My New Tumblr “Blog”

Written by Ariel Seidman on February 20th, 2011

I have been following Tumblr’s progress for awhile.  Tumblr ties pieces of classic blogging, social networking, and Tweeting with a heavy emphasis on photos and videos into a beautifully designed package.   Unlike Twitter which does one thing very well, Tumblr does many.

I will continue to post longer thoughts here, but for  quick “appetizer” notes and things of interest I will start posting them on my Tumblr blog here.  If you want my stream of conscious check out Tumblr, if you want some well formed ideas this is the place for you.

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Are Users Aware They are Running Android?

Written by Ariel Seidman on January 18th, 2011

Android’s strategy is to provide both hardware and software diversity to spread Android globally and quickly. So far, it’s working.   A hardware diversity strategy for non-niche markets (greater than 300M units) works – Microsoft used this successfully in the PC market.  The question remains whether software diversity is a good long-term strategy for Android.  Are they building brand loyalty and experience lock-in that will stand the test of time.

(1) Users don’t know  they are carrying an Android powered device.

As part of Gigwalk recruitment we ask users to provide us with the type of phone they own.  Here is the exact wording of the question

If you don’t own an iPhone, what kind of operating system is your device running?

That means that the vast majority of users don’t know they are using an Android device.  I was curious so I dug deeper and asked some users who did not include the term Android in describing their phone what they thought Android was and here are some of the responses I got:

  • Android is a place to buy apps
  • Android is a specific kind of phone (but I don’t have one)

(2) No Experience Lock-In

Longer term this software diversity strategy hampers Google’s ability to lock-in users to the Android platform.  One of the last remaining ways to lock-in users over extended period of times is experience lock-in. Getting a user to switch from Windows to Mac is hard as most don’t want to re-learn how to use an operating system – that is experience lock-in. The same thing will happen for mobile operating systems; as users develop gesture muscle memory around common mobile tasks (calling, texting, emailing, photos, etc.) they are not going to eagerly switch devices.  By inviting hardware partners to customize the Android UI (e.g. HTC Sense) they are introducing software diversity into the ecosystem.  This software diversity means their are no consistent experiences across Android devices.  When a user upgrades their device switching from their HTC Incredible (Android device) to a Samsung Galaxy (another Android device) or Windows Phone is nearly as much relearning work for the user.

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The Mobile Hardware Diversity Strategy

Written by Ariel Seidman on January 14th, 2011
Recently Marco Arment made the point that Android suffers from too much hardware choice.  This is really an argument against the hardware diversity strategy.  I have purchased two iPhones and will likely purchase another one in the future.  Yet, to argue against the hardware diversity strategy is a mistake. Here’s why:
  1. 5 Billion Mobile Subscribers
    • Ultimately all 5 billions of these subscribers will be buying a smartphone. Some people will buy two so it could be more. While I really like my iPhone, in a market of this size a lot of people won’t agree.  Some won’t like its price, others its size, , some won’t buy because of a missing feature(s), and the list goes on . I think you will be hard pressed to find a non-niche market (>300 million units) in the tech consumer space where a single product dominates.
  2. Calling a Game in the 1st Inning
    • The smartphone revolution has only started — their are only a few hundred million devices out there.  Drawing conclusions on the hardware diversity strategy at this stage is like calling a baseball game in the 1st inning with the score 2-1.  The hardware diversity strategy takes many years to fully play out.
    • To suggest that the hardware accessory market won’t develop because of hardware diversity seems is wrong.  Samsung sold 10M Galaxy Android devices in about six months and the accessory vendors jumped on board.
  3. Big Bang vs. Constant Drumbeat
    • iPhone takes the big bang approach to marketing.  A single big launch every year a frenzied build-up. For most people who don’t follow technology that big Apple event quickly fades from memory after a day or two – they simply don’t keep this stuff top of mind.  Whereas the marketing power of Android and Windows Phone is a constant drumbeat in TV, web, radio, billboards, etc.  The aggregate marketing spend of the hardware vendor, mobile OS provider, and carrier is going to be huge.
  4. How People Buy Phones
    • How techies buy phones is very different then normal people. Head to a Verizon or AT&T store in Waukegan, IL and watch how normal people buy phones.  That will give you a sense of how normal people make phone purchasing decisions.  If they see a huge and sexy Windows Phone display and the sales guy is talking up the Windows Phones’, normals are going to play around with a few of the Windows Phones and buy one of them.

