Will Google+ focus on what’s working, or force feed us what they wish was working?
I opened Tumblr to write about Google+, and of course, MG Siegler had already written a great post with a lot of what I was going to say. The overall thesis of what I wanted to talk about is:
The point is that if Google+ is so great, shouldn’t Google be straightforward about the service and how it’s actually being used? Instead, it looks like they have something to hide.
I totally agree with this.
When the big number they release is 170+ million users, it’s clear that something isn’t totally working. We all know they get those users from their distribution network and product integration, not people saying “OMG I NEED TO GET ON GOOGLE+ IMMEDIATELY.” And that’s fine, having a network like that to onboard people is a result of all the hard work Google has done up to this point. In short, they deserve the access to those users.
But now that they have them, it’s important to understand what “users” really means. And that’s where the metrics Google releases falls short.
We have no clue how those users are actually contributing to Google+. As a personal example, I go to Google+ when someone links to it on Twitter. But that’s it. The only other time I might contribute / visit Google+ is when I want to +1 something and add a comment to it. But that’s rare, because the only things I usually do that for are my own posts. Check out my Google+ profile to see the examples.
What metrics might actually matter?
Compelling headlines might be “Avg Google+ user spends over 90 minutes per day browsing Google+” or “Google+ users post 5 times on average to their page every day”. Those kind of metrics would show that the site is being used.
But since there isn’t a firehose API for another company to dig into, unless Google releases more info, we just dont know. So those of us that pay attention can assume it’s not working.
I feel like this is an opportunity for Google to actually have a conversation about what is working and what isn’t. Tell us that “Hangouts are a breakout success. Users are spending an average of 45 minutes per hangout.” Then also say “The whole circles thing isn’t working. People create them once, but dont update them. We’re working on things to make that easier.”
But they wont. Companies rarely talk about this stuff verbally. Fortunately, many companies do open the kimono in the way they iterate the product. Generally, they take one of two paths:
- Focus on the stuff that’s working. (This is how Instagram evolved from Burbn).
- Force the stuff that’s not working down a user’s throat in an effort to try to make it work.
So it will be interesting to see how Google+ chooses to evolve. If they choose #1, I think it could turn out to be interesting. If they take the second route, it’s time to wave goodbye to all the buzz Google+ launched with.
About a year ago, I was standing on top of Machu Picchu and taking a photo to post to Instagram when I realized that I’d probably never see this photo again. It would exist in my Instagram stream for a while and then disappear.
I started thinking that it would be amazing to get a random reminder of these kinds of memories each morning. The idea for MorningPics came out of that moment. I returned home and built it.
Last week, MorningPics sent me the Machu Picchu photo.
Mission accomplished.
Last night I gave a talk to a huge group of Japanese entrepreneurs through an event sponsored by Open Network Lab. The topic was exploring the subtleties around launching a product, specifically Setting Goals, Choosing Metrics, Visualizing Metrics, Launch Promotion, and Gathering Feedback.
Thanks to Hiro Maeda and everyone who came out! Was a blast!
Hiro Maeda (@djtokyo), through his incubator Open Network Lab, is making a huge difference to the Japanese startup ecosystem. With the backing of Digital Garage and Netprice, they have graduated 4 classes of entrepreneurs in 2 years.
I’ve had the chance to meet with many of the teams, and they’re really impressive. Follow Hiro and Onlab to see how they continue to grow this community!
Photo Credit: Elle Luna
When the new @Rdio launched, I complained that it was too much like Spotify.
New @Rdio is beautiful, but it’s a shame that it’s so much less unique than Spotify. They copied so much / everything.
— Brenden Mulligan (@mulligan) March 13, 2012
Lead Rdio designer Wilson Miner replied:
@mulligan We spent a lot of time with it. We made what we felt were the right choices for the experience. Sometimes patterns emerge.
— Wilson Miner (@wilsonminer) March 13, 2012
After using the new UX for a few weeks, Wilson is right. It’s a great new experience. Wilson and his team did an excellent job with the new version. It’s great, and there are lots of subtle, delightful surprises throughout the UI. That are far ahead of Spotify.
Wilson, sorry for being a jerk! :)
A single VC firm entering or leaving the seed market will make just as much of a difference as a Facebook IPO, just because VC firms have so much more capital that they put to work regularly.
This interview with @naval from AngelList is outstanding. An amazing view into the world of angel investing.
