With a wealth of chatter on industry blogs about the problem of email morass and need for information reduction (e.g., Fred Wilson, A VC ), it’s a problem I’m exploring as a product. New services like Hunch and WolframAlpha suggest more intelligent, computational search is a growing market.
The original killer app and yet still primitive Internet channel is email, because it’s an established, trusted usecase that connects users to search without needing to go out and search, rather integrate relevant information into their daily workflow, pushed directly to them. In fact, e-mail is a form of “Push” – a delivery concept that was predicted by Wired 10+ years ago and never came to dominate the Web. But virtually every site in the world now has an e-mail sub and/or mailinglist option that, in essence, pushes news and transaction requests to users. The growth of these subs has created an amazing wealth of niche information broadcast daily in email… and also way too much clutter in our in-boxes. Referring again to Seth Godin’s recent post: “Right now, there’s way too much stuff and far too little information about that stuff. Sounds like an opportunity.”
Revive Push as intelligent search via email. MeMail.
As Taleb’s “The Black Swan” notes, “The strategy for the discoverers and entrepreneurs is to rely less on top-down planning and focus on maximum tinkering and recognizing opportunities when they present themselves.”
Brilliant you think you are, but you cannot engineer success. Neither could Larry and Sergei.
The message is to silence the ego, drop the genius complex and get to work.
Having tested Aardvark for a few weeks now, I find the answers are not usually high quality because the social network connections are too remote to provide specific and trusted answers. The IM interaction, however, is addictive. I feel compelled to answer users even more than ask questions. It’s a simple, fast distraction with another regular human that you can regulate (modify settings for frequency of questions) or ignore without recourse.
At the heart of it are 2 principles:
- the “good samaritan” urge to help someone in need
- the anonymity to pass on helping others without being fingered as a negligent netizen
I’m reverse-engineering my own Aardvarkian habits and feelings for the last month, so this is not just theory, but real behavior that their prototype proves in practice. But do my answers help Aardvark users? (example Q&A.)
I’m not sure Aardvark will succeed as more than a novelty unless they can narrow the social circles to provide more contextual specificity. Even leveraging users’ Facebook network out-of-the-box is not focused enough for questions which tend to be local, e.g., “can you recommend a good mid-century modern antique shop in SF?” Response from Aardvark after 10 minutes: “No response yet from people who know about **mid-century modern and San Francisco”
Taking their idea a few steps further, leveraging similar and more honed interactions on top of mailing list communities could be a nice blend of UX and hyper-local social, trusted content.
The economics of Internet video is broken. Independent estimates suggest that after 5 years of operation YouTube still loses $.5 billion /yr after the balance of relatively meager revs and massive infrastructure/bandwidth costs. Google execs have made many comments that “it’s not working, and they are exploring ideas.” But Google has already pursued and abandoned “paid content” once offered via Google video (pre-YT acquisition). Their eyes are trained away from it now, but they may not realize that they failed due to market timing and bad execution. Consumers were understandably not willing to commit money and hassle with a CC transaction for every purchase of clip content from unknown sources with no previews at a time copyrighted content was suddenly becoming available on YT for free. Today there is a new emphasis on content protection and monetization.
Hulu’s content and revenue looks promising on the surface, but they still are in debt. They are 100% ad-based and a perfect example of “shovel ware” – that is, shoveling an offline model online; they simply replicate the network TV model on the Web. Note the evolution of offline Network TV: The 3 networks controlled it until Cable came along in the ’80s and convinced consumers to spend for exclusive content and quality. Today the avg consumer spends $700/yr for paid content via Cable. I predict a similar pattern for the Internet (paid content), but designed for the Internet, on demand, pay only for what you consume, right down to the minute, and promoted by user affiliates who share in the wealth.
To build content, pursue the content providers first. They are petrified of the Internet doing to them what it did to the music industry; they are willing to try paid content solutions above free ones. They will understand that, in order to be successful, their content needs to be held away from free sources. That leaves 4 main competitors for online paid video content: Cable distributors, NetFlix, Amazon and iTunes. They all require monetary commitment from consumers.
Two prevailing methods of search and discovery are social vs. self. Sometimes you want to know what others are reading to serve as a guide to discovery and to stay abreast of popular trends. Other times you are purely interested in discovering good articles, regardless of social trends. Self-discovery is the seed of trends, and those who tend to read that way are more likely to be the trendsetters. But just as important to trends are the people who spread them.
Serendipitous reading is the drive for self-discovery. Very few, when asked, would say they want to read only what others (even their best friends) have deemed popular. No one wants automated personalization to blind them to self-discovery. So, personalization automated by social or self history is a slippery-slope, except when presented strictly as an option.
Google’s recent efforts to personalize search based on history and preferences is troubling. By default, we want the same, unadulterated search results the rest of the world gets. Search Wiki ( http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your-own.html ) would be useful if presented as an option (like a secondary tab or search filter), but the feature makes you log out of your Google account to see unmanipulated results!
Digg personalizes news by industry category from user-generated posts and displays it on the Web. Your Digg account does this today based the “industry” preferences you set, but then why don’t you get even all of your favorite publisher/blogger articles on, for instance, architecture and design on your personal Digg page? Digg’s personalization isn’t specific enough and the content is user-generated based on article (instead of publisher) and not complete. All the niche articles offered in email blasts daily are, for the most part, nowhere to be found on my Digg homepage.
Topical news from publishers and bloggers get blasted via email. You’ve spent months and years self-discovering (often through social recommendations) these pubs and deliberately signed up to receive email news updates from them. In essence, you’ve already self-designed your content preferences. But now there are too many, a lot of overlap and duplication. For example, you may see the same article covering a new home manufacturing technique on CleanTech and MocoLoco modern design blog.
