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Re: Listening to Customers is Hard, Hard, Hard - Continuations

mikepk — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:47:30 -0000

Thanks for this post, we passionately believe in listening to our users, but as you point out it's not nearly as easy as most people think. We've found two distinct problems.

First, it has been our experience with Grazr that outside a few very passionate users (thank you!), people give us almost no feedback. I assume there's a tipping point where you begin to get real, deliberate, feedback but in our time operating, we haven't hit it yet. We all want the virtuous positive-feedback cycle of using feedback to improve your offering, to get more users, to get more feedback, etc... but the thing most people don't realize is that until you hit the critical mass and start the loop you end up wandering in the dark.

The other problem is the difficulty in heuristically deducing what's going through user's minds. In a web service, most times your tools are simple page view patterns to watch user behavior but this is a pretty limited viewport. If your service only offers one thing and is hyper-simple I suppose it makes it easier, but if you're trying to build a more generic and powerful productivity style application it can be next to impossible. There is, of course, the argument that the users don't want your powerful productivity application, something we're painfully aware of, but how do you get that feedback, do you interpret lack of feedback as a kind of feedback? A user edited a file but didn't save it, did they not want the file? Did they get confused with the save dialog? Where they just "kicking the tires" and not finding the compelling use for the product? Did they hit a bug that failed to save the file? A/B testing can help but it's still a guessing game which can be very frustrating.

I'm interested in what this "listening lab" you mention is, we're always trying to find new ways of getting information about what people would like to see out of our service.

If anyone wants to give Grazr a spin and give feedback, we'd love it http://grazr.com - support (at) grazr com

Re: Twitter and the importance of architecture

mikepk — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:35:21 -0000

Well I'm going to disagree with you here. As a startup there's only so much energy you have, and you must apportion your resources carefully. The truth is, we like to talk about scaling, but without steady growth and something people find compelling, all the scaling in the world won't help you.

We significantly over-engineered our architecture at Grazr, spending lots of energy building a powerful and flexible system. We can potentially handle very large streams of data with huge numbers of users, *but* we're not seeing the user adoption that we'd been hoping for. We do many of the things that FriendFeed does, and if we'd been a little looser we could have launched them last October. I even gave a talk at MySQL about this, while it's sexy to work on scaling infrastructure, too much emphasis is a mistake.

You're seeing now that, even with all their troubles, people are still loyal to Twitter and talking about it. It's definitely painful to change their architecture now, but they have the user momentum to carry them through these tough times. In the balance between building a scalable system, and just getting the users, it's a balance but the latter is more important.

We've had almost no downtime, have ridden out all of our traffic spikes (from TechCrunch and others) with almost no problems. But no one talks about Grazr with the same passion and loyalty they do Twitter.

Unless Twitter totally implodes, they'll weather this current pain and the majority of their userbase will stick with them (that's at least my contention). The fact that there are alternatives (and good ones with better stability track records) that have not gained traction should be an interesting indicator of what people care about.

Re: We're angry, uneducated and unhealthy. Now what? (Scripting News)

mikepk — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:19:01 -0000

My faith in us as Americans has been on a roller coaster ride during this primary season. I saw a vision of an inspirational and possibly historic (not just for skin tone or gender) leader and cynically assumed we could never elect such a person. I've seen a seeming desire for candor and change but then a simultaneous glee at a process that devolves into petty squabbling, personal attacks, bigotry, sexism and media circus.

I agree that a President that deals with the facts on the ground is preferable to one who complains about personal slights or injustices, but the flip side is the president who changes the game to their advantage. I would almost argue that Obama has done something very special, he's played the game in a different way, speaking to the people and building a grassroots movement. His success thus far has, in some ways, changed the understood rules of the political game. I think this is where a lot of Sen. Clintons frustrations stem. She's played the game the way it's *supposed* to be played and been out maneuvered.

