Is Amazon Echo Show a Gateway Drug?

Recently the Amazon “Echo Show” was released for pre-sale, which is basically an Amazon Echo with the addition of a video screen. The original Amazon Echo is a voice assistant with a Bluetooth speaker, and it works much like Siri, the Google assistant, or Microsoft Cortana. While the Amazon Echo has been a hugely successful product (selling 11 million units in two years, as of Jan 2017), it’s not nearly as proliferant (yet) as the 90 million iPhones in use in the US.

The invention of the “information superhighway” in the 90’s was the beginning of the web as an informational resource for the consumer. A purported place where you could “find anything”, a digital information resource much like a cross between a phone book and a library. It began much like a scavenger hunt through static information. The beginning of the web was a static experience.

I was there in early 1995 when “surfing the web” meant web pages that were basically text, links, and .gif images. I remember when every business wanted a dot com website, and what started as an informational page yellow-pages-on-the-web approach gradually led to rich media sites. The 2000’s of the web were a media rich experience, and it wasn’t until the latter part of that decade we got things like the smartphone and geolocation to start moving the Internet experience off of the desktop. This middle decade the web became an interactive experience that extended from web pages on computers to apps and new devices (like tablets and phones).

The two-thousand-teens have now delivered a smartphone in nearly everyone’s hand. This has introduced mobile payments, mobile ordering (of food, services, and retail goods), messaging far beyond SMS texting (900 million users on Facebook Messenger alone), and now the ability to “go live” from your phone anytime you want from multiple platforms. I believe we are now on the tipping point of what I will call the “Real Time Experience”, or the RTE — for everyone.

The Digital Threads That Make Up Real Time Experience

I believe as it becomes more and more available a “real time experience” will be expected by all consumers. What you get used to becomes your expectation. Social media has toyed around with RTE threads bit by bit in the last decade. You’ve seen Facebook posts show a date, time, and location in timeline items for years now. Facebook pages show that a page owner responds “instantly” or “within 5 minutes”. Location based apps and services show people or items close to your vicinity in droves. Twitter shows not only news civilian reported before it’s officially reported, you can practically track the public sentiment as it trends. You can Facetime, Skype, Slack, WeChat, or WhatsApp from your phone and fully expect the popup notification on the other end to instantly connect you with a person. If it doesn’t, what you are is instantly disappointed.

As disjointed as these experiences are, you have slowly become conditioned to expect a RTE as much as possible from all things digital.

The threads of RTE are that a consumer expects technology to align with their needs. It should assist within the constructs of “what I do”, “where I go”, “what I need”, and “what I want”. Help me with my work or daily tasks. Help me get somewhere, or find what I need when I get there. Help me figure out what I want. Help me connect with people, places, and things — as quickly as possible. These are all positive threads.

For good or bad, RTE connects us with the inevitable future of AI. All the positive threads generate data that can be used to begin to predict experiences. AI will begin to weave into the RTE things like “where will I go”, “what will I do”, “what will I buy”, “what am I about to do”, and “what will I do in the future”. While we can obtain a small bit of solace in the fact that these threads of RTE will be used to prevent mass shootings or to prevent terrorism, there is a certain sense of paranoia knowing that eventually technology will know you better than you know yourself.

The Rise of the Conversational UI

Amazon has been the king of inventing and dominating new product categories for awhile now. This is good, considering some forays into existing categories didn’t work so well (enter, and exit the Fire phone). When it comes to wins I think of things like the Kindle, which basically killed brick and mortar book stores by proliferating eBooks. I think of Prime and free shipping, which has led to a slow and painful death for most traditional retailers. And I think of the Amazon Web Services Cloud, an absolutely unrivaled computing platform. Did you know an estimated 33% of ALL global web site traffic was estimated to run on Amazon Web Services in 2012? Who knows how much that has additionally increased in the last 5 years.

While most tech companies struggled to produce a virtual assistant product better than Siri, Amazon knocked it out of the park with both a hardware and software solution that became an instant hit. They carved out a new space, and the Amazon Echo was born. Many versions and iterations of the Echo were also born (with and without a speaker), and any company with hardware or software can now integrate Alexa in to their products as well. This has already happened as Harman Kardon has already added Alexa to their own Bluetooth speaker hardware, selling it with a virtual assistant, and Ford has been the first to add Alexa to a car (the Fusion).

As I previously mentioned, as of Jan 2017 Amazon has sold more than 11 million “Echo” units. I would call this a smashing success, but not exactly big enough to change the world. When I talk to other techies about the Echo, we seem to agree it’s a bit kitschy. Great for party games, a novelty for getting the current weather or obtaining the capital of Wyoming for the children’s book report.

In the last year we have seen the rise of the “conversational UI”. Conversational User Interfaces (CUIs) change the interaction of technology amongst users. Our existing uses are things we’ve already talked about like Siri and Alexa, but also includes the rise of “chatbots”. A chatbot is when you use an interface like Slack or Facebook Messenger and you’re engaged in real-time communication by scripted software. A “chatbot” might ask a question like “what can I help you find?”. It might present options, such as “please choose one of these 3 things” (which lead to more choices or a new destination). It might even seem like it is engaging you in a mock conversation, even though the scripted choose-your-own-adventure style responses are pre-determined.

When I first saw the Amazon Echo two or so years ago, the first thing I wondered was why it didn’t have a video screen. Screens are so cheap, it just seemed like it would have been very easy to include one. While I like the concept of the Echo, I personally do not like talking into devices to get a reply. I have never used Siri, I have an Android phone but have never used Google’s assistant, and I have never used Cortana. I know lots of people like me, and I can’t count the number of times that people have said that Alexa is just plain “creepy”. Despite this, I did think that there would be more users of the Amazon Echo by now.

