Product Management: Shelfware

There are lot of shades of gray between the product that sells and the product that is actually used and recommended.  I see this often with enterprise software.  Although a company buys a software product, it does not necessarily mean that the product is being used.  It happens often in enterprise software because buyers are often not the users.  If you are buying for someone else to use the product, it is more prone to buy something that may not be useful to the end users.

But this also exists in consumer space.  And it happens all the time.

I am not talking about something that you grew out of.  I'm talking about something that you thought you'd use, but never found it as useful for one reason or another and decided that it's just easier not to use it than trying to make it work.

There are many such examples.  Let me share one.  It's voice command control on my car.  I don't know of anyone who uses voice command to enter address, although technology has been available for several years.  Take a look at the steps involved in entering address using voice command.

You are all powering YouTube: Filter your own content

Thanks to social media, we all are publishers.  Whether we have been trained to be media savvy or not, keyboards and free social media accounts have been popping up on our computer and mobile device screens.

Here's the problem that I see this with everyone getting access to global media:

We are just getting used to this new media.  

We have not been talking or teaching kids about how to use social media.  People don't distinguish whether something is a fact or opinion.  There is nothing that tells the subscribers whether something is a fact or opinion.

Zuckerberg shares his lesson from HTML5: Speed matters

Mark Zuckerberg appeared on the stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012 the other day.  He talked briefly about Facebook's stock performance, but spent most of time talking about Facebook's mobile strategy.

One of the interesting things that Zuckerberg mentioned was how he failed by focusing on HTML 5 back in 2010.  He recounted that the performance was not there to create the best mobile user experience, and talked about how he had to redo the mobile development work on iOS to provide the best user experience possible.  His conversation with Michael Arrington on this topic starts 11 minutes into the interview:

KQED Forum: The Cheapest Generation

Derek Thompson and Jordan Weissman from the Atlantic magazine appeared on KQED Forum this morning.  Topic was how the new Millennial generation is fundamentally changing our culture of consumption.  Products and services like Zipcars and smartphones propelled by more social sharing than ownership are making it easier to rent than own, especially when it comes to cars.


The most interesting comment was this idea of how cars are being replaced by smartphones.  Car was not just a means of transportation.  It had been a symbol of adulthood, social status and freedom.  Now smartphone is in some sense replacing car as social platform to share experiences for the Millennial generation.

It used to be unthinkable to think of going out on a date without a car.
Now going out anywhere without a smartphone is unthinkable.
Never mind the car, we'll hop on a Muni bus but we've got our iPhones.

Apple is quick to learn

Earlier I wrote about why Apple was the biggest loser from the patent war.  It seems that people are agreeing.  CNET ran a couple of articles talking about Apple image in decline while Samsung's remaining largely intact from the lawsuit.  Forbe cited social media listening data from Radian 6 how there were much more negative sentiments around Apple since the verdict has been announced.

Apple lost the PR war from its patent lawsuit against Samsung;
I bet that Apple is well aware of this and changing its course.

Data points to Apple's PR loss.  But Apple is learning quickly.

Livebolt: The 2012 Disrupt SF Hackathon winner

There was the 2012 Disrupt SF Hackathon over the weekend.  It had 147 teams participating.  Hackathon is a great platform to launch your startup when all you have is engineering skills and product ideas.  It provides a great potential to get lot of exposures to winners which is a good thing to have.  Getting people to pay attention to your project is not an easy thing to do.

This year's winner was Livebolt.  Livebolt lets user open a door remotely using iPhone app and $60 hardware when a visitor shows up at the door.

Product Management: Solve a big must-have problem first

I don't keep my desk neat.  From time to time I find something that I meant to put away for a short while on the corner of my desk.  I wanted to share one of those things that I found today on my desk.  It's a 6-inch USB extension cord.

"It is not necessary to use this UBS extension cord."
Someone must have asked for this feature, and
MagicJack was smart enough not to build extension cord in its product.

It came with one sticker around the cord, which says "it is not necessary to use this USB extension cord."  I believe the code came with MagicJack.  They must have received customer requests asking for extension cord.  After including the cord, I guess they wanted to make it clear that extension cord is not required piece of hardware for MagicJack to work.

Seeing this label and 6-inch USB extension cord gave me a pause.  I asked myself whether I am building anything that is not necessary to use.  If it is not necessary to functionality, I should have looked for a generic solution.  Just like MagicJack did not set out to build extensible USB cord, a great product should contain the absolute bare essential to solve the problem at hand.

That is the focus.  That is the only way to solve a big and must-have problem.  Let all the other small problems to be solved by someone else who can do it cheaper and off-the-shelf.