Re: We're angry, uneducated and unhealthy. Now what? (Scripting News)

mikepk — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:29:57 -0000

Not sure if I was clear, but I think Obama's done something more important than just "play by the rules" in terms of the party machinery. He's changed the higher level "rules" of how you're supposed to win elections. He's been "too optimistic" and "unreasonable" in what can be accomplished by activating the electorate and bypassing the traditional approaches of pandering and avoiding making us think. It reminds me of the famous George Bernard Shaw quote:

“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”

Re: Twitter and the importance of architecture

mikepk — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:09:12 -0000

I see your point, but we already have a lot of free services that we've been offering. Hosting reading lists, the ability to create free feed widgets, and several others, that when it came to releasing streams we decided to try and charge for something. All the other services only give you a single stream (twitter friend feed, etc are all really just one stream) so we thought a differentiator would be the ability to create multiple topic based streams, something power users might want and/or pay for.

The alternate approach was to try and inject advertising somewhere in our data flow. Twitter, FriendFeed and others will need to find a business model at some point, we've been experimenting with premium services as our model.

As to twitter loyalty, I'm also curious where the downtime tipping point is where users will leave their system. I think the bar is much higher than most people think.

Re: Scoble Feedback

mikepk — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:25:27 -0000

Yes, we're not a really like Twitter in the services we're currently offering. Grazr is basically a system for collecting information, blending it together into streams, filtering it, and allowing you to republish it (using widgets) on other pages.

Grazr and Twitter are similar in some basic behind-the-scenes kinds of ways. We both deal with lots of user generated data, blended together and then presented in time sorted streams (very much like Twitter in that respect). Unlike twitter, we're not a place to post. Since we're not the source of that data we have to collect the feeds from all over the web, making it in some respects a harder problem. We also deal with a lot more data than Twitter since we aggregate the full content of feeds in those streams. One place where our job is easier is that, unlike Twitter, we're not aiming for real-time delivery of the data.

Re: Twitter and the importance of architecture

mikepk — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:38:18 -0000

Of course it's possible to build simple, scalable architectures but that usually assumes that you know in advance the problem you're trying to solve (or at least the problem space you're in). It's easy to look at Twitter now and editorialize on their scaling issues, hindsight is 20/20. Twitter appears to me to have been started on a lark, a little throwaway side project. They didn't know what they'd built or why anyone would want it, so their initial architecture wasn't trying to solve any particular problem. The interesting thing about startups is that you're sometimes building without knowing what problem you're actually, in the end of the day, solving. Case in point, at Grazr we're still looking for our problem space.

It's hard to know what's gone on inside Twitter up to this point, but I do agree with you that it's curious that with the time and money they had they didn't fix this problem, or at least see it coming. By the time they got their first round of funding, they already must have seen growth curves, and realized the real problem that that they were solving for their userbase. Then again, until recently, they've been pretty opaque so it's hard to know exactly what went on.

Re: The real Web 2.0 shows its face

mikepk — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:37:27 -0000

This is quite the gloomy scenario you're painting here, but I think there is a force you're discounting, the interests at the other end of the pipe from the consumers. Some of the most powerful companies in technology now rely on access models that don't insert artificial friction at the user end-point. If the Cable Companies and Telco's really start to meddle too much they risk invoking the wrath of this powerful group of entities.

Just one player in that space, Google, has a strong vested interest in ubiquitous access (to move advertising inventory). Just to throw some numbers at this, the entire Time-Warner company (not just cable) has a market cap of 50 billion (US) whereas google has almost 180 billion (US) market cap. Beware waking the sleeping giant.

I think the maneuvers by Google during the 700MHz spectrum auction here in the US were in some ways a warning salvo fired across the bow of the Telco's. "Careful or we will route around your restrictions". Content is king, the pipes to get it are in some ways fungible (especially with the advent of wider area wireless).

Re: The real Web 2.0 shows its face

mikepk — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:43:34 -0000

Didn't see this comment, but I made a point about google not allowing Cable Co.s and Telcos to kill the goose that laid the golden egg, so to speak. And it's not just Google, there are other, very powerful, players who also have an interest in unfettered access for consumers.

Also, content is king, people could care less how they get it (via which pipes). If it becomes an issue, these players and/or the free market *will* route around the problem.

Re: The real Web 2.0 shows its face

mikepk — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:13:04 -0000

Even scarier is how much money has been slashed from fundamental research in the US. We like to think we get a lot of innovation from the free market, but a huge amount of the science for new drugs and other real breakthroughs happen from NSF and other government funded basic research programs.

