Skype to let you book trips, shop, more by chatting with third-party chatbots, with conversations brokered by Cortana
Your regular host Adam Lashinsky is out this week. Natacha Brown / Garage & Updates : Skype Bots preview comes to consumers and developers Roger Fingas / AppleInsider : Microsoft adds info-hunting ‘Bot’ assistants to Skype for iPhone & iPad Andrew E. Freedman / Laptop Mag : Cortana Brings Intelligence and Bots to Skype Jordan Novet / VentureBeat : Microsoft launches Bot Framework to let developers build their own chatbots Jez Corden / Windows Central : Microsoft bots will help you order pizza, book hotels from Skype Tweets: @chrismessina : IT'S HAPPENING. #ConvComm http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This is Microsoft formalizing what it had been assembling piece by piece: after previewing Cortana inside Windows 10 and opening Skype to Slack-originated calls, the company now turns Skype chats into a transaction layer where third-party bots book trips and take orders, with Cortana acting as the broker between user and bot. The companion Bot Framework announcement is the supply side — Microsoft wants developers building these bots for Skype rather than only for rival messengers.
The move lands amid a broader bot push across Microsoft's portfolio: the Zo chatbot launched on Kik with Skype as a stated future home, and the platform already gained group-bot support mid-year. Whether Cortana can hold the brokerage role against the platforms hosting their own bots is the open question this story sets up.
First-order effects
- Developers get a new distribution channel overnight: the Bot Framework lets them deploy booking and shopping bots into Skype's consumer base without building per-platform integrations themselves.
- Skype users gain in-chat transactions — ordering pizza, booking hotels — directly inside conversations they already have, no app switch required.
Second-order effects
- Rival messaging platforms face pressure to match the assistant-brokered commerce model, which is why Microsoft's own Zo chatbot targets Kik and Facebook Messenger alongside Skype — bot distribution becomes multi-platform by default.
- Cortana's position shifts from OS feature to intermediary: whoever brokers the conversation between user and merchant bot captures the intent data and the default placement.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, messaging clients consolidate into commerce surfaces where an assistant layer sits above third-party services — though the related coverage hints at friction, since Cortana's full Skype integration shipped over a year after first announcing, suggesting the brokerage model was harder to deliver than to demo.
The trend: Messaging platforms are evolving from communication tools into assistant-brokered commerce layers, with each platform's AI competing to be the intermediary between users and third-party service bots.