Smart speakers from Amazon and Google are setting records

Amazon announced today that the Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend resulted in “millions of Alexa devices sold.”

“This weekend, Echo Dot was the #1 selling product on Amazon globally, from any manufacturer in any category…Echo Dot was the best-selling device at Whole Foods Market over the holiday weekend.”

Google Home Mini devices were already sold out at Walmart by 9:00 am on Black Friday.

Smart speakers are shaping up to be the most popular gift this holiday season.

Just think about it.

A couple of millions users added to the voice market during Black Friday.

Still haven’t built anything for Alexa and Google Home? 🤨

https://www.voicebot.ai/2017/11/28/amazon-says-millions-alexa-devices-sold-black-friday-weekend/

Drift today launched the Drift Platform to give developers tools to make Drift bots for marketing and sales.

Drift Platform gives developers and businesses using Drift the ability to make custom bots and integrations.

The Drift App Directory will allow customers to find and discover bots made by third-party developers, enterprise software makers, or Drift customers.

Unlike Slack or Microsoft’s bot offerings for chat apps like Microsoft Teams or Slack, Drift bots are most often used on apps and websites.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/05/drift-launches-third-party-platform-for-sales-and-marketing-bots/

⚡️HEROES, a tool which allows social media Influencers to send direct messages to their fans on Facebook Messenger, is launching today on Product Hunt!

Think of it as a parallel channel alongside Instagram or Youtube, but entirely chat-based, where Influencers can directly broadcast content to their follower's Messenger, be it a private video or a voice message.

Influencers are able to schedule their broadcasts and even segment their audience, creating richer and more interactive experiences both for them and for their users.

In the future, HEROES will let Influencers directly monetize from their audience through subnoscriptions and in-chat sales as well as Influencer Marketing campaigns.

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/heroes-for-facebook-messenger

Apple wants to buy Shazam for $400 million

Seems like a big number, right?

But if you factor in Shazam’s last round of funding, which valued the company at around $1 billion, a $400 million price tag is a steal.

But what would Apple do with Shazam?

Well, Apple likely wants Siri to do what both Amazon and Google are working on: help the user figure out the world around them, and also sell them content.

Siri should be able to extract valuable information for the user from what it hears and what it sees. 

It could also then let you add that song to your Apple Music playlist, watch the trailer, or even buy the movie on iTunes, and so on.

That’s much easier to achieve once Siri has swallowed Shazam.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/09/apples-shazam-steal-is-all-about-siri/

A lot of you guys have been busy building chatbots and still haven’t had a chance to dive into the voice space.

I’ve found a really great video to help you get started.

It’s an introduction into the whole Amazon Alexa ecosystem.

It explains what is Amazon Alexa, how to build apps for it, what apps are there and a plenty of other stuff.

It’s quite long, but totally worth it.

I highly recommend you to watch this video if you want to start building voice bots for Amazon Alexa.

Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cjsxRtrbNs

Today, Facebook is launching a new ad unit that will let businesses create a link between the two platforms: advertisers can now include a button on their ads so that people can call or message via WhatsApp with the click of a button.

The new feature getting announced today, more generally, follows on from some bigger developments for how WhatsApp is already being used by businesses.

The new button ad-unit is also similar to the click-to-Messenger ads that Facebook previously rolled out.

Since Manychat is killing it with simple bots that are connected to Facebook Ads, it sounds like a huge opportunity for bot builders 🤘

https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/13/click-to-whatsapp-messaging-buttons-are-now-rolling-out-in-facebook-ads

Microsoft introduced the Azure Bot Framework more than two years ago and companies have been building chatbots for a variety of scenarios ever since.

Today, the company made generally available the Microsoft Azure Bot Service and Microsoft Cognitive Language Understanding service (known as LUIS).

When you combine the bot building tools with the LUIS language understanding tool, you get what should be a powerful combination.

The latter helps the bot understand and parse the query to deliver the correct answer (and understand related queries).

Cheng said more than 200,000 developers have signed up for the Bot service, and they currently have 33,000 active bots in areas like retail, healthcare, financial services and insurance.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/13/microsoft-launches-bot-engine-and-language-understanding-services-out-of-beta/

Amazon has just released a brand new Test Simulator for Alexa skills

The new simulator expands existing testing capabilities such as text input, JSON debugging, and visual display by adding features like the ability to test multi-turn conversation, entity resolution, dialog management, and more.

With the new voice input capability, you can validate Alexa’s understanding of the spoken word and how the skill responds.

The new device event log shows the directives that are sent to the devices, which allows you to understand how the skill interacts with the device.

