In “How the Web Was Won”, Paul Andrews writes about Microsoft circa 1991-1995, as it was becoming clear that Internet connectivity was going to change the way people use computers.
Andrews’ angle is that Bill Gates and Microsoft were successful in making Microsoft more of an Internet-focused company. I think the jury is still out on that one. One could argue this was the time Internet search innovation should have been happening. But it’s clear Microsoft was focused on the software in the computer, not the new content that was becoming available on the Web.
It wasn’t a straightforward decision to build a separate browser. There was concern over whether the Internet would make the operating system, and Microsoft, less relevant. Microsoft could have built Internet connectivity into Microsoft Office. But they saw Netscape’s success and realized the importance of owning the browser.
There’s some interesting stories about Netscape and other companies that developed long-forgotten web browsers. Did you know BookLink was the first company to gain traction in the browser market? AOL bought BookLink which didn’t make Microsoft very happy.
So MSFT and AOL competed intensely in the mid 90’s, and 15 years later may be looking at a merger!
Buy it at Amazon
A recent article on TechCrunch about Digg and the role of “fanatical users” brings up the issue of customer responsiveness and product strategy. Arrington thinks that Digg, and specifically Kevin Rose, are captives to their hardcore users and in doing so have sacrificed larger markets. He compares Digg to Facebook, who he admires for sticking to its guns when rolling out features that are initially unpopular.
I agree that it is possible to be too literal when finding customer needs. Just because a single customer has a strong need, and knows exactly what they want, doesn’t mean that a feature is a good investment. All to often companies make this mistake and suffer as a result.
My opinion is that product teams should decipher common problems of groups of similar customers. These customers know the problem, but don’t know the solution. They can’t vocalize what to build. We could call them “ambient needs”. For example:
- The newspaper is hard to read on the subway (solution: iPad)
- There are too many Technology news blogs to stay up to date with (solution: Techmeme, RSS)
- It’s too hard for me to manage all my different bank accounts to my finances (solution: Mint)
I actually found this article to be more about Leadership than Product.
Every new website feature, product, or business should solve an ambient need! Product Management should deliver solutions that meet a broad need.
Quotes from the article -
Death by committee:
And when too many people have product input, you’ve got lots of features but no soul.
I agree that too many compromises can yield a soulless product. But, this is something that strong leadership could overcome.
Customers becoming the shadow board:
Digg’s most active users form a sort of shadow board of directors that guides the company. The end result is a very nice place to hang out for those 250,000 or so hard core Digg users. But for the rest of the Internet, not so much.
Change could be hard for hardcore users. But the total addressable market (not the rest of the Internet) is who the product should be defined for, not just hardcore users.
It’s not a black and white situation – perhaps the degree of customer responsiveness depends on the size of a market and market penetration. If a company has 80% of a market that is not rapidly changing, should they be highly responsive to customers?
Digg may be too in touch with their hardcore users. But do we know what would happen if they stopped listening? Maybe the market for socially curated news is small, and Digg has them hostage? If so Digg would one day wake up to find themselves with a product vision, but no users and no ad revenue.
While Arrington has an interesting perspective, I found the article to be as much about Leadership as Product. It speaks to the need for Product Managers to have strong leadership skills.
The iPad is coming on April 3rd and with that, thousands of journalists looking for an angle.
Daniel Lyons has a gushing piece in Newsweek about the iPad. According to Mr. Lyons, it’s another irresistible Apple product that will change the consumption of content and computing as we know it. He was one of the lucky few that received a sneak peak. This quote was in the article.
With the iPad, a lot of people are hoping there’s a killer app that we just can’t conceive of yet,” says Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry Analytics…
This brings up the key question - what is the core value (i.e. killer app) of the iPad? The iPhone has a killer app and it’s the phone. The phone is a critical part of people’s life. By providing this need well, Apple opened up doors to vastly improve what a phone could be. What’s the killer app on the iPad – what will make people bring it with them EVERYWHERE?
iPad Core Value Options
- Commerce – If iTunes can spur people to buy from their mobile devices, which it has proven it can do, why not broaden their goal beyond media to physical goods? When will we see retailers in iTunes? In theory retailers could tap into the mobile market by selling their products in iTunes (one of these days iTunes will change it’s name to iShop). E-Commerce is a key driver behind Google’s growth. This trend is just starting on the iPhone, and potentially the iPad.
- Video - I’m not sure that the iPhone/iPod has been as successful a platform for video content as much as it is for music and apps. People don’t consume nearly as much video as music and apps on Apple products. This represents both a challenge and an opportunity for Apple. If people just need a bigger screen they’ll have it with the iPad. A big if.
- Print Media – Steve Jobs wants to do for print media with iBooks what he did to the music business with iTunes – get people to pay for their content. There are two models for content creators to get their share – Google’s ad model and Apple’s paid model. The battle is how will people consume content. Everywhere. If the iPad becomes a platform for reading print media, that’s a big win.
- Gaming - It’s hard for me to speak to this one because I don’t play video games much. I have doubts about the ability for a top video game platform to co-exist within a broader operating system, but who knows.
I’m not sure what the answer is. But, I do think that the fact that there is no clear killer app is interesting.
A phone is something the world uses, but how will the iPad make itself indispensable?
