blackbirds chatbot
Overview
To celebrate Black History Month on Twitter and continue to build upon my technologist skillset, I took the initiative of working with Twitter's then-new Direct Message chatbot API to create a custom chatbot for the company's employee resource group for Black employees, Twitter Blackbirds.
The chatbot invited people to explore four features, including discovering Black history facts of the day, cultural events in major cities nationwide, self-care tips, and #ForTheCulture fun. It included a content integration from GIPHY to feature custom Black History Month GIFs.
I loved working on this with my colleague, Rafi Jacoby, the team at Giphy, and the leads of Blackbirds because it gave me a chance to build and pitch an initiative that related back to appreciation of Black culture on Twitter.
In 2016, chatbots were relatively unexplored territory on Twitter. Where today, our interactions with chatbots tend to shape our view of what's in store for the future of technology, democracy, and humanity; in 2016, you were lucky if you interacted with a customer service chatbot that didn't make you want to pull your hair out. I wondered how we could leverage this new technological solution to drive cultural knowledge sharing and promote equitable experiences across the United States.
We envisioned, developed, created and launched a first-of-its-kind cultural chatbot.
Leveraged Twitter's Chatbot API to create the chatbot interface and launch it in February 2017
Pitched the Chatbot to Blackbirds leads and iterated upon the chatbot with features like a custom GIPHY integration
Throughout the month of February, the chatbot drove over 50K messages and secured national coverage in publications including Mashable, TechCrunch, and Adweek. The project also launched the beginning of a years-long experience serving as a Lead for Twitter Blackbirds.
