Kadir's Blog on Everything

Mobile, Consumer Products, Product Management and the Miscellany var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-30866878-1']); _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'krathnavelu.com']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[d-thougts]

Why consumer product metrics are all terrible

Andrew Chen:

The point of this essay isn’t to provide an excuse for mediocre metrics, but rather, to point out the harsh reality of the situation. There’s just a stark contrast between how much we as consumer entrepreneurs care about our products, versus our target audience who really doesn’t give a shit about how much effort we put in. As a result, people aren’t signing up, and if they do, they don’t use the product nor have a good experience. It’s very hard.

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Statictics

Smartphone OS Shares

Ericsson World Mobility Report

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Everyone needs it vs how many people will need this

Two advertisements from UK telecom operators: One assumes that everyone will need a mobile phone and the other assumes that a % of people will need this. 

Orange: Everyone needs mobile phones in future

Cellnet: Some people will need this

Pretty interesting way to look at the market opportunity. 

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Ways to think about market size.

When you try to work out the market potential for something fundamentally new, you’re actually trying to resolve two, linked problems. 

First, you have to look past what it is now, and see how much better and cheaper it might become

Second, you need to think about who would buy it now, and who else would buy it once it is better and cheaper, and how it might be used. 

 The second problem is actually the hard one. 

[d-thougts]

OEMs can use these phones for warranty replacement units or sell it on discount in segments that cannot afford brand new phones. I wonder when this will become a product line itself - my iPhone 5 was in good working conduction. I just wanted to get the new phone.

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HoloLens

Microsoft HoloLens.

It is a bold bet and something Microsoft should be doing. My concern is how practicality for consumers: If you are living with someone in a house, it will be super awkward to walk around with this head gear or a couple sitting side-by-side with the head gears. It isolates you from your surrounding.

Compared to this, Google Glasses looks very acceptable. 

I don't see Apple rushing in to this space because of the same issue - it is awkward and society will not change to adapt this. It needs to be subtler than this. 

[d-thougts]

A mile wide, an inch deep

Numbers are important. Number of users is important. So are lots of other things. Different services create value in different ways. Trust your gut as much (or more) than the numbers. Figure out what matters and build something good.

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The right way to ask users to review your app

Circa’s secret to getting 90% 5-stars

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Time for New Questions in Mobile

Benedict Evans: 

It’s hard to express just how much of a change this is. For the first time ever, the tech industry is selling not to big corporations or middle-class families but to four fifths of all the adults on earth - it is selling to people who don’t have mains electricity or running water and substitute spending on cigarettes for mobile. This means we have accelerating complexity in three ways: we go from middle class families to everyone, we go from the PC to mobile, and we go from the simplicity of the web browser, mouse and keyboard model that lasted twenty years (thanks Marc!) to these complex, multi-layered devices where everything is still changing. And this is why it's so much fun. 

[d-thougts]

You want to talk about the “user experience” of your product? You’ve got to earn that right by watching people use it. Because that’s the only time the user experience flickers into existence. Yes you should look at stats. Yes you should read research reports. Yes these are all great inputs. But they’re also indirect. You need to be there when it happens. You need to be in the room. Once you fix that feedback loop, you can worry about all the stuff on top. Responsive vs adaptive, skeuomorphic vs flat, iOS vs Android. All of that stuff only matters once you’ve answered the real challenge of your medium.

Why The Internet Is Anti-design, and How You Can Fight Back

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Faith in Eventually

Jason Fried:

It’s hard to live with something that isn’t quite right yet – especially when it’s your job to get it right. It’s important to know when to say “it’s fine for now, but it won’t be fine for later.” Because moving forward is critical to getting somewhere. And, eventually, you’ll figure it all out. It’ll all work out in the end.

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Microtragetting Potential Voters

On Facebook, nobody know you're a voter. Well, almost nobody:

The “Custom Managed Audiences” tool works like this: A campaign or group uses its own list of potential voters (or buys one from a state authority or private vendor) and uploads it to Facebook. The company then matches the names to its user base through databases managed by companies, such as Acxiom, that specialize in collecting information about individuals. This process effectively combines the electoral information it already knows about voters with their Facebook profiles: likes, group memberships, issues or even favorites. The process anonymizes the users’ personal identifiers but retains enough information to enable campaigns to target well-defined groups.

While it targets advertising more precisely, the campaigns can also use it to raise money. For Facebook users, this new tool most likely means more political advertisements, but those ads could be directed to very specific interests or concerns.

....

The tool also enables campaigns to build “look-alike audiences” that consist of Facebook users who are not included in the original voter file but who generally match the characteristics of those who are, thus extending the potential reach of advertising. This is similar to the voter modeling that campaigns use to find out which candidates voters they have not contacted are likely to support. Although Facebook advertisers have been able to build “look-alike” groups based on Facebook’s own data since last year, now they can create them from their custom files.

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Leaders are right a lot...

Jeff Bezos on 'right a lot':

He said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. He doesn’t think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy — encouraged, even — to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today.

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Temporary Tattoo to Unlock your Moto X

Digital tattoo for Moto X

Entering passcode to unlock the phones is nuance. But do I have to stick a NFC enabled temporary tattoo that lasts for 5 days to overcome that problem? Nope. 

Solutions to an already solved problems like this for sake of differentiation irks me. Oh it sells in a pack of 10 for $10.

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Top 20 Windows Phone Countries

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27 out of 45 customers asked their waiter to take a group photo. 14 of those requested the waiter retake the photo as they were not pleased with the first photo. On average this entire process between the chit chatting and reviewing the photo taken added another 5 minutes and obviously caused the waiter not to be able to take care of other tables he/she was serving.

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Facebook Messenger - Instead of making it feel like work, FB could have used the data they already have to get users to create actual groups in one tap. I have many such conversations on FB and they could have just used it.