Amazon Alexa surpasses 10,000 skills

Amazon has announced another Alexa-related milestone: more than 10,000 skills are now available. (A “skill” is Alexa’s equivalent of a mobile app.)

The skill that helped Alexa reach 10,000 is a musical game called Beat the Intro, which invites players to guess song titles based just on the opening bars of music before the singing starts. In fact, Amazon’s David Isbitski says gaming skills are the second-most popular category overall so far. Here’s the top five:

1. News
2. Gaming
3. Education/Reference
4. Lifestyle
5. Novelty/Humor

With more than 10,000 skills now, the library has added about 3,000 of them since last month’s 7,000-skill milestone. Overall, the skills count has more than tripled in the five months since Amazon said there were 3,000 skills available.

Amazon has been heavily courting the developer community with a developer portal and skills kit, and recently launched a hub to help marketers create voice skills.

Discovery is still a concern, though. Amazon overhauled the Alexa app last summer to make it easier to find skills, and more recently began listing them on the web at Amazon.com/skills. As the skills library continues to grow, it’s likely Amazon will need to stay ahead of the curve and make it even easier for developers to get their skills in front of potential users.