Amazon Echo can now read your Twitter notifications for you

Amazon Echo, the odd looking cylindrical Bluetooth speaker has gained a new skill adding to a long list. Twitter released an update to add “Twitter Reader” skill to the device using Amazon Alexa. Amazon Alexa is the voice platform by Amazon that acts like a digital assistant powering Echo devices.

Twitter also launched a #AskAlexa hashtag during the announcement of the feature. The feature in its current state does not support push notifications. Users can ask Alexa about latest trends, tweets, mentions, and notifications. This works like a cool Iron Man digital assistant J.A.R.V.I.S or Friday (considering which comic series or movie you have watched.) Some of the commands that can be used to interact with Twitter using Alexa according to TechCrunch are: “Alexa, ask Twitter for my own tweets” “Alexa, ask Twitter has anyone retweeted me?” “Alexa, ask Twitter for my Mentions” “Alexa, ask Twitter what is happening?” The users can turn the new Twitter skill using the Alexa app on the smartphone or the web version to authorize the service to access your Twitter account. This comes right after the company **announced an upgrade** to its messaging service, ‘Direct Messages’ with read receipts, typing indicators among other features. Even though the amount of information posted on Twitter makes it inefficient for Voice platform but, the mere presence of Twitter app highlights the importance of Amazon Alexa as a platform.