Amazon Will Pay Developers With the Most Engaging Alexa Skills (venturebeat.com)

Amazon today announced a new program to bring revenue to developers of Alexa skills based on how much engagement their voice app is able to generate among users of Alexa-enabled devices. From a report: Amazon appears to be the first of the major tech companies with AI assistants and third-party integrations -- like Google, Samsung, Apple, and Microsoft -- with a program to compensate developers based on engagement created by their voice app. Metrics used to measure engagement of an Alexa skill include minutes of usage, new customers, customer ratings, and return visitors, an Amazon spokesperson told VentureBeat. Developers of Alexa skills in the U.S., U.K., and Germany are eligible to join. Developers with a skill active in all three countries will receive separate payments based on engagement in each country.

Comments

Turn Alexa into a phone sex voice bot...

[cayenne8]

I would predict that if you could get Alexa to give a good phone sex experience, they'd have the winner developer there.

Depending on how good the app was, the length of time of engagement might be short, but I"m guessing that would be made up by increased repeat business.

Alexa Skill Store is Shit and So is Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

I submitted a skill. They strung me along for about 4 months asking for pointless tweaks while changing the acceptable encryption schemes, etc. At the end of all that they finally said "Some skills will never be accepted" and ended it there. No way to follow up.

Quick check of the dev forums and there are plenty of similar tales. The reason why? Whatever the skill was eventually became part of core functionality, or another large company released something identical shortly thereafter. My particular skill wound up in core.

You know, I get it. Maybe you don't want to reveal your road map. But don't string people along for months knowing you have no intention of ever approving. I've had plenty of ideas for skills since, but I'm never going near it again. Fuck those guys.

I don't like voice interfaces.

[jellomizer]

The voice interface, while looks good in science fiction as it is an easy way to push the plot along. However these devices such as Alexa, are often getting in my way of instant data. As someone who keep my phone silent and my PC on mute I find getting info from a keyboard, or with gestures on a good interface, is much better to get info. Plus other people don't have to hear me ask silly questions or bore listing to the answers.