Amazon opens Alexa Skill Blueprints to businesses, content creators
Featured
Amazon has opened up its Alexa Skill Blueprints to businesses, publishers, brands and others in a move that is likely to quickly inflate Alexa's skill inventory.
The company announced that Skill Blueprints will allow anyone to create skills and publish them to the Alexa Skills Store. Now this effort may be a bit like the Kindle self-publishing move by Amazon where there was a lot more choice as well as sprawl. While it's nice that anyone can create an Alexa skill it's unclear how the sprawl issue will develop.
Also: Best Presidents' Day 2019 sales
There are 80,000 Alexa skills today and the opening of blueprints is likely to add many more quickly.
Skill Blueprints were opened up in April and they are pretty easy to create. ZDNet's David Gewirtz tried out a few.
Amazon is also going after content creators with Skill Blueprints that cover flash briefings to share updates, a WordPress integration that delivers blog posts as audios and educational talks that can be distributed.
Also: Amazon redesigns Alexa Skills Developer Console | Hey Alexa! Hey Google! Smarter IoT is all about context | Getting started with Alexa and smart home tech for under $100 TechRepublic: Amazon Alexa: The smart person's guide | Amazon AI: The smart person's guide | How to become an Alexa developer: The smart person's guide
According to Amazon, there's also many options for individuals looking to create Alexa skills. Tutors have a Flashcards blueprint, personal trainers and gyms have options with Alexa-friendly routines and authors can publish short stories.