Allow users to funnel the emails through a new service (do this by simply adding a FeedBurner link or email sub to their profile page) which will clean them up and organize, remove duplicates and categorize into a single, “intelligent digest.” The more feeds and lists users generate, the more content the service gleans and can present on a Web portal. You can then explore top-line blogs, categories and articles deeper. It presumes the publishers would vie for user attention on this service which could be the basis for a revenue stream.
There are many services to filter and personalize news on the Web or in desktop RSS apps/plugins. But what about news delivered in email? Many people use email as their push mechanism for discovery of content from topical publishers who offer opt-in lists to be alerted when new features are posted.
One pain point I perceive is the duplication and clutter from 100s of overlapping publisher emails, categories and posts. The hook is to use email as the channel and an intelligent digest as the solution.
Very small, seemingly insignificant interface implementations are the entire value prop of many start-ups. Consider how Posterous built it’s service on 1 simple premise: use email to post anything. Email was their interface hook to blogging and microblogging already offered by dozens of incumbant platforms like Movable Type, WordPress and Twitter. But it’s just stupid easy to populate a blog by email, noone was thinking of it, so they did it and became known for it. Simple as that, a tiny interface hook can gain traction as the springboard for a company.
With a bushel of new Web products introduced every month, it’s a huge challenge to attract attention to yours. Today Web products are like onions—overabundant and offensive unless prepared and served with care.
The best “approach vector” (to borrow the phrase from a friend) is to start with a very simple, succinct expression that:
- Addresses a pain point
- Introduces an enticing value prop
Each expression (in order: logo, tagline, statement, case studies), should flow to the next by piquing curiosity to solve a problem and create a new opportunity.
Allow your audience to peel back the layers of your onion, skin-by-skin, so they never get overwhelmed in tears. They should enjoy the fine, even subtle experience of eating a well-prepared dish that came from a bushel of raw onions.
A few years back it took a suitably long time to build and launch a Web product. Founders needed a formal business plan, months to secure funding, employees, an office, formal market analysis, top-down planning, waterfall development, marketing, sales… All these difficult, expensive, time-consuming steps made it prohibitively difficult for average Joe to pursue a Web start-up. A Web-generation of companies came to the rescue.
Consider where we are today. Tools and platforms now allow average Joe to build and release a product in days or weeks with no funding, just an idea and some spare time. The new Agiledevelopment mantra encourages sprint cycles for iterative development which has extended to entire products and companies. With templated term sheets and overnight incorporation, a company can sprint from inception to accepting users and payment in days. Founders can self-market with global reach on Twitter and Facebook. Cloud hosting services like Amazon make it inexpensive to build a small infrastructure footprint in minutes and scale dynamically in real-time when traffic demands it and business can afford it. What is the result?
Thousands of new companies and products get launched annually (every month?) in the U.S. alone. Most fail, or at least don’t succeed as hoped. But as they fight to survive and thrive, it makes for an awful lot of clutter. Consumers are pummeled with choices for new forms of service, information and entertainment. Businesses are taxed to consider new options for saving or making money with new services. The Web marketplace is flooded and spilling over.
What’s needed now is less. But this is not realistic advice; no one will heed it. There will only be more. The process is accelerating with no end in sight as new Web companies march onto the scene. Like the lotteries and casinos, the allure of success for founders is too great.
The ironic solution is to create more products—ones that help us reduce the clutter. We need a new breed of carefully planned services that distill, evaluate, computationally classify, categorize and prioritize for us.
Because less is more.
Nature continually destroys itself to cleanse the old and rebuild anew.
Lightening storms in California ignite forest fires that burn 100 yr-old trees entrenched in mounds of brush, then grow back new, vibrant variations of vegetation. Volcanoes burst in Hawaii smothering ancient sea life with lava sediment, and old life is replaced with fertile fields for a next generation of underwater evolution. It seems unfortunate. Many beautiful, complex lifeforms with great potential are suddenly destroyed. It’s not fair or correct; it just is. After 4.5 billion years of Earth development, this Machiavellian process appears to work quite well.
Humans are a part of nature, or at least mimic it. Military forces bomb enemy territory leveling towns and killing “enemy” ranks and innocent civilians. This devastation is immoral, yet it paves the way for a new start. The near complete destruction of Germany by coalition forces in WW2 silenced the Nazis, killed thousands of civilians and realized several generations of peace and profit to follow.
It’s a frightening thought, but human military destruction resembles the forces of nature. It cleans up. Bombs are green.
After 10+ years as an Internet product designer, it often amazes me how few conventions for product design and development have been established. There is not 1 nor even 10 accepted ways of building and launching a product. In fact, there are many, many more tools, processes and paths today than there were in 1999. Multiple methods, types, flavors, languages, some but not all interchangeable. Each guy will promote and defend his recipe as brilliant and the “only way,” then speak to him 3 weeks later when he’s changed his mind and his tools.
- No x step process for discovery and definition
- No “best” hosting partner, scalable infrastructure, database design or type. Not even a paradigm. RDMS, SimpleDB? Managed, Co-lo, cloud? Cloud control?
- No “best” programming language. Java, Perl, PHP, RoR, Python?
- No front-end library of choice. Flash ActionScript, YUI, Prototype, Scriptaculous, MooTools?
The choices have become unfathomably overwhelming for 1 simple reason: new generations develop new service companies with new technologies and business models to sell them. The tools to execute on an idea are supposedly far advanced, more cost effective and faster than before, but what of needing to spend weeks or months evaluating each and every toolset? Takes time. And according to each, if you make the right choice of toolset, your company will fast-track ahead of the competition. Make the wrong choice, and you’re dead.
It begs the question: is free-market capitalism the best environment to build, launch and succeed with a start-up? Is there a place for regulation and constraints?
Because uncontrolled growth creates debilitating paralysis.
