"It's a once-in-a-decade paradigm shift," said Beerud Sheth, CEO of the bot development firm Gupshup, when asked about the technological trend towards engagement in messaging. He believes it could be as significant as when Apple cofounder Steve Jobs introduced the world to the App Store. Mike Roberts, Kik's head of messaging and bot experience, described it this way: Messaging is the new browser and bots are the websites.
"Conversation as a platform" definitely has some traction in a mobile-first world, and I think the browser/websites analogy is apt, but I think the use cases here are far smaller and simpler than Facebook, Slack, and Skype would have you believe.