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Alright, moving on to today’s business.

Buzzfeed is cutting their podcast unit to focus on shows. The news came fast with some Twitter on layovers the same day last week. According to an article by The Wall Street Journal. Buzzfeed decision to cut its original podcasting staff comes in conjunction with the decision made the previous week, by the audio company Panoply. Audible Originals, the podcasting unit run by Amazon.com Inc.’s Audible audiobooks division, also laid off several employees earlier this year.

Apparently Buzzfeed is having problems keeping up with investors expectations in the advertising torment the industry is suffering from now. The Vice-President of News and Programming Shani Hilton said in a memo to stuff also reported by the Wall Street Journal:

We’ve decided to move to a production model that is more like our TV projects — that is, treating shows as individual projects, with teams brought on as needed.

These developments come as Audible and Buzzfeed reshapes its original programming strategy, alleging for more short-term programming or more Netflix-style shows.

As contrast the NYT Voyages issue will feature stories told through audio that correspond with full images without captions in the magazine”:

For the first time, the Times has produced a bonus crossword puzzle in which more than half the clues will feature audio clues.

Noting the company is experimenting with audio, not podcasts per se.

The founders of Gimlet Media, the narrative podcasting company, said in an episode by Recode Podcast that is expanding beyond original audio shows and into two newer businesses: Film and TV adaptations of their podcasts, such as a TV series reworking of the show Homecoming, now starring Julia Roberts, that will hit Amazon this fall; and branded podcasts, which are completely underwritten by a single sponsor.

Does this means that the podcast media is dying in favor of short-style stories or shows? What does this tell us about the state of podcast monetization at scale? Today I’ll leave you with more questions than answers. Partly because then I can come back and do another episode with the answers!

The truth is that the podcast industry is shifting and we need to watch how that plays out with content being created for smart assistants platforms.

Here are more resources to complement this subject:

• Audible layoffs of podcast division
• A big shakeup at audible

You have a great day and we will talk tomorrow!

From all the voice platforms out there Amazon Alexa is the one offering more monetization options for creators. Even if these options are still limited, there are reports by several successful skills that are doing ok. No one seem to be the next Facebook, Insta or Uber just yet. As far I know, Google Assistant has little to no option of monetization, Samsung Bixby is offering some prizes now for capsules builders, but that’s not a monetization strategy and Microsoft Cortana doesn’t have any as far as I know either. I talked about monetization strategies a while back and that the time I said:

The most obvious monetization strategy is what’s known in Alexa as ISP: In skill purchasing, a way to sell premium content such as game features and interactive stories or sell products. 

Amazon is the one pushing the most for monetization options. This is not that strange, because Bezos, and by extension, Amazon understand incentives very well. E.g: affiliate program in amazon.com, the free tier in AWS and prizes for Alexa skills.

To top that Amazon announced yesterday that developers can now sell consumables in their skills leveraging in skill purchasing.

A consumable is an in-skill product that customers can purchase, use, and then purchase again. In addition to one-time purchases and subscriptions, consumables give developers more ways to deliver premium experiences to customers.

Meaning, users can pay to unlock features in your skills.

The feature is already live in Storyline and VoiceApps where you can use consumables with visual tools in addition of the Alexa Skill Kit CLI.

Another opportunity for developers and skill creators to monetize their work with Alexa skills. As I have said before, developer attention is the currency for companies today and by providing recurring means of revenue to skills developers Amazon keeps getting the attention in the voice space.

We are going to build amazing new voice-base, mobile experiences for customers.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce tweeted this morning.

Salesforce and Apple announced today a new strategic partnership. Looking to win in the enterprise, the partnership means that a salesperson can use Siri after a customer meeting to update that customer’s record with notes from the meeting. Salesforce will be redesigning its mobile app working with Apple and building Siri deeper into Salesforce mobile apps.

