Voice Summit 2 weeks ago featured a panel of investors, from the panel I gather that the investors present, mostly from the east coast, weren’t getting the leads they were expecting. There was a lot around on what they wouldn’t invest at the moment as part of the panel. One of the things that have caught my attention in the recent investments in voice technology and applications is that Silicon Valley is not all in on it. I don’t have inside data on the investment firms, but I do know that when Silicon Valley investors get into it full weight it gonna get billions crazy.
Benedict Evans, a partner at Andreesen Horowitz investment firm tweeted this week:

One problem at Yahoo back in the day (apparently): if you put something on the homepage it got such a firehose of traffic that you couldn’t really tell if you had product-market fit or not. This might be the Alexa/Echo problem.

— Benedict Evans (@benedictevans) August 7, 2018

Amazon can push it, and make it cheap enough (thanks to the smartphone supply chain) that people think ‘why not’. So volumes look great. But it doesn’t follow that it actually has product-market fit.

So maybe that explains why Silicon Valley is not jumping full weight into this investments.
Some of the replies included purchasing is horrible and we use it mostly for smart home automation, weather and listening to music.

The other thing to pay attention to, is that most of the investments are about the tools to build the apps, not a lot about direct to consumer applications. Which actually makes sense if you think that the attention is just not there yet for direct to consumer voice apps.
Let’s look at the list of the most recent investments:

• Voice app development platform Storyline announced a $770,00 funding round last week.
• Novel Effect which enhances stories with sound effects raised $3 million in June.
• Independent voice assistant developer Snips.ai raised a $13 million funding round in June.
• Independent voice assistant developer SoundHound closed $100 million in financing in May.
• Healthcare voice assistant startup Suki raised $20 million in May.
• Voice interactive meeting assistant maker Voicera closed $20 million in funding in April.
• Sayspring was acquired by Adobe in April.
• Bespoken, automation testing for Alexa raised 2.4 million seed round.
• Voice game developer Sensible Object closed $3.2 million round in June.

From this list, probably Sensible Object is the only direct to consumer company. The focus is on the shovels, not the gold mines.
Newark Venture Partners, have said recently that they are looking at a number of horizontal voice application that can validate accros their corporate investor network. For them, targeting cross-industry integrations capture a significantly larger market opportunity. The most relevant part from Newark Venture Partners for me is that they are paying attention to what market leaders like Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft are doing that might helo to support or undermine ecosystems in voice space. Basically, everyone is watching because no one wants to be crushed by one of the big 5. That has been a concern for 3P developers with Amazon for example, where your skill can become internal to Alexa and your whole business model just disappear. They control the network and the distribution. Newark partners also said they are particularly interested in B2B applications, as their recent investment in Veritonic, an audio testing platform, proves.
Thank you for listening, we’ll talk tomorrow!

If you still haven’t optimized your website for voice search, you’re losing a fair share of the online marketing potential.

If that doesn’t convince you, just take a look at these voice search statistics:

• 325 million people are searching through the internet using voice search
• 20% of Google searches are done through voice search with 95% accuracy of answers
• 4 million Amazon Echo devices are sold during one holiday season

Voice search process and transcribe human speech into text.

Interesting fact is that 25% of searches in windows 10 are voice searches. Is it possible that Windows might enter the battle of voice technology giants? I personally don’t think so, but I know they have great tools for natural language processing.

It comes as a surprise to no one that the place where people make use of voice search the most it’s in their cars. Second place when doing other external activities and when watching TV. Last one being when they are in bed. That one was definitely a surprise to me because i use Alexa a lot while in bed, to play podcasts, music, play voice games that i want to check out etc.

What are people searching more?

First: More than 50% ask for deals, sales and promos, then personalized tips and info and events and activity information. 38% of the searches are for customer support. A really interesting fact in the data is that only 13% of smart speakers owners use smart speakers to find local businesses.

Why do people use voice search?

Primarily when hands are occupied or when is difficult to use other devices.

Reasons smartphone users use voice search.

The primary reason is for online searches, finding product information and asking questions.

And who uses voice search the most?

Millennials, followed by Gen X and Baby boomers. Women seems to be the biggest consumers gender wise.

25% of individuals between 16 and 24 use voice search on mobile.

How all of this can influence search engine optimization?

Natural language keywords might be the next thing. Using natural language matches with consumer searches more, and your rank gets higher. And how do you prepare for it.

Please go to voicefirstweekly.com/flashbriefing/56 to find more statistics about voice search engine optimization predictions. Summarizing, this is the state of voice search today,

In general, voice search is used for:

• Searching for general info on the internet;

• Getting directions;

• Calling or texting somebody;

• Checking the weather;

• Scheduling an alarm;

• Checking sports scores;

• Finding jokes;

• Playing music;

• Opening an app;

• Checking email.

You can check more of this numbers in Seotribunal.

