Disqus - Latest Comments for marshalldt

Re: Twitter’s Acquisition, Chirp & Managing Developer Relationships

marshally — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:46:32 -0000

The thing that I suspect is different between the two is that the Twitter ecosystem is based on a free, publishing platform while Salesforce is a paid product which is focused on solving real business problems. As such, public perception of Twitter's ecosystem may be dominated by a handful of applications that deliver real innovation and value, but most of the actual apps out there are boring, spammy, or both.

To make matters worse, the number of folks actually doing anything interesting with Twitter's API is actually quite small. I'm concerned that the 'genetic diversity' just isn't available in this ecosystem to support the 'outline the whitespace and highlight best of breed apps' approach that you suggest.

Even the Disqus comment stream below, has largely turned into a mindless stream of RT or 'look what I read' messages. (and sadly Disqus used to be one of the apps that innovates and adds value). I thought Disqus was supposed to be about conversations?

Maybe the acquisition of Tweetie will cause a shakeout in the world of also-ran-Twitter clients, and some of these developers will turn around and do something really interesting. I'd love to see that happen. But for now, the Twitterverse does not need another iPhone client or URL shortener.

Re: Charging from Day 1: Genius or Deathknell?

marshally — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:00:26 -0000

This reminds me of the Customer Development Process, as espoused by Steve Blank

http://steveblank.com/categ...

If you haven't read his book, check out the 4 Steps to Epiphany, which I consider to be a must read for internet entrepreneurs. Blank has a great framework that you can use to structure your marketing efforts, and line them up neatly with an iterative software development process. Seriously great stuff.

Blank's term for what you are describing is the Minimum Viable Product, or the product with just the necessary features to get money and feedback from early adopters.

Re: Being Successful as a Distributed Team

marshally — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:29:49 -0000

Bradley,

Great post! I live in Dallas but work for a consulting company based in San Francisco. We wrestle with many of the same challenges every day.

What is Co-op? Can you supply a link? "Co-op" is a common phrase which resists my GoogleFu.

And congratulations on your trip to Peru! Do you have any pics posted online?

Re: Advanced Search

marshally — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 12:34:56 -0000

I definitely agree that to abandon a prominently featured "Advanced Search" after a few months of traffic was probably a bit premature.

What kind of UI changes would you suggest?

I propose that a few rapid fire searches around the same terms might indicate that a given user would be a good candidate for advanced search. In this case it might be helpful to have some kind of a word bubble callout for the "Show Options" feature ("Hey, I see that you seem to be having trouble finding what you are looking for. Have you tried our Advanced search? [Click here to disable this suggestion]")

Re: Advanced Search

marshally — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:01:27 -0000

When Google first added Advanced Search features in August of 2000, the link was much larger and much more prominent:

http://web.archive.org/web/...

But just a few months later, it had shrunk off to the right:

http://web.archive.org/web/...

Why?

The obvious reason is that advanced search is hard, people want instant gratification, and people don't use it.

Do you remember the feeling of glee the first time you punched a UPS tracking number into a google search box? Or more simply "weather 75248"? This is the kind of advanced search that most users what. "Dear Google, please figure out what I want. kthxby"

The other, more subtle reason, is that for almost all users the advanced search link does not drive scalable engagement. It doesn't drive future engagement, because it is a slow laborious process to enter the search terms. It isn't scalable because every search becomes a beautiful, unique snowflake that is impossible to cache and uses "off the beaten path" blocks of the code base.

Giving lightning fast results to simple queries benefits both me the user, my community of other users like me, and therefore Google itself. Advanced search on the other hand, really only benefits me. Google reaps only a tiny incremental increase in the total number of searches for an awful lot of work.

We've all heard tales of Google's obsession with measurement. I suspect that the Advanced Link of Diminutive Size shrank because people just don't use it.