    Additionally, Android and Windows Phone are not using the exact same strategies.  Android is taking a hardware AND software diversity strategy – they allow their hardware partners to layer on custom user experiences.  This is a dangerous long term strategy as users never mentally develop brand affinity towards a single user experience.  Whereas, Microsoft is only employing a hardware diversity strategy, and even there its taking on a slightly different form than Android.  Specifically, Windows Phone hardware specs are very strict compared to Android.

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    A Lesson in Negative Advertising from Box.net

    Written by Ariel Seidman on December 10th, 2010

    My startup is growing.  We need some really simple collaboration tools for tracking projects, logging bugs, and sharing documents.  I started to look at some of the products in this space like 37Signal’s Basecamp, Box.net, etc.  The positioning of these products struck me.  Here are a few products I checked out and the word associations I quickly formed for each:

    • 37 Signals Basecamp: Simplicity
    • Box.net: SharePoint sucks
    • FogBuz: Great for Geeks

    Without ever using Basecamp or FogBuz I developed a mental picture of these products. For Box.net all I know about their product is that they think SharePoint is a crappy product.  That tells me absolutely nothing about their product. In fact, Box.net has done a phenomenal job of telling the world that SharePoint sucks  – especially if you live in the SF Bay Area and travel on 101.

    This is classic negative advertising – politicians have mastered it.  For companies this hard hitting negative advertising is a poor way of communicating. It doesn’t tell the consumer anything about the product.

    If you are going to take some shots at your competitor (which is fair) it also needs communicate your value to the consumer. Here are some recent clever marketing tactics that did both.

    Netflix: “No Late Fees”

    They are clearly going after Blockbuster but don’t have to explicitly mention it.  If I explained the Netflix product to a friend I would say something like “they deliver movies by mail and I never have to worry about late fees like I did with Blockbuster.” They reenforce one of their core differentiators in contrast to their competitor.

    Apple: “I am a Mac”

    This ad campaign clearly took some shots at Windows but at the same time establishes the Mac as a fast, no-virus, easy-to-use alternative to Windows.  The clever part of this ad is that they don’t slam Windows in a mean spirited kind of way, yet they also successfully tell you you why the Mac is better.

    Salesforce.com:  “No Software”

    As a pay-as-you-go web-hosted service the “No Software” slogan squarely takes aim at the license fee client-server based application vendors like Oracle, Siebel (now Oracle), and SAP.  Back in 2000 delivering enterprise software via the web as a monthly service was novel – now not so much – and the “No Software” made that point clear without using words like “application hosted software.”

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    Disclosures:  I have never worked for Microsoft.  I am not an investor in any private software collaboration company.

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    How to Kill Your Product Management Career

    Written by Ariel Seidman on December 6th, 2010

    Big company product managers have a way of becoming inward focused and abstract.  By abstract I mean focusing on technology and business problems that have a very low probability of materializing and even if they do it won’t matter much.  Startups on the other hand, quickly put product managers back in touch with reality – as they force you to focus on the basics: selling, building products, and building awareness (aka marketing).  Here are a few signs that you are a product manager at a big company out of touch with reality and on path towards killing your career:

    Your office is home: Get out of the office and  talk to customers, partners, and peers at other companies.  Sitting in your cube and having lunch with the same people every single day is the single worst thing you can do for your career.  This doesn’t mean you need to be at every conference (the polar extreme is equally unhealthy).  It does mean that the world will not come to you, you need to go it.  I have seen too many incredibly talented people innovative muscles atrophy by making their office their home.

