Amazon’s Alexa just got a taste of Twitter power.
Twitter has rolled out an app that they’re calling Twitter Reader, which lets people have their Amazon Echo smart phone speakers or other Alexa-enabled device recite their Twitter feeds. This app, which seems to be the first Alexa app from a big social network like Twitter, seems to be coming from Twitter the news company more than Twitter the social network itself, since Twitter Reader serves mainly as an audible news reader.
Not only will this app recite people’s main timelines, the Twitter Reader app can read aloud what topics are trending on Twitter near where the person’s location or somewhere else. Users will be able to ask for a sample of tweets corresponding to one of these trends.
People can even as Alexa to check if anybody has mentioned them on Twitter or retweeted one of their tweets. They can also call out a person’s own tweets or tweets that they’ve liked.
Right now, it’s not clear if Twitter has a way to make money from the Alexa app. There’s been no news from a Twitter or one of their spokespeople on anything else regarding the new app, such as whether it’ll read out Promoted Tweets between the normal tweets appearing in a person’s timeline or list of trending tweets.