I should probably title this one “Open Conversations, pt. 1” because we will revisit this subject over and over again in this newsletter. That’s because we believe the only thing holding back amazing voice experiences for users is open standards and protocols. The one thing that was clear from a week at CES and a week at Project Voice last month was that we are going to have more voice assistants and domain-specific voice assistants in our lives, not less. There will not be one voice assistant with a 70% market share like Google Chrome in browsers. I doubt that even the CEOs and SVPs of Amazon, Apple, Google, or Samsung will have a singular car-to-home-to-TV voice assistant experience. The future is and will be a multiple voice assistant world.
So how do we move forward with open voice across multiple assistants? To borrow from my friend Mike Masnick, we should “build protocols, not platforms.” While Mike was referencing the benefits of open protocols in the context of free speech online, the point applies to us in the voice community. Here’s the thing…we’ve seen this proprietary online distribution situation before.
For those who didn’t come up with dial-up modems and CRT monitors, there was a time when online communications were dominated by wall-garden services like AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy. These services set the rules for content creation, monetization and how your brand presented itself to consumers through their services. Tell me if this sounds familiar to you? Alexa..what was Compuserve?
Even as these proprietary services dominated, open protocols existed and new ones were created that ultimately created a better online experience…eventually. From Mike’s piece:
”The early internet involved many different protocols—instructions and standards that anyone could then use to build a compatible interface. Email used SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Chat was done over IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Usenet served as a distributed discussion system using NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol). The World Wide Web itself was its own protocol: HyperText Transfer Protocol, or HTTP.”
Just watch a bit of this video and you’ll see some early open internet in all it’s glory. You would have to squint really hard to see the future we live in today. But it’s there.
That brings me to today’s #mustreads. The following are three pieces from folks who went to Project Voice (and a couple who went to CES as well). They talk about leveraging the open web to make smarter voice assistants. The lack of revenue we have seen over the last half-decade working on proprietary voice assistant platforms, and steps we could take to solve that. They also reference trends we are seeing that indicate a better, more interoperable voice development future if we come together. Even better, they are helping to build it. That’s our goal too. Enjoy.
How the Open Web Can Change Publishing to Voice Assistants by Daniel Tyreus from Soundcheck
“There could be a better way for publishers to get content onto voice devices. Instead of building proprietary voice apps for each platform, let’s teach assistants to better understand structured web content. “
Project Voice Convinced Me It’s Time for an Open Voice Web by Matt Buck from Voxable
“As entrepreneurs in the voice industry for the past four-and-a-half years, my partner Lauren and I (firmly) agree it’s more of a struggle to make a living than it should be. The fact that we’re still having conversations at major conferences about monetization and discovery a half-decade into this journey is distressing, to say the least. And, independent firms aren’t the only ones feeling skittish about voice.”
Voice Trends at the Start of the Decade: Heard from Las Vegas to Chattanooga - Shaun Withers from Jargon
“For many brands exploring voice, the desired use-cases are more complex. The interactions are open-ended and might require a few back-and-forths in the dialog. Building this is not easy. It's challenging enough to create an application that can understand these complex requests, then comes the challenge of serving relevant and useful voice content.”
Think we all might be a little crazy with this whole voice coming of age and opening up? Who knows. Maybe one for these folks will look like Ev Williams, dropping some truth back in the 90’s on how big the open internet was going to be in front of his CRT monitor and modem. I bet they will.
This is issue #4 of SpokeDaily. Please send us any feedback with comments on Substack or on Twitter @spokestack. Thanks for reading!