We will be touching on branding again today is this flash briefing, it’s an interesting subject in the state voice technology is today. I think that a lot of players right now won’t be the biggest winners later on, but, as you guys might know already, because I say it constantly, it’s really imperative to be in the platforms and to start defining your strategy, so it’s always interesting to me to talk about how brands are reacting to this wave. Audio branding is not new, it comes since the Golden Age of Radio, but it were never a time where it was more important to know how you brand sounds like in today’s times. And as part of your audio strategy or voice strategy, the first thing is the actual voice.

That’s the distinction that might make or break the experience for the users in voice applications, and when choosing a voice, even if smart assistants are relatively new there is a lot of science and studies relative to on-brand voices. You know, there is a reason why lots of people love Morgan Freeman voice, for instance. Voice is the link between your audience and your brand. But after you found your voice, how is gonna sound what is gonna say, if it intp or intj, how do you actually amplify the experience? Launch a voice app, have a sonic logo, a sonic logo is the combination of sounds that identify you uniquely and that it’s in tone with the personality of your voice, i bet you’ll remember, well, those who were born then, the Nokia opening tone

The power of audio can be a tool to deliver white glove service in a hands-free environment; a frictionless conduit through which you can deliver customer service as the experience unto itself.

The sense of urgency to be in voice platforms that we listen constantly means that at least you should be putting some content on one of this platforms, or ideally all. Take care of your voice and audio experiences. To see is to believe, but to listen is to experience.

Make sure if you are listening to this to say hi on Twitter @voicefirstlabs or Instagram @voicefirstweekly.
I would like to know more about, tell me what you want to hear feature or just tell me about you, and ask me anything!

The news of the day yesterday was an article by the Information, echoed by Techcrunch “Surprise, no one buy things via Alexa”. According to information very few owners of Alexa devices use them for shopping. Of 50 million, reportedly only 100 000 bought something via voice interface more than once. The article goes on about how Amazon has been trying to push for conversational commerce on this platform and pose the question: Who would just buy something by telling their Echo that they want to? Hardly anyone, according to the publication. The article does highlights Alexa as a good seller of subscriptions as Spotify and Audible (and I will say, Amazon Music). But It ends with a harsh statement, it’s like using a laptop as a hammer. Ouch.

We continue to see this articles questioning whether voice technology is there or not, voice commerce being the latest one. I think that’s normal for this stage in the technology. Let’s try to present what we know until now. First thing, this reports contradicts other studies. According to the smart audio report by NPR and Edison Research released this July, the second thing smart speaker owners request the most is add to my shopping list. Twitter user Derek says it blandly, I don’t use Alexa to order things, I use it to reorder things. But it’s that all?

No, NPR report also concludes that users Top three index activities during the day is Add to shopping list. Other user research has shown a higher percent of users doing purchases via Alexa. One thing is distinguish between plain transactions done through the smart speaker or the whole shopping experience. Are users researching products through Alexa and Google Home? According to several user surveys, yes. Are users adding products to their shopping list and thus, effectively buying this products? Apparently yes, according to NPR.

Assuring that no one wants to buy thing through voice is a wide, full of assumptions statement. I think time will tell, but for now, I’ll keep believing that voice is so young as a medium, its developing and growing, we have a long road ahead. Expect the technology to be there yet (for whatever subject matter you are thinking) is ignore the cycles in which inventions in human machine interface has evolved. And I rather stay away from that.

What do you think? We’ll like to start a debate on the subject, #IsThereYet @voicefirstlabs on Twitter or @voicefirstweekly on Instagram and let us know what you think, about this. Find the show notes at voicefirstweekly.com/

Check the NPR and Edison Research Smart Audio Report here.

Check the Voysis and Voicebot Voice Shopping Consumer Adoption Report 2018

It seems that it needs to be said and repeated. I have listened or other people have commented recently about the need to call it voice ‘and’. In one of the talks at Voice Summit about voice search, Dustin Coates mentioned the distinction between voice added vs voice-first vs voice-only. And I think that’s fine and even interesting, especially since they are working on voice search. But what I have a concern, it’s about those that believe that voice-first is voice only. When we say voice-first, here at voicefirst weekly and voicefirst labs, what we mean is the first step in an user interaction with machines. It means voice is the initiator. If later that interaction continues with a screen, with camera lenses like Snapchat just released, with your email or continue to be just voice only it’s a different story. The point is voice-first is not about the whole conversational journey, it’s about the beginning of that conversation, how the communication between human – machine is established. I’m no one to judge you if you already have a whole model built around voice only, but understand, this technology is about integration, where every sense come together (ok smell, i’m sure you’ll come in soon enough). Voice first is about multi-modal, you start with voice and might continue with screen, your phone, your car console. And it’s also multi-device. So for me, this is what voice first means and I don’t think that voiceand will catch up a lot, we may end up with other terms for it. This whole thing reminds me of what Chris Geison mentioned that you should meet your users where they are. And they are all over the place, cars, in their homes, in their phones. So build for spreading your modalities and to be later present in different devices.
Thank you for listening!

P.D The same day this audio was published, Dustin Coates published an excellent article discussing his variations of voice first vs voice added vs voice only. I think it’s good that you have every perspective on the subject. My take is about the field in general and not about the different modalities in which you can deal with voice input and outputs. Enjoy the article, and leave us a comment!