Re: The early Internet: No business model

mikepk — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:48:55 -0000

I think this points to a more fundamental issue for startups, the idea of muddled purpose. One of the problems with being in the startup space is keeping a sense of purpose *and* making money to fuel your purpose. When asked 'why build a startup', most people would answer 'to make money'. I don't think this is exactly right and where the criticisms of not having a business plan arise. I like this quote from Peter Drucker on the idea of profit:

Asked what a business is, the typical business man is likely to answer, "An organization to make profit". The typical economist is likely to give the same answer. The answer is not only false, it is irrelevant.

The prevailing economic theory of the mission of business enterprise and behavior, the maximization of profit [...] cannot explain how Sears, Roebuck or any other business operates, or how it should operate. The concept of profit maximization is, in fact, meaningless. The danger in the concept of profit maximization is that it makes profitability appear a myth.

Profit and profitability are, however, crucial---for society even more than for the individual business. Yet profitability is not the purpose of, but the limiting factor on business enterprise and business activity...

- "The Essential Drucker", Peter Drucker

In both cases, google and the internet, they had purpose from their inception. The internet's purpose was to build a reliable, fault tolerant communication infrastructure in the event of a disaster.

As an aside, for the early internet what's really interesting are the network economics at play where the distributed system brought enough value (not necessarily monetary) to each member that it was incentive enough for them to participate. "The internet" never needed to make money, it's value derives from an economy of connection. It's a mind-bender because it's the thing itself (interconnectedness) that was the currency.

For startups like the early google, the job is frequently to pursue your main purpose while probing the value space of what you're doing. I actually see a real danger in the future of Google. They are no longer an exploration of an academic thesis or, as their vision evolved, to organize the world's information, they are becoming an advertising company. What's dangerous is that their profit motive frequently contradicts their original vision instead of complimenting it. We're seeing this transition of purpose already, especially with the growth pressure from Wall Street which will only get more powerful. We'll see if they're able to balance this force in the company against their original vision.

Re: Why Microsoft will never win (again)

mikepk — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:25:06 -0000

This is a very common story in big companies. I worked in the research dept for a couple of really big ones, and while we like to think that innovation isn't the domain of big companies, you'd be amazed at the things that get imagined, specified, and even prototyped in the basements of large corporations that never see the light of day. Reminded me of an old post on a long forgotten blog that I resurrected and re-posted. http://mikepk.com/?p=23

Re: Why Microsoft will never win (again)

mikepk — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:02:02 -0000

Although if you believe Christensen, Microsoft could still do well if it split off new "innovation business units" from the main corporate entity. I'm actually not sure what the history of the XBOX is, whether they actually did that for that business unit or not.

As I mentioned on Zoli's blog, I also think SilverLight is a wildcard. It's got huge potential, is much more attractive for traditional developers (flash is a werid environment to program in) and if MS figures out a way to produce a compelling MS office experience for the web using silverlight, that could be a huge force to be reckoned with.

Re: Did HRC lose to sexism? (Scripting News)

mikepk — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:17:16 -0000

I agree with you, "the media using the name 'Hillary'" argument is extremely weak indicator of sexism but on the other hand I don't think anyone denies that sexism was a factor in the primary. The number of pundits saying she was "Strident" (would we classify a man as strident?), the focus on her pant-suits, or on the web things like the "Hillary cackle" meme or the "make me a sandwich" site, all were obvious manifestations of sexism in the race.

Did she lose because of it though, that's the really interesting question. Unfortunately there can be no clear answer. In many ways she artfully used the underlying current of sexism to her advantage. Did at least some of her votes come from a contingent that only voted for her because she was a woman? Did it balance out those who would never vote for a woman?

Re: Three Rules For Startup Success

mikepk — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:31:15 -0000

Nice post, I think couching them as "three rules for startup success" is overstating it a bit, but they do represent some good general advice. As always, all startup advice is a lie. (google that phrase, there's a pretty good post by Tony Wright I particularly like) :)

I would modify the second one a little though. You state "Dont take forever to make a decision, but dont make it too fast.", that's somewhat contradictory advice and it makes it seem like there's some magical criteria, a Goldilocks moment, to make a decision . My feeling is that you should make a decision as soon as possible, accept it's going to be an imperfect decision. Obviously you don't want to make random choices, but as soon as you have any reasonable rationale for a particular path you should go with it (especially if you have a gut feeling one way or another).

