisers and not to the entire advertising world. Facing these limits, ActiveBuddy began to introduce features beyond simple information retrieval and chat (setting reminders, notebook, sending messages about crushes to other users). In order to redefine the application, ActiveBuddy temporarily suspended the application in June 2002^[3] (12 months after its initial release) with plans to relaunch it as a pay service^[4]. The relaunch of SmarterChild in April of 2003 was met with some reluctance, however, as the millions of users who had become accustomed to the service had either moved on to other applications during its downtime, or did not see enough utility in the new applications to justify the $9.95 per year subscription fee^[5]. With lagging numbers and little revenue from subscriptions, SmarterChild was reborn as a free service in April of 2004.

In subsequent years the audience for SmarterChild returned, with the number of unique names in its own buddy list exceeding 20 million as of November 2006. While SmarterChild remains extremely popular, and advertisements now appear in its messages, it is an application which seems to have missed a significant window of opportunity. Microsoft's recent purchase of Colloquis will see SmarterChild become the centerpiece of the Windows Live Messenger initiative.