First comes puberty, then comes paying rent... Tech follows a similar path — Growth 1st, profits 2nd. Facebook focused its first 5 years on growth, and only started selling ads in 2012. Amazon Alexa grew in its first years to reach 100M Alexa-enabled devices worldwide, selling Echos and Alexa software for near nothing. Now it's time for Part 2: Make money.
10K Amazonians are on Team Alexa... According to reporting from The Information, ten-thousand employees must now figure out how to squeeze $$$ out of your awkward Alexa commands — because the voice assistant only brought in $1.4M in revenues for Amazon this year (that's a measly $140 per employee). Here are some of Amazon's ideas:
- Premium content?: If you order Spotify through Alexa, could Amazon take a cut of that subscription?
- Premium skills?: If you ask Alexa to "translate Spanish homework," could Amazon charge your parents for that feature?
- "Hey, famous person": This one's already happening — Alexa can adopt the voice of Samuel L. Jackson for 99 cents. More A-list celebs coming soon for $5.
It’s not 100% clear Alexa is a success... Amazon's plan was to disseminate Alexas across every corner of the country to hook people on Amazon Prime (and possibly get them voice shopping on Amazon). But that "vcommerce" feature hasn't taken off (at all). The fact that Amazon is now trying to make revenue directly from Alexa could be a signal that it failed its original purpose: Make money indirectly for Amazon.