I think this is what you were saying, but I feel like that one sentence kind of takes some of the wind out of the point. The sooner you make a decision, the sooner you'll actually get the data that you need to evaluate that decision. I agree that the problem most people have is that they think of decisions as "the end", hard forks, that once chosen will inexorably affect their destiny forever. That kind of moral weight can be paralyzing. The truth is, decision making is a process, one that does *not* end once you start down a path. There should be a continuous feedback loop evaluating, modifying and refining the choices that you make based on new information.

On the plains of hesitation lie the blackened bones of countless millions who at the dawn of victory lay down to rest, and in resting died.

- Adlai E. Stevenson

Re: Three Rules For Startup Success

mikepk — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:29:50 -0000

I still think we're saying mostly the same thing, I just worry that by saying "not too fast and not too slow" and saying there is a definitive "right" time to make a decision you're shifting the anxiety of prospective founders to knowing *when* is the right time to make a decision. I guess we disagree in that I don't think there is a right time. My feeling is that it's a very fuzzy continuum. I'm not suggesting you make random choices with no thinking or information, but you have to accept that you're always going to have to act on imperfect data. I argue that the sooner you make the choice, the sooner you "start the experiment" and can start getting feedback that helps you evaluate the decision and adjust.

I could be extra sensitive though, I worked in a big company for many years, and the most painful thing was the analysis-paralysis that used to set in. Research, committee's, design boards, and thrashing that all went into a seemingly endless process to make product decisions. I used to joke that in the time it took to make the decision between two options, we could have actually tried both and still taken less time.

Re: iPhone as platform = cha-ching

mikepk — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:02:02 -0000

I'm speaking about the iPhone in the US, but one thing that was great about the original iPhone launch that many people overlooked was the thought put into the entire iPhone experience. I'm thinking specifically of the initial activation process and plan selection. I believe they were incredibly smart in saying, "there is only one plan, and it's a flat rate for unlimited data". Sure, a small percentage of people howled that they couldn't get the phone without the unlimited data plan, but they weren't the target market anyway.

Unfortunately people can't see past the initial cost of the phone. If you calculate the true cost for the new 3G data plans coupled with the subsidized handset, the total real cost of ownership is actually higher over the two year contract, but that's something people don't see. One good thing in the US, at least initially, is that it's still an unlimited data plan.

The change of their model to a handset subsidized one actually doesn't bode well for the overall experience. There is already talk that users will be unable to activate their phones at home and that business users will have different phone rates from regular users (without any clear indication so far as to why). With apple relinquishing control of the plan selection and activation process, it does open up the possibility for a whole host of abusive ISP/Wireless co practices.

I don't know about you, but when presented a whole smorgasbord of plans, I can't help but think I'm getting scammed in some way for each of them, I get the "car dealer option package" feeling "Oh you want a sunroof, then you have to take alloy wheels then", "really? I didn't know they were connected."

I think if ISP's become too abusive, the market will route around the issue. People are willing to pay for pipes, but metered pipes is another question. I think Google's foray into the 700MHz spectrum auction here in the US was a warning shot aimed at Telcos. Many companies whole business model (like google moving ad inventory) depends on unfettered access to bandwidth.

Re: iPhone as platform = cha-ching

mikepk — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:21:04 -0000

I also thought for a while that they might evolve to become a MVNO here in the US to have total control over the process (not that those have had much luck recently). I think their latest moves show they have no interest in running the bandwidth themselves. It could be that they believe the wireless providers will be forced to become more open, and with that, the shift of focus would be from the pipes back to the services and devices (the platform). It seems to me that's the bet they're making, the same one as Google, although Google has been toying with force-accelerating the opening up process (municipal wi-fi, spectrum auction, etc...).

Re: Grazr

mikepk — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:51:19 -0000

Thanks for the nice words on Grazr! We've got a a big project in the pipeline, but getting back and re-working the interface is our next priority after that.