Then I saw the pre-sale of the Amazon Echo Show with a video screen and I got a thousand ideas all at once. This could be the connector. It could be the thing we didn’t know we needed. It could be exactly the gateway drug Amazon wants it to be.

What Makes Amazon Echo Show a Gateway Drug?

When I first saw the Echo Show I knew that it would be popular because it had the ability to go beyond a traditional question and answer type conversation. The video screen adds a visual element which far exceeds the capability of voice commands alone. Dharmesh Shah wrote an article about “The Subtle Reason The Amazon Echo Show Will Be A Smashing Success” in which he says “We can read at about 250 words a minute, but we can listen at about 150 words a minute.” The Echo Show will be more widely accepted because it’s easier (and faster) to use. Almost twice as fast.

Speed and ease of use will bring people to the Echo Show, but things that gain traction quickly are things that are easy, useful, and least path of resistance. Think Swiffer. I can remember in the 80’s and 90’s seeing several very expensive devices that attempted to be video phone on a landline. I also remember that until the last few years, doing nearly anything video (including video calling) on a cell phone not connected to WiFi was just useless. Now Amazon is introducing a device that could sit in your living room or kitchen, and you can just touch a button to quickly video call family or friends. You might be thinking that this is not so revolutionary, and yet it’s about to be.

Amazon has more than 300 million users. 80% of Amazon US customers make a purchase at least once per month. 44% of web shoppers go directly to Amazon any time they do a product search online. 60% of Amazon users are estimated to be prime users. Amazon encourages students to sign up for Prime Student (for free at first, and then a reduced rate), and Amazon Family members to connect accounts and share content.

With an Amazon Echo Show I can see myself calling my kids or my Mom because we all have Amazon accounts and we all have prime. I can see it being pretty easy to setup a friends and family circle there, and adding my siblings to call their families too. In fact, since most of us are deluged with robo-spam on the cell phone (and we all religiously avoid even checking voicemail), I can see this being a very clean and new way to quickly connect to those that are important to me. Video is just an added bonus that clinches the deal. If Amazon can suck people in with this one single feature alone, it could start a tidal wave of usage and become an expected RTE for consumers. Amazon could actually deliver the video phone we were looking for 30+ years ago.

But wait — there’s more. In the early web it was cool to have a toolbar or widget displaying the weather. Most smartphones show the weather as soon as you open the lock screen now. Going back to the “visual processing is faster than voice”, if I had a device in my kitchen showing the weather by the coffee pot, I would probably view it at the start (and end) of each and every day. The Echo is voice driven, and you can use it to play songs — but with the Echo Show you could use it to show the lyrics too. You could listen to the song while shopping for a t-shirt of that band that’s playing. You could ask for a recipe, see the ingredients on the screen, AND watch a video example of how to cook it.

Let’s go to the next level and think about the Echo Show for home automation. Sure you could dim the lights, turn on the air, or open the blinds. But with video I could view the baby monitor, see who’s at the front door, or check the back yard. I can check the pool, or maybe even check the location on a map of my future student driver. I can watch the news while watching the stove, and I can make a shopping list and order what I need visually at the same time. You can see why I called this a gateway drug, just using the calling feature could be the tipping point leading to much, much more.

How the Echo Show as a Gateway Leads to the Real Time Experience

Amazon has the opportunity to become what Microsoft wanted to be 20 years ago. In the late 90’s Windows was stagnating and Bill Gates desperately wanted to get the PC in the living room. He foresaw Microsoft being able to deliver a whole home entertainment device (it just didn’t happen). This is the entire reason the Xbox was created, it was originally supposed to run Windows and get Microsoft into the living room. When Xbox launched in 2001 it made them a serious console contender, but not much more has happened since then. While Microsoft earned an impressive $1.9 billion in gaming revenue Q1 2017, Amazon earned $35 billion for the same quarter. Amazon is not only getting into your living room (and your kitchen), it’s getting you to purchase at least one thing per month from them while connecting you with your home, friends, and family. Something Xbox and Microsoft has never been able to do.

I believe that the gateway to the real time experience lies in getting you used to the video feature with calling family and friends, and getting used to performing simple voice searches that are complemented by video. Looking up a recipe by voice, viewing images to find the best picture and ratings, then getting a visual ingredients list or a video. When you’ve viewed multiple pressure cooker recipes it suggests you might like a “pressure cooker cookbook” (by showing images). If you order a Star Wars light saber “you might like” a Chewbacca mask too. Wouldn’t it be funny if it suggested that with the Chewbacca noise in the background. This isn’t really different than what the Amazon website has been doing all along within its web pages.

I think the next step is for brands to make help or information instantly accessible through whatever device they’re using. Real time experience is the new responsive design. This might involve a little AI and I predict we will think it’s creepy at first (but gradually get used to it). Let’s say you return an item to Amazon. Your Echo Show could show the notification “would it be OK if a company representative called you?” You might think “sure, I have a lot to say about my issues” and agree. What would your perception of that brand be if you placed a return, and a company rep video called you before you could even print out the return label? Even if you still had to return it, your experience might have gone from negative to positive (just from the interaction). If they fixed the issue (so you didn’t have to return it), or sent out a new one before it was even returned you would probably tell everyone you knew how great that company was.

This article was originally published on Medium. Read the final paragraphs and accompanying resource links here.