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Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

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Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#321

Post by julianeon »

S0y wrote: post #113

>Customers actually used Echo mostly for free apps such as setting alarms and checking the weather. “We worried we’ve hired 10,000 people and we’ve built a smart timer,” said a former senior employee. That's actually really funny to read. Just last night I was watching my brother cook and he asked Alexa to set a timer (It's pretty much the only thing he uses it for...) I jokingly said "You know, that's a really expen…

The other really good use case, which I'm surprised to see more people don't use, is to use it to immediately add items to a shopping list when you're out (which doesn't auto-buy, to be clear).

Example: cooking, noticed the paprika is out, or in the bathroom, noticing the razors are used up. "Alexa, add to my shopping list..." My most used Alexa feature.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#322

Post by UberFly »

sa46 wrote: post #296
bagels wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't even make sense. Babies cry all the time for a multitude of reasons, none of which are informed by how many diapers are in the house.

Interestingly, there is an app, Chatterbaby [1], that claims to detect why a baby is crying based on the acoustic features of the cry. I've used it with middling success. That'd be a neat integration: "Alexa, why is my baby crying?" [1]: https://www.chatterbaby.org/pages/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-019-0592-4

"Your baby is crying because it doesn't like the brand of formula you purchase. We recommend Amazon Basics!"

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#323

Post by ryukoposting »

anthomtb wrote: post #313
paxys wrote: post #86

The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…

> people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed... > consumers don't behave like that Computer savvy HN readers don't behave like that. My computer illiterate mother-in-law, on the other hand, kind of does. My brother-in-law got her one of those Google smart speakers years ago and she loved the thing. Finally, a computer to which she could ba…

My parents are more computer-literate than the average late-fifty-somethings, but they aren't HN techies by any means. Having lived with them for about a year, I'd break down their Alexa usage like this:

~90% timers

~8% weather

~2% putting items in a shopping list

And I don't recall them ever buying anything via Alexa that they wouldn't have bought on Amazon some other way.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#324

Post by Manuel_D »

mgraupner wrote: post #132
jjfoooo4 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can set the volume to any number from 1-10

Which correlates to 10% and 100%. I want for example 15%, which works with the buttons.

I thought each button press on the volume buttons corresponded to + or -10%? I always thought Alexa's volume only had 10 states (11 counting zero) regardless of buttons or voice commands? Maybe it depends on the device, I have the spherical echo.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#325

Post by supportengineer »

booi wrote: post #220
crazygringo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This a million times. I swear I will never understand why Amazon's supply, organization, and pricing for household goods is such a disaster. Because their experience for mainstream books is mostly perfectly fine -- there's a single listing for each book, and the price doesn't change much, just some discount from list. It works. But for things like paper towels or Tide or whatever, it's utter chaos. Multiple listings…

It's ridiculous that I have to have a spreadsheet with pricing information and links for household goods just to spot check and make sure I'm getting the actual price per quantity that I want due to the multiple dynamic listings that change every day nightmare. Don't ask how many times I receive more or less than I thought I would or something came in 10 packages of 3 instead of 1 30x package.

Prescription drugs have something called "NDC number" ( National Drug Codes ). What we need is NDC numbers but for consumer goods.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#326

Post by Rapzid »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #298
swozey wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costco really needs to get new products in or I don't think it will do well with genz and younger millennials. I hadn't been to a Costco since I was a kid so I had completely forgotten that the only stock (maybe) a few versions of specific items. I went a year or two ago thinking I'd come home with months worth of groceries and I was shocked that it STILL looked like the inside of a 1990s fridge and cabinet with such…

Are there actually good juices on the public market? I'm pretty sure anything you don't squeeze yourself has been reconstituted from parts. I was chatting up a hotel chef recently and he told me the lil 8oz of 'proper' orange juice he gave me cost more to put on the table than the entire rest of the breakfast combined.

Well Sunny D is an "orange drink" and there are various widely available "fresh squeezed" real juice options so... Yes?

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#327

Post by jaggederest »

juxtaposicion wrote: post #309
booi wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ridiculous that I have to have a spreadsheet with pricing information and links for household goods just to spot check and make sure I'm getting the actual price per quantity that I want due to the multiple dynamic listings that change every day nightmare. Don't ask how many times I receive more or less than I thought I would or something came in 10 packages of 3 instead of 1 30x package.

We're building that spreadsheet as a product. I'd love to show you. I'd message you a private link to a prototype but you have no contact info on your profile. If you are interested, can you email or DM me using my profile info?

You also don't have an email on your profile, for what it's worth. I don't use Twitter. I'd be interested in something like this as well.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#328

Post by cqqxo4zV46cp »

polynomial wrote: post #295
booi wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ridiculous that I have to have a spreadsheet with pricing information and links for household goods just to spot check and make sure I'm getting the actual price per quantity that I want due to the multiple dynamic listings that change every day nightmare. Don't ask how many times I receive more or less than I thought I would or something came in 10 packages of 3 instead of 1 30x package.

This creates the opportunity for a start up offering such spreadsheet management as a service to flourish in the ecosystem whether or not Amazon ends up acquiring them. Yes I am being facetious. (obvi)

Unfortunately, another commenter is indicating that they’ve done just that. This is truly some darkest timeline stuff.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#329

Post by LordKeren »

mvanbaak wrote: post #235
textlapse wrote: post #225

If Amazon (and Google and Apple) couldn’t figure out how to monetize a voice/chat ‘app’ after a decade of plowing money into it, how does the whole LLM market come to fruition? Genuinely curious as I see a similar trend: there is definite consumer interest, but just like ‘kitchen timers on Alexa’ what if the LLMs main use case is simply to generate funny memes and the most basic RAG? How does this manifest into a tri…

hype, marketing, investors spent millions so lets make it happen. It feels a lot like the whole crypto thing

This is by design— the rhetoric around crypto was specifically tailored to emulate all the new-exciting-tech talking points in an attempt to get new people to buy in to the market and prop up the next rug pull.

Every new culturally significant tech is going to sound like crypto from now on. And ultimately I think it is too easy to cynically look at all tech hype through the lens of crypto.

I think it is pretty fair to say that LLMs have already achieved several magnitudes more real use cases than crypto ever did.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#330

Post by leros »

paxys wrote: post #86

The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…

I actually used my Alexa like that all the time.

"Alexa, order more dish detergent"

"From your recent order history, I found Cascade Dish Detergent pods, 120 count, $17.99. Would you like to order?"

"Yes"

It was super convenient when I was ordering something I had already ordered before, which is all my common purchased.

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