Re: Video interlude: The Pirate’s Dilemma

mikepk — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 01:04:55 -0000

Haven't watched the video yet, but this sounds similar, at least in spirit, to "Steal this film pt 2" http://www.stealthisfilm.co... which tries to draw the comparison between piracy and historical revolutions sparked by the freeing up of information.

I'll definitely watch this one when I get a change.

Re: Video interlude: The Pirate’s Dilemma

mikepk — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 01:07:51 -0000

Probably easier on youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=...

Re: Loopt launches its iPhone app with a surprise partner: Yelp

mikepk — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:01:49 -0000

As others have also speculated, I think the iphone 3G / App Store may be the tipping point for location aware services. Frankly, I'm excited by the possibilities this presents. I'm a little surprised and also a little concerned that the initial reviews had almost nothing to say about how good the GPS chip in the new iPhone is.

Re: Firefox Tablet — I would like one too

mikepk — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:48:37 -0000

It's a ridiculous post. It's a totally unrealistic price-point and goal, especially with the described feature set. To get it to a $200 retail price (assuming it's not just a BOM cost for the device, which I don't think it is), the number of sacrifices that would need to be made would make the device unusable for the intended audience. I'd be surprised if a quality, moderately high pixel density touch LCD screen (maybe at 800x600) wasn't north of $50, alone eating a quarter of your BOM cost. A battery capable of powering a bright large screen too for any extended period of time is not cheap either.

Also, IMHO, crowd sourcing this kind of device is a terrible idea unless you have a true benevolent dictator who's wiling to make the really hard choices. There are just too many interests at play. While it's do-able, you end up with something like linux or openmoko. Now I love linux, but it suffers from the many cooks in the kitchen syndrome that's just not tennable in a true consumer device. Just reading through the comments you see everyone chiming in with their needs, bluetooth to access external keyboards, video cameras, more USB ports etc... I can't imagine a single simple *cheap* device satisfying the diverse set of needs of this crowd.

Having said all that, I am curious if this actually goes anywhere. My prediction is that if anything does come of it, realistically it will be in the $500 ballpark. I doubt when presented with the sacrifices needed to bring the cost down if they'd be willing to make them.

Re: Firefox Tablet — I would like one too

mikepk — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:55:08 -0000

re: linux, I'm not saying it's impossible, but like ubuntu, you need some kind of benevolent dictator willing to make sacrifices to make it more friendly. Otherwise you get too many install options, customizations, and specific interests reflected in the finished product making it unusable for people not deeply involved with the technology/philosophy.

Re: Could Vista fail? (Scripting News)

mikepk — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:36:09 -0000

I mostly agree with your assessment. When I initially heard all the moaning and groaning about Vista, I assumed the issues were overblown, the tech elite casting echo-chamber judgment. Then I had the "pleasure" of using it and I was really quite surprised at how bad it was. The security "nagging dialogs", random UI changes for seemingly no good reason, the perception of general bloat and slow speed, and the lack of compelling new features really surprised me. Most of my Vista using colleagues say the initial negative reaction gets better over time, but like you said, few *love* Vista.

I disagree, however, with the notion that the OS is now at it's feature Apex and that future OS releases are for tweaks and maintenance. There is still lots of room for innovation, both from a user facing and developer standpoint. The object store file system that was supposed to be in Longhorn could have been truly innovative. The "Core" services in later OSX releases were quite useful to developers. I think we're also on the cusp of some new UI paradigms. Physics simulated, touch-based, UI's that mimic and extend real world behaviors I think will start to appear. These UI changes will occur very slowly, the MacBook Air's support for more OS gestures using the trackpad is an example of this "priming" for this new kind of UI.

The truly innovative OS's of the future will be a lot more like blank slates, where the OS and applications will "disappear" from the forefront and the things we're dealing with, documents, photos, maps, etc... will take center stage. The best example of this is the Perceptive Pixel demonstration videos. Those are highlighting the touch display, but what's more interesting to me is that the there is almost no notion of an OS framework around the manipulated on-screen objects. We're a long way from a real usable OS that could follow this model, but it's where I think we're heading.