Tim Cook said in an interview: If you look at enterprise in general, voice has not been used as much as in consumer, we’re changing the way people work, and that’s always been at the heart of what Apple is about — changing things for the better.

In that vein, Microsoft announced today as well they are launching Cortana Skills Kit for the enterprise. The product lead, Javier Soltero said  that:

The goal is to make Cortana skills and conversational computing in the workplace as easy to use as smartphones are today, requiring no lengthy introduction or user manual.

Enterprise is the next battleground for voice technology

I mentioned here after the special event Apple held, that maybe they were unequipped to compete in a voicefirst world. And this kind of sum it up: they probably are, and establishing this partnership to win the enterprise is a smart move. Shortcuts in apps, plus this integration, Apple can tap into Salesforce developers and its own platform developers to incorporate more Shortcuts and knowledge to Siri, they are basically crowdfunding the platform with knowledge. But this is also a response to Amazon and Microsoft partnership. Reportedly, Facebook is also partnering with Amazon to incorporate Alexa to their Portal smart assistant to be launch later this week, according to a report by Cheddar.

There hasn’t been that many times at the beginning of a technological wave, like we are now with voice, that companies have been collaborating in this way. It certainly didn’t happened for the Apple Store or mobile.

So in that sense, we will be hearing more about partnerships, to tap into each other’s strengths. If this isn’t a sign that voice is the next revolution in computing, nothing else might be. The question is who is next? And how long will this last?

With the release last week of iOS 12 iPhone app developers can integrate an “Add to Siri” button right in their app’s interface for common tasks that their app can perform – like playing a favorite playlist, for instance.

When a user taps this button, they’ll be directed to a screen where they can record their own custom voice command to launch whatever task or action the developer is suggesting.

These are some of the apps that you can try Shortcuts today:

• Pandora: After you “Add to Siri” in the settings for Pandora, you can then choose a specific station, album, or playlist and record a custom phrase to say the next time they want to hear it.
• Streaks: The habit tracker app also added an Add to Siri option that will allow users to record custom phrases to complete their tasks.
• PCalc: will let you record voice commands for any common activity in the app, like converting currencies, setting the clipboard, opening conversions, and more.

Other apps with shortcuts are Sky Guide, Things, Carrot Weather, The Weather Channel, City Mapper, Google News and TripIt.

Jobs to be done… by me?

Even though I was quite disappointed with Apple’s stance on voice during their special event, I’m watching closely their moves. Bringing Brian Roemmele’s thoughts on Shortcuts as powerful kernels for Siri, made by the developers themselves, as a way to have this concept of jobs to be done. What concerns me though with this approach, is that there is so much cognitive load that we can handle in any given moment. The fact that I have to set all of this, and then remember what shortcut I use for the playlist and which to open my cards on Trello put the load on me as the consumer and not in the machine.

Show love for the work and share this episodes, subscribe to get a daily roundup in the world of voice. You have a great Sunday and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

This week Skype announced their excitement to bring Skype to Alexa. Using only your voice, users can make outgoing Skype voice and video calls, accept incoming Skype calls, and even make SkypeOut calls to most phone numbers around the world. Sample phrases are “Lexi, call Jimmy on Skype,” or if Jimmy is calling you on Skype, say, “Lexi, answer.”

VentureBeat reported on the collaboration that

Adding support for an app with hundreds of millions of users, that happens to be one of the oldest and best-known ways to make video calls, is an awful lot better than starting from zero.

This is part of the collaboration between Microsoft and Amazon in a very smart play. The companies previously released Cortana and Alexa integration, their respective smart assistants and Xbox integration.

I can’t stress enough how genius Amazon (and Microsoft are both playing here with voice). I’m not sure how long this friendship is going to last but is certainly a win win for consumers. I have never make calls through Alexa but frequently use Skype, now I can do it outside my phone or computer, it doesn’t sound like much, but if you are having long calls, as I often have with my cofounder, it’s good to be able to focus on your work in the computer while handling the call by voice.