BY: Brittany Vallely
There is Siri, Alexa, Cortina, and now Aloha. Facebook is getting ready to launch their own voice assistant that will be more dependable than the rest, according to an article on Social Media Week.
Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, worked on his own personal voice assistant for over a year and was inspired by Iron Man’s Jarvis. He is now using those codes to create a speaker for the public. The reason why Facebook is wanting to compete with Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana is because they are becoming more demanding in households. Social Media Week found that ComScore predicts that 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches by 2020.In order for Zuckerberg to get his product on top of the charts, he is going to have to make sure Aloha stands out, but makes life easier.
Why is Aloha special? What makes Aloha different is that the home speaker will be connected from a social network service, and not from a multinational technology company. The article states that Aloha will supposedly be able to translate slang to help make voice searching easier. The voice searching will also help Facebook get to know their users better by hearing how they communicate and behave with Aloha. People can also use the voice assistant to reply back to comments or message people on multiple social media networks.
Aloha could change advertisement. The voice assistant will help Facebook gain more exposure. Marketers will be able to find their main customers through Aloha as well. Companies will have a better understanding of one’s interest from the requests people ask Aloha. “When someone does a voice search, they’re looking to actually make moves, such as purchase something,” says the article. Facebook will be able to produce more specific content on one’s watch list and market section. Aloha will be a huge money maker for Facebook because people will buy the speaker, and the speaker will provide information that will get more companies involved.
Overall, the goal for Aloha is to create a device that is more social to help people stay connected and fix the issues that other voice assistants lack.