I recently joined Emily Binder and Katherine Prescott on Emily’s Beetle Moment Marketing podcast where we discussed a few different topics pertaining to voice assistants. Katherine and Emily quickly became two of my favorite people to follow in the voice space after I had the chance to meet them both at the Voice Summit and hear them share their stories about what excites them about voice technology.

I wrote about Katherine, her awesome VoiceBrew newsletter, and her appearance on the podcast, This Week in Voice, last week (read it here). Emily’s a wealth of knowledge as well, providing constant insights spanning the whole spectrum of traditional and digital marketing through her Beetle Moment podcast, flash briefing and twitter account. You can check out the first podcast convo I had with Emily about hearables here. They’re both super sharp and provide great ongoing commentary as this technology unfolds.
Our discussion centered around Amazon’s Voice Interoperability Initiative that Amazon launched in September along with 30 other companies. The main question that we collectively considered during the podcast was whether we’re moving toward a future where everything funnels through one voice assistant or, instead, might there be a multitude of assistants?
With the BBC’s announcement that it will be launching it’s own “mini-assistant” – Beeb, which will house all of the BBC’s content – a new dynamic is emerging around the voice assistant space. We talk through this new dynamic and how it might evolve, thinking through what a multi-assistant scenario would look like (an app store?), the differences between a “mini-assistant” and the skill ecosystem, and how new contexts, such as hearables, will also impact this new equation. Listen in and enjoy this 20 minute discussion!
-Thanks for Reading-
Dave