    Your side project is on hold:   Your current project is likely not that innovative.  It could be very important – like improving the scalability and reliability of Gmail (please solve this) or shipping the next version of Outlook on schedule.  What is innovative is that side project you work on a few hours a week that with a bit of nurturing could provide the seeds for something truly innovative down the road.  One of my weekend side projects provided the inspiration for my current startup.

    People confuse you with a project manager:  My objective is not to diminish the role of a project manager — they can be invaluable for certain projects. But project managers don’t determine when to cancel products, don’t design and work with engineers to prototype a new idea, and don’t prioritize features amongst other things.

    You attend organized (internal) meetings 80% of the day: You can’t recruit in internal meetings, you can’t design in meetings, you can’t talk to customer/partners in internal meetings.  The folks who spend all day updating executives become overhead. These are folks who aren’t the experts in anything and they aren’t driving anything.  They are well paid meeting attenders who usually say the same things over and over in every meeting.  They say it so much they get really good at saying it so some people believe they must know what they are talking about.  Instead figure out what you need to do to be the “CEO” of something — by CEO I mean earn the right to become the default person people ping for that thing — whether it be a feature-set, a customer initiative, or an entire project.

    I will finish with a short story related to this point. A few years back I inherited a product management team.  One of the product managers was constantly asking me about attending internal meeting  I quickly realized he hadn’t shipped a thing because he was meeting busy — so I told him to stop attending meetings.  Judging from his facial expression I got the sense that he felt like I was punishing him – for most of his career he confused meetings with work. As soon has he cut the number of meeting he attended he started shipping more product.   He ended up switching groups a year later and low and behold he was back on the meeting circuit.  Bad habits are hard to kill.

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    Five Ways to Stay Productive as Your Startup Grows

    Written by Ariel Seidman on November 28th, 2010

    I left Yahoo in early July and started a company called Gigwalk which is still stealthish.  In the past few months I have been incredibly productive and it got me thinking as we grow Gigwalk beyond the three founders how can I maintain this same level of productivity.  These are some of my initial ideas:

    1.) Schedule Me Time.

    Each week schedule a minimum of:

    • 8 hours to deal with customer (we have two sets of customers at Gigwalk) issues.  At most large companies product managers and engineers get too far away from the customer –by scheduling time with customers it helps you avoid this issue.  Even Steve Jobs answers customer emails.
    • 3 hours to write.  The process of writing clarifies thinking.
    • 3 hours to vet new ideas — drawing and coding prototypes.
    • 2 hours to with work new technologies and services — get to know things far beyond their buzz words.

    2.) Be a Closer.

    • Close email threads down.  Provide or produce a piece of information that closes the thread down.  Don’t engage in the back and forth of an email thread unless you are actively working towards closing it down. [This is a Tom Chi trick I subscribe to]

    3.) Meetings of Last Resort.

    • Try to accomplish as much as possible via email — asychrnonous conversations tend to yield far more thoughtfulness and insight than real-time conversations. Sometimes (complex issues or personal issues) face to face meetings are more productive — if so see the next rule:

    4.) Schedule Small meetings:

    • In any meeting with over 5 people 25% of the conversation becomes useless or worse sows confusion into the conversation.
    • Schedule either very short (15 minutes) or very long (1.5 hrs) meetings.  I find that issues either get resolved in 15 minutes or require a good 1.5 hrs where people come prepared to discuss a set of issues and brainstorm solutions.

    5.) Skip Weekly Meetings without a Published Agenda

    • Staff meeting without an agenda are a huge waste of time.  Skip it and demand that the organizer publish an agenda with each 15 minute increment accounted for.
    • Schedule bi-weekly staff meeting but make them a bit longer.  The act of pulling together 10 or 20 people is costlier than the 45 minute the meeting is scheduled for; instead of a weekly 45 minute meeting make it a one hour meeting every two weeks.

    Even though this is supposed to be a list of five I cannot possibly leave this one off the list: hire carefully. Bad hires are a productivity drain.

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