That’s a totally new level of testing for Alexa skills 🔥

https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/577069bd-d9f9-439a-b4bf-3b0495e3d24b/announcing-new-test-simulator-beta-for-alexa-skills

It’s Amazon’s World—But Do You Want to Live There?

If Amazon were an animal, it would be an octopus. Its tentacles are in retail and grocery stores, consumer goods and electronics, home services, streaming media, cloud computing and publishing—to name just a few. Recently, the leviathan has been extending its reach toward pharmacies and conference rooms, and building new inroads into our homes and families.

By week’s end, there was a short list of things Amazon hadn’t helped me with: booking a doctor’s appointment, picking up a prenoscription, scheduling a haircut, and buying a flight. How long before that—and all the other stuff on all of our to-do lists—can be crossed off with a click and a Prime membership?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-amazons-worldbut-do-you-want-to-live-there-1512586126

Christmas is coming 🎅

Since you guys are interested about bots, the best gift will be a new smart speaker with a voice assistant inside!

But how to choose one?

Here is a great guide on that: https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/18/how-to-pick-a-smart-speaker-this-holiday-season

Amazon will let developers build Alexa skills that recognize unique voices in 2018

Amazon today announced that developers will be able to build Alexa skills that recognize unique human voices, starting in early 2018. Personalized voice profiles are set up through the account of the primary user of an Alexa-enabled device and can be extended to up to 10 users.

Called “Your Voice by Amazon,” voice profiles that recognize up to 10 users were first made available last month. This type of personalization makes it possible for Alexa to deliver the right flash briefings when someone in your household asks “What’s the latest news?” It also powers personalized shopping and allows Alexa to use the right contacts when you say “Call work” and to deliver tailored music results if you have the Amazon Music Unlimited Family Plan.

Letting third-party Alexa skills identify users based on voice could potentially lead to native payments for Alexa skills. Today, payments for skills like Starbucks or Wingstop are often entered via websites or apps for preset orders.

Personalization for Amazon voice apps could also lead to more Alexa skills made especially for games. From reports of CEO Jeff Bezos’ gaming interest to Alexa Accelerator investments, games with Alexa-enabled devices are becoming a bigger part of Amazon’s effort to grow its Alexa skills ecosystem. Last month saw the debut of When in Rome, one of the first known board games led by Amazon’s Alexa. The game was the product of Alexa Accelerator graduate Sensible Object. A series of six board games, called Voice Originals, is also due out next year.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/28/amazon-will-let-developers-build-alexa-skills-that-recognize-unique-voices-in-2018/

Hey guys, I’ve just finished our first version of awesome-alexa list!

I want it to be the main knowledge and resource base about Amazon Alexa.

It’s pretty empty right now, but you can help me fix it.

Feel free to message me (@maximabramchuk) or just directly send pull requests.

Also, clicking a “Star” icon would mean the world for me 🙂

Thanks a lot, I really appreciate your help, folks!

https://github.com/GetStoryline/awesome-alexa

Introducing Cooking Capabilities in the Alexa Smart Home Skill API

Customers have now connected tens of millions of smart home devices to Alexa, including cameras, door locks, lights, entertainment systems, and thermostats. Now Amazon introduces cooking capabilities as part of the Smart Home Skill API. You can build skills to enable customers in the US to control their microwave ovens using Alexa. Support for other cooking devices, such as conventional ovens, is coming soon. Cooking capabilities will also be available in other countries soon.

Whether you build cloud-connected microwaves or other smart home devices that connect to Alexa, you can submit your products for certification via the Works with Amazon Alexa program. The program raises the bar on responsiveness, reliability, and functionality, ensuring your customers have the best smart home experiences. When your products are certified, they can carry the Works with Amazon Alexa badge in the Amazon Smart Home Store and on product packaging. This increases customer confidence that your products integrate seamlessly with Alexa.

https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/a143dc87-5070-4158-bd0d-5777faa3a46c/introducing-cooking-capabilities-in-the-alexa-smart-home-skill-api

Today, 16 percent of Americans own a smart speaker or around 39 million people.

Both Amazon and Google used the holiday shopping season to their advantage regarding acquiring market share for their respective devices by slashing prices to encourage more impulse buys, and by heavily promoting the items across their storefronts.

In fact, analysts believe that both Amazon and Google likely lost a few dollars per unit during the holiday season, where they were discounting their smaller form factor devices to $29 for the Amazon Echo Dot and $50 for the Google Home Mini, for example.