Dirty Pillows: Subtleties of unregulated collaborative consumption services
This post originally appeared on TechCrunch
When my wife and I travel, we rarely stay in hotels. We usually either stay in hostels or apartments. The apartments are usually found and booked on Airbnb. We’re big fans of the service, and think it’s one of the best ways to experience a foreign city. However, some recent events have made me think a bit deeper about this maturing marketplace and the whole spectrum of collaborative consumption services.
We are currently on a trip to Tokyo for an speaking engagement and some mentoring of the teams at Open Network Lab, a Tokyo-based incubator I wrote about last fall during our last Tokyo visit.
Last night, we arrived to our apartment. The amenities and space was almost exactly as described. But there was something about our place that didn’t appear in the Airbnb description, which almost made us walk out immediately: the cleanliness of the bedding.
After 24 hours of traveling, got to a disgusting @airbnb place. Not happy we are stuck here 5 nights. Provided pillows: twitter.com/mulligan/statu…
— Brenden Mulligan (@mulligan) March 31, 2012
Luckily, both the host and Airbnb have been extremely responsive and helpful with the issue and we’ve got it resolved (the pillows and sheets are being replaced). But it got me thinking about a few subtle aspects of collaborate consumption.
Lack of Consistent Health / Cleanliness Standards
When you stay at a hotel, there’s a certain level of cleanliness you expect. That level is probably directly proportional with the price you are paying, but even at budget hotels, you still expect a decently clean room. And the worst case scenario is that your room isn’t what you want, you can try to switch to one that’s more suited for your needs.
But personal apartments are different. There is no baseline of cleanliness, and no immediate options if it doesn’t suit your needs. If when you check into a hotel room, you see a big stain in the middle of the bed, you can ask to switch rooms, or at the very least to get new sheets. But when you check into an apartment in a foreign city, you don’t have that option. There’s a small chance you can be moved to a different apartment, but that might be in a totally different neighborhood, with different amenities, etc..
I think that’s a subtle but very important dynamic. Essentially, when you choose to stay in an apartment, you are making a gamble. Most of the time, the gamble results in a more positive overall experience, but in the times it doesn’t, it really leaves a negative impression.
To be clear, I love @Airbnb. But when every pillow provided looks soaked in every body fluid imaginable, hotels seem appealing.
— Brenden Mulligan (@mulligan) March 31, 2012
Sometimes the trade off of a more local experience isn’t worth the chance of dirty sheets.
I’ve found a similar experience when renting cars from RelayRides, GetAround, or Zipcar. In general, the interiors of the vehicles are dirtier than a traditional rental cars. The reasons for this are obvious. Rental car companies prep the cars for each renter, the same way hotels clean / prep the rooms for each guest. But with the economics of car sharing by the hour, it doesn’t make sense to professionally clean a car every time someone wants to pay $10 to take it to IKEA.
As more of these companies come into existence, it’ll be interesting to see if a set of standards is developed so renters / guests can come to expect a certain amount of cleanliness when reserving a car/apartment/etc…. That will most likely increase consumer confidence in these services and take them closer to mainstream use.
Professionals service providers are more attune to when items “expire”
Hotels make a business out of rotating people through its rooms night after night. I’ve never worked in the industry, but I’d assume there is some kind of schedule about when they replace certain things. For example, maybe a hotel has an internal policy to replace the pillows once a month.
But most people renting their spaces on Airbnb or Homeaway probably don’t think about this stuff, because they’re not professionals. They are just making some extra cash from their places.
It’d be interesting to see these services help owners by adding some alerts to their dashboard. Maybe after they have logged 60 consecutive days of bookings, an email is sent to the host saying “We recommend you replace the pillows and sheets”.
Even better, maybe there’s a way for the hosts to mark in their account that this has happened, so potential renters can see “Pillows replaced 23 days ago” in the profile. I know this seems minor but think about it: you are smashing your face (and mouth) into the pillow for 8 straight hours. You should care about how many other people did this on the same pillow.
TripAdvisor brought transparency to hotel photos; Airbnb does the opposite.
When TripAdvisor launched, it gave us all an opportunity to see what hotel rooms actually look like. It was amazing. We got to see beyond the stock photos hotels post on their website and get a glimpse of what the real bed and bathroom we will be experiencing. It was great, and brought accountability to the whole industry.
