Hearst Is Launching a 10-Person Team Tasked With Building Voice-Activated Experiences

Good Housekeeping's December issue Hearst may be a 129-year-old media company, but even it's planning for a Jetsons-like future when news will be consumed through voice-controlled technology. The New York-based company has quietly launched a 10-person group called the Native and Emerging Technologies (or NET group) that's responsible for keeping the mega-publisher up to speed with the newest technologies, starting with voice-activated devices including Amazon Echo, Google Home and voice-based smartphone experiences. For instance, this week, the team launched an Amazon Echo Skill for Good Housekeeping. The group was born out of Hearst's acquisition of startup BranchOut a couple of years ago. "We're looking at this new wave of natural language interfaces as being a great source of content discovery and content interaction," said Phil Wiser, Hearst's chief technology officer. "We find all of that to be increasingly important as a way to engage consumers." The Good Housekeeping Echo skill allows users to receive a step-by-step guide of instructions and recommended tools to remove stains by talking to the cylinder-shaped gadget. As consumers work through removing the stain, music plays in the background. "It's a really good branding opportunity—as we're providing that advice, we can also give the consumer guidance on which brands they should look for," Wiser said. "That's a theme that we're going to build on as we take our expert editorial content and weave it in... Continue reading at 'AdWeek'

[ AdWeek | 2016-12-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with: #machine learning #mobile app

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