Take a look at the article below - it contains a lot of data on how people use smart speakers, super helpful piece of content.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/12/39-million-americans-now-own-a-smart-speaker-report-claims/

Amazon’s Echo Buttons are just the start – more form factors to launch this year

Amazon’s Echo Buttons, the weird devices that work with at-home trivia games you play with Alexa, are only the start of what could turn out to be a new product line filled with a variety of “connected accessories.” The company is now testing other gadgets of a similar nature with Alexa game developers and plans to launch these sometime in 2018.

“I think you’ll see a lot more games come out this year that take advantage of the buttons,” said Steve Rabuchin, vice president of Amazon Alexa, in a conversation this week at CES. He added that consumers may see more types of connected devices, too. “They could be buttons or they could be other form factors,” he said of the rollouts expected this year.

Specifically, this product category is called Alexa Gadgets, and their existence isn’t completely unknown.

As with the Echo itself, the Echo Buttons demonstrate the technology that’s possible – the buttons aren’t standalone devices, but connect with Echo via Bluetooth. But with the newer developer tools, anyone can build their own connected devices, too.

“The model is that we build something, we open it up to developer community, and let them innovate,” Rabuchin said.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/08/amazons-echo-buttons-are-just-the-start-more-form-factors-to-launch-this-year/

David Marcus (Head of Messenger @ Facebook) has just published an interesting article called “Six Trends for 2018: What to Watch from Messenger”.

There he shared his vision on where Messenger will be in a couple of years, his thoughts about trends into communication in general, and also about the messaging as a marketing channel.

Highly recommended to read for people that are doing marketing via bots in Facebook Messenger 👇🏻

https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/six-trends-for-2018-what-to-watch-from-messenger/10157040374369148/

Seems like Apple starts shipping first HomePods

After Apple’s HomePod missed its December 2017 ship date due to an eleventh-hour delay, the smart speaker is now beginning to ship from one of its two assemblers.

According to the report, the HomePod’s delay is attributable to “fine-tuning of software and hardware integration,” a presumably critical final step for a speaker featuring Apple’s Siri as its voice-controlled AI assistant.

HomePod suppliers reportedly received a shipment notice from Apple at the beginning of January, leading them to believe the HomePod will hit stores soon.

Apple has provided only an “available early 2018” time frame for the HomePod’s release in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

I’m super excited to try it, may be a real competitor to Alexa / Google Assistant 🤔

https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/17/apple-homepod-supplier-reportedly-ships-first-units-software-integration-blamed-for-delay/

It’s finally here 🎉

WhatsApp today officially launched its new WhatsApp Business app in select markets, including Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S., ahead of its planned worldwide rollout.

With the new WhatsApp Business app arriving today, small companies can set up their WhatsApp Business profiles by filling out information like a business denoscription, email, address and website.

Businesses will also be able to access messaging statistics, like number of messages read, and they can send and receive messages from the desktop via WhatsApp Web.

While businesses will need to use this new app to communicate with customers, for the general WhatsApp user, there’s no change.

They’ll be able to message businesses but can control their experience by blocking numbers and businesses, as well as report spam.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/whatsapp-officially-launches-its-app-for-businesses-in-select-markets/

Alright, now it’s a big deal.

Product Hunt nominated Storyline as a developer tool of the year! 🎉

Along with companies like Stripe and Google. I couldn’t believe it.

If you show us some love with the upvote, more people will discover Storyline.

Thank you for all the support!

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/storyline-8

You can now use Alexa to send SMS messages

Amazon announced today it’s launching a new messaging feature for Alexa devices in the U.S. that will allow you to send texts – yes, SMS messages – to your friends and other contacts using your voice. Customers can now ask Alexa to send a message to a specific contact, and Alexa will figure out how to route it appropriately – using either the previously launched Alexa messaging system, or by sending it out as an SMS instead, if the recipient doesn’t have an Alexa device of their own.

There is one big caveat, however – the feature currently works only for sending SMS messages to Android phones.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/30/you-can-now-use-alexa-to-send-sms-messages-to-your-friends/?utm_content=buffer0f404&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer

There's finally a board game powered by Amazon Alexa

Game manufacturer Sensible Objects has released When in Rome, the first board game to incorporate Alexa.

Through your Amazon Echo device, Alexa teaches you the rules, keeps track of the score, and guides you through the game.

The game is pretty simple. Players sit around a world map, and each places their marker on a "home city" to start.

Players then travel around the map to various major cities. As your marker enters each city, Alexa asks you questions about that city's weather, customs, food, culture, and more. The questions range from easy ("Is San Francisco foggy?") to difficult ("Which of these is not a real pub?").

Sensible Objects recommends it for ages "5 to 99." It's possible for young kids to play, but since it's a game about world trivia, older kids and adults will likely be the biggest fans.

https://mashable.com/2018/02/18/amazon-alexa-board-game/#OmH4F9DT2mqS