But Airbnb is almost the total opposite from a photography standpoint:
We extend a professional photography program that offers immense value. Professionally photographed listings get booked twice as often as those without professional photography since high-resolution photos really showcase your space.
Source: Airbnb Support
This is an awesome service that they provide and they’re really smart to do it. They bring in a photographer — with a wide angle lens, it seems like — to stage the apartment and make it feel as bright and spacious as possible. And it works; the places look huge!
But this also has negative consequences. For almost every apartment I’ve rented on Airbnb, my first thoughts were “this is smaller than it looked online”. I’ve come to expect this, so it’s never a surprise, but for new Airbnb-ers, it could be a turnoff.
But this doesn’t bother me. The thing that bothers me is that although they let me write reviews, I can’t post my own photos.
I want to see the glamor shots, and think they should always appear on the front page, but I also think it’d be useful to see the real photos of these places. I can see why Airbnb wouldn’t want that on their site (because the renter photos will undoubtably look MUCH worse than the provided ones), but it’d be nice for this to exist somewhere.
Regardless if it’s apartments, cars, or hotels, when you rent from a well known brand, you inherently start with a basis of trust in how the end product will appear in comparison to how its represented on their website. When renting from another person, there isn’t that basis of trust, which is why reviews from other users are so important and the addition of visual elements can enhance those reviews.
Going Forward
Collaborative consumption is amazing and is here to stay. But as these services grow in usage and enter the mainstream, they will continually need to add more elements that make the experience across their inventory more consistent.
I can’t wait to continue to watch as this dynamic matures and see the new things that become standard across these sharing marketplaces.
Source: TechCrunch
How to Fix the Relevance Issue in Highlight
Last weekend, I wrote a post on TechCrunch called “Why Highlight Wasn’t A Breakout Success At SXSW”. Although it sparked some controversy, especially around my logo rant, one part of my message that was lost to some was that I actually think the idea of Highlight is solid. My point was that we shouldn’t have expected SXSW to be the place it exploded.
So, to continue to understand the usefulness of the app, I reinstalled it when I got back from SXSW and have been using it for a few weeks. This has led me to uncover the single enhancement that would drastically change the value of the app for me.
Let users define what relevance means.
One of my criticisms was that Highlight set the bar too low. It notifies you in many non-relevant situations, such as when you have one friend in common, or have liked the same thing on Facebook. I suggested that Highlight raise the bar for what is a relevant connection:
But on services like Highlight, most people would rather get one extremely relevant notification about a possible connection than ten somewhat loose connections. If I walk past someone on the street and Highlight tells me they also like Sigur Ros, that’s not going to make me stop everything and connect with them. But if they like Sigur Ros, and we have 10 very solid friends in common, and are from the same town, then I get interested.
Highlight just set the bar too low. They know this, and they’re working on it. But they should have just raised it before SXSW.
But after a couple weeks of using it normal circumstances, I realize that I’m wrong. Highlight shouldn’t raise the bar, it should let me define the bar.
Personally, I think Highlight is worth having on my phone (especially if they can solve perceived battery issues). But I’ll disable it again if it keeps alerting me when I’m around some person who I really dont have much in common with. In my case, I would like to set it to alert me when I’m around someone who I have 15 friends in common with or more. Personally, I dont care about shared interests, because I dont “Like” everything I’m interested in on Facebook. But I do keep my friend graph fairly up to date there.
But I’m unique, like everyone who uses the app. A more networked person might only want alerts when someone with over 50 connections is near. Or someone who is a high fan of a certain TV show might only want alerts when another person who likes that TV is near.
My point is that everyone is different, and everyone will have a different preference for getting alerted about a potential “relevant” connection. So I think Highlight should just make this part of the onboarding process.
This single change would make the app about 100x times more useful for me. Sure, I wouldn’t get as many notifications so the app wouldn’t be as active in my life, but when I got a notification, it would mean a lot more to me and I would pay close attention to every one.
Elle and I will be speaking to Entrepreneurs in Tokyo in a few weeks
We will be having an event with @elleluna & @mulligan on design and post-launch startup strategy - bit.ly/GzYnAz
— Open Network Lab (@on_lab) March 21, 2012
I’m very excited to return to Tokyo and speak with the local entrepreneurial community in a few weeks. The event link is above.
Elle and I were invited to speak by Open Network Lab, an incubator we visited the last time we were in Japan (I wrote a post on TechCrunch about our visit).
See you soon Japan!
