|
IMO Alexa is just a bad product, which Amazon thought scale scale scale instead of finding value and product market fit. So many things that it does is better than predecessors, but overall is subpar and didn't get better over time. Ex. Music. Bread and butter for Alexa. Conversion opportunity to Amazon Music. Conversion opportunity for podcasts, news, so much... Try asking Alexa to play new music, something different, slow jazz, I didn't like that song, play something like blah, etc... Most of these queries do not work. It's such a POS. Ex. Proactive notifications. Alexa routinely informs me that diapers or something else from my routine purchases is likely running out and I should refill them. I've used this feature 100s of times in the 7+ years I've owned Alexa. I'm sure the LTV I've given Amazon is hell a lot more than most Alexa users. That being said, I can get so many more recommendations than just the 1-2 things in my routine purchase history. I could go on and on. Ultimately, like many products by large companies, Amazon had a product that received early success because of novelties like hands-free music, alarms, timers - but never found more utility beyond that. Instead of doubling down on discovery, they worked on scaling out the platform and opening it up to 3P developers. The platform they exposed was limited in frustrating ways, and ultimately did not help them discover any hidden gem skills. IMO the smart home virtual assistant is ripe for easy disruption. Throw out Amazon's model and use ChatGPT / Anthropic instead. Keep the 3P plugins. This fusion would be a sufficiently better product than what's in the market today. |