Amazon's Alexa Passes 15,000 skills, Up From 10,000 in February (techcrunch.com)

As more and more companies get into the smart speaker game, a new report shows just how much ground they have to make up to catch Amazon's digital assistant, Alexa. From a report: Amazon's Alexa voice platform has now passed 15,000 skills -- the voice-powered apps that run on devices like the Echo speaker, Echo Dot, newer Echo Show and others. The figure is up from the 10,000 skills Amazon officially announced back in February, which had then represented a 3x increase from September. The new 15,000 figure was first reported via third-party analysis from Voicebot, and Amazon has since confirmed the figure. According to Voicebot, which only analyzed skills in the U.S., the milestone was reached for the first time on June 30, 2017. During the month of June, new skill introductions increased by 23 percent, up from the less than 10 percent growth that was seen in each of the prior three months.

Comments

Awesome.

[sunking2]

You know, like numchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills!

Re:Awesome.

[mfh]

I get that you're joking but the erosion of our language to this pseudo-marketing language is devolving us completely as a species.

No corporation can deny the meaning of common words.

Skill is not the same as "number of apps interfacing with a hardware system," and this perversion of language continues to be tolerated.

Corporations want this because it means they can make a word mean whatever will benefit them the most, either to limit their own culpability or to trigger a buying response.

Amazon wants to take the word "skills" and apply it to "app-count" but if this was truly an amazing product, it would work on every app and not require special coding just to get it to work.

Re:Awesome.

[__aaclcg7560]

And learn to dance, the ladies love it when you can get up and dance with them.

Another useful skill. The first time I learned how to dance was when my date taught me the moves to "YMCA" by the Village People.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QINoUyrP0BI

Re:Awesome.

[mfh]

Really interesting choice of words since Apple decided that they can 'make a word mean whatever will benefit them the most' when they changed 'app' from being an appearance in a sport to 'software interfacing with a hardware system.' In riling against the practice you subtly reinforce it. Bravo!

Slow down cowboy!

App is short for application. Apps is the plural. You got this wrong totally. If Apple uses the term APPS, they are merely using the general term with the happy coincidence that it includes the first three letters of their company name.

How many of you remember WAREZ APPS? Apple wasn't even a thing back then for most of us. :D

Re:Awesome.

[Waffle Iron]

Skills skills are more skillful then LUDDITE apps! Only LUDDITE appsters lack skill skills!

Skilly skill SKILLS!

Skills?

[Luthair]

I've never been able to convince anyone that farting is a skill.

Only 42% malware

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Amazon's Alexa voice platform (now has) 15,000...apps

And only 42% of them are malware.

Re:Only 42% malware

[Darinbob]

If it's anything like smart phones, where 5 apps out of 5 million are useful, then Alexa probably doesn't even have 1 useful skill.

Real reason for expansion

[frank_adrian314159]

Amazon's Alexa voice platform has now passed 15,000 skills...

...and only 14500 of them start with "buy: or "purchase" .

Age of consent

[PopeRatzo]

Do any of you know if the Alexa AI has yet reached the equivalent mental age of a 16 year old? Asking for a friend.

WTF?

[DogDude]

I read the article, and I still have no idea what this article means. What the fuck does "skill" mean in this context?

Yeah, but

[wonkey_monkey]

Doesn't mean most of them aren't shit. There's one that reads out Zoidberg quotes, and another that plays firework noises. Yay.