Amazon will allow developers to compete for the Echo Shows screen and everything else Alexa just added

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Amazon’s Alexa devices are environmental computers, not the kind you use all day. When you ask Echo a question or take a look at Echo Shows’s tiny screen, the voice assistant has only a brief chance to impress. Today, Amazon announces that it will offer more of these opportunities to third-party developers, including brand new widgets and featured skill cards that could take up a portion of your smart speakers’ valuable real estate.

Here’s what to expect from those and everything else the company announced today at its Alexa Live event.

As you can see in the Amazon mockup above, the widgets look pretty much what you might expect. In a blog post, Amazon describes them as rich, customizable, visible, and self-updating views of skill content where you can select items from a to-do list or activate skill functions – no need to say first. Alexa. It’s still unclear how limited they are or if they could actually be a way to build a touchscreen app for an Echo Show.

Developers don’t have to pay for Amazon’s Alexa skill ads

The featured skill cards might be slightly controversial, depending on how useful they are. Promote new Alexa skills on the home screen, even if you haven’t requested them. It’s not exactly an advertising service, Aaron Rubenson, vice president of Amazon Alexa Skills, tells The Verge, not something developers will have to pay for. It’s open for everyone to raise their hand and say they want to be a part of it, he says, adding that you’ll see personalized results based on other signals you send to Alexa. One of the first featured skill cards will be Comedy Central, and Rubenson says he may very well see it because he already listens to some comedy in his Alexa Flash Briefing every morning.

But even if you don’t have an Echo device with a screen, you may be getting more Alexa skills suggested soon. Amazon says it’s expanding its nameless interaction toolkit to allow volunteer skills to be promoted when you speak phrases like Alexa, like the Nasdaq did today?

Allow the developers to raise their hand and say, “My skill can handle that demand,” says Rubenson. And you agree to use Amazon’s suggested skills, Alexa can broadcast your request instead of having you repeat.

Here’s Alexa with the upsell

While Amazon was the only one that previously profited from physical merchandise sold through Alexa, the company will now allow Alexa skill developers to sell products within their capabilities even with Alexa’s buy shares and also get a commission. 10% affiliate marketing from Amazon. As expected, you can only sell products listed on Amazon.com, although they don’t need to be your own products. (Rubenson couldn’t tell if Amazon would allow skills that are actually just shops.) Amazon also introduces paid skills, so don’t be surprised if you have to pay before using your next Alexa app instead of using an in-app purchase afterwards.

While Amazon still doesn’t seem to have attracted rivals Apple, Google, and Samsung to its voice interop initiative, it also has some news on that front. Rubenson says Samsung will have a refrigerator with Bixby and Alexa operating side-by-side, and the company’s Alexa Custom Assistant (which allows brands to create their own Alexa-based assistant) will appear in a Verizon smart display where Alexa can handle standard Alexa tasks while Verizon’s new assistant can handle requests such as checking your wireless bill. Rubenson says they can also exchange requests.

In addition to these highlights, here’s a quick bulleted list of other Alexa updates that caught my eye:

Food Skill API for high quality food delivery and pickup experiences. Dominos Pizza will use it at some point; Here’s an example: Send to Phone where customers can initiate an experience on their Alexa-enabled device and continue it on their mobile phone. McDonalds UK, Twitter, Husqvarna, Iberia Airlines, Cookpad, and Lysol will connect their mobile apps with Alexa skills.

Event-based triggers and proactive suggestions: For example, if a customer is going out on business, customers may choose to have a skill that proactively suggests they lock their home. Whole Foods will be launching a door-to-door pickup experience later this year. Find My is opening Alexa, Find My Command at multiple businesses with Tile-like device trackers, with Samsung and Remote + coming later this year. Alexa Device Discovery will be able to discover new categories of devices such as printers and smart TVs. Alexa Entities now allows any skill developer to access the Alexa knowledge graph for general answers.

That’s not the whole list, mind you – there’s even more in Amazon’s full blog post. Additionally, Amazon today announces that nearly all Echo smart speakers will support Matter, an ambitious new open standard for smart home devices.

The new features are all arriving today as part of the company’s Alexa Live developer conference, where it is looking to attract the next generation of programmers to develop skills for its voice assistant. Amazon says it now has 900,000 registered developers and 130,000 skills (compared to 750,000 developers a year ago and 100,000 skills as of September 2019), and Rubenson tells us that developer revenue has doubled every year, with some skill developers earning over $ 1. million per year.

Update, 1:04 PM ET: Added a link to the full Amazon blog post and some embedded videos.

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