Matt Kiser

8 Principles For Building Products People Want

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:09:00 -0500

8 Principles For Building Products People Want:

Mike Krieger’s Eight Principles Of Product Design:

Draw On Previous Experience and Understanding – The biggest problem is startups in search of a problem. Chase what you’re passionate about; you’ll probably already have knowledge in the space.

Have A Hypothesis About How You’re Different – Have a point of view about your startup. Why is there a special opportunity for this now?

Never Build Without Sketching – Mike says he and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom would go to a cafe with little iPhone design pads where “we’d build and throw away entire features. You’d waste three or four pieces of paper, not three weeks of coding.”

Learn In Weeklong Increments – Start with a question: “Will folks want to share photos on the go? Can we build filters that look good?” Spend the week investigating, and by Friday have a conclusion and move on.

Validate In Social Situations – “We called this the Bar Exam. If you can’t explain it to the guy or girl at the bar, you need to simplify.” Don’t just test with your techy friends.

Know When It’s Time To Move On – “I know ‘pivot’ has become a dirty word, but if there’s no unanswered questions left, then it’s time to move on.”

The Wizard Of Oz Techniques For Social Prototyping – You don’t need to build everything at first. You can be the man behind the curtain. Krieger says him and Systrom tested an early version of a feature which would notify you when friends joined the service. Instead of building it out, they manually sent people notifications “like a human bot” saying ‘your friend has joined.’ It turned out not to be useful. “We wrote zero lines of Python, so we had zero lines to throw away.”

Build And Maintain A Constant Stream Of Communication With Your Audience – Don’t spend months building something without any idea if someone actually wants it.

Stables and Volatiles

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:07:04 -0500

Stables and Volatiles:

This great post by Rands explains perfectly how messed up the media industry is. Read the following definitions:

Stables are engineers who:

Happily work with direction and appreciate that there appears to be a plan, as well as the calm predictability of a well-defined schedule.

Play nice with others because they value an efficiently-run team.

Calmly assess risk and carefully work to mitigate failure, however distant or improbable it might be.

Tend to generate a lot of process because they know process creates predictably and measurability.

Are known for their calm reliability.

Volatiles are the engineers who:

Prefer to define strategy rather than follow it.

Have issues with authority and often have legitimate arguments for anarchy.

Can’t conceive of failing, and seek a thrill in risk.

See working with others as time-consuming and onerous tasks, prefer to work in small, autonomous groups, and don’t give a shit how you feel.

Often don’t build particularly beautiful or stable things, but they sure do build a lot.

Are only reliable if it’s in their best interest.

Leave a trail of disruption in their wake.

Who are Stables? They’re print guys. The publishers and managing editors that are scared of the digital unknown. They’ve been in the business for years, scraped to get by, and just want to coast to the retirement finish line. They’re boring, and, ironically, think it’s safe to cling to a declining business.

The Volatiles? They’re the digital guys inside your print business. They see the edge, and where we’re headed. You need to put them in charge… of everything. Disrupt yourself before you die.

Your Stables are there to remind you about reality and to define process whereby large groups of people can be coordinated to actually get work done. Your Stables bring predictability, repeatability, credibility to your execution, and you need to build a world where they can thrive.

Your Volatiles are there to remind you that nothing lasts, and that the world is full of Volatiles who consider it their mission in life to replace the inefficient, boring, and uninspired. You can’t actually build them a world because they’ll think you’re up to something Stable, so you need to create a corner of the building where they can disrupt.

The Future of Mobile Devices and News Consumption

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:42:00 -0500

I really love this study by Pew on the state of mobile devices and news consumption. It crystalizes some things a lot of news organizations have ignored (or don’t realize, yet?) about the migration of users from desktop to mobile/tablet, and the effect it’ll have on their businesses.

Consumers are engaging with news more often and on more devices. The landscape is becoming more fragmented as consumers migrate from desktop (website) to mobile/tablet (app & mobile web), and news organizations are faced with increased competition for attention. To complicate matters further, the mobile/tablet ad spending is nowhere near that of on desktop. There is a major disparity in CPM rates. 2013 will likely be a pivotal year for news organizations. The reckoning is coming.

The Pew study confirms this fragmentation and increased consumption, saying:

For most with multiple devices, there is not a single place for news. People who acquire mobile devices appear to be using them to get news on all their devices. This also suggests they may be getting more news more often. About a third, 34%, of desktop/laptop news consumers now also get news on a smartphone. About a quarter, 27%, of smartphone news consumers also get news on a tablet. While this smartphone/tablet news consumer group is small, just 6% of the population over all, it is a large percentage of those who own smartphones and tablets; fully 44% of people who own both kinds of devices use both for news. What’s more, most of those individuals (78%) still get news on the desktop or laptop as well.

That analysis seems to be echoed in this slide from Henry Blodget’s presentation on the future of mobile and how smartphone/tablet sales are now outselling desktop PCs.

This fragmentation can further be underscored in the amount of time spent using the device and the consumption of news in the Pew study:

Smartphone news users are now nearly split between their laptop and smartphone as their primary news platform; 46% still get most of their news on the desktop/laptop; 45% get most on their smartphone. Another 7% of these smartphone owners say they get most of their news on a tablet. Early tablet news users are moving in the same direction, but remain somewhat more reliant on the laptop or desktop computer. Of tablet owners, 47% still get most of their digital news via desktops or laptops, while a third, 34%, have already transitioned to consuming most of their news on the tablet.

And, from the Blodget presentation, you can see the disparty in ad spend vs consumer time spend:

And, to complicate matters further, the news organizations are losing the war for attention as social networks are increasingly becoming the starting point. Consumers are likely becoming less brand loyal as a result.

From Pew:

For those who get news on both the smartphone and tablet, social networking is a much more popular way to get news. Among that group (13% of all digital news consumers), fully two-thirds (67%) have ever gotten news recommendations from Facebook. That compares to 59% who get news on just one of those devices and 41% who only get digital news via the desktop/laptop. Similarly, 39% follow news recommendations on Twitter, compared with 24% who just use a smartphone or a tablet and 9% who use only the desktop/laptop.

All in all, it’s becoming clear that consumers are using multiple devices to consume more news than ever, but paradoxically, it’s at the expense of the news organizations themselves! As consumers move upstream to smartphones and tablets, news organizations will earn less revenue per consumer till the gap closes between consumer time spend and ad spend. And, coupled with the fragmentation of sources, like social media, the news organizations are no longer the starting point. 2013 is shaping up to be a rough year for many publishers…

Reaching the Startup Holy Grail: Product-Market Fit

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 16:57:40 -0500

Reaching the Startup Holy Grail: Product-Market Fit:

Some really, really solid stuff here, including lots of good links.

Why I think Apple is Building An Ad Hoc Social Network

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 16:56:35 -0500

Why I think Apple is Building An Ad Hoc Social Network :

I’ll be writing up all my thoughts on the topic, but here are some key takeaways to consider:

Apple’s social service would no doubt give people the opportunity to establishing lasting connections, but the default will likely be to erase connections and dissolve the networks when everyone leaves.

More importantly, Apple could achieve what Ping never could, which is to give people the means to share and socially discover music and other content, always with the added benefit of offering a path to purchase for that content.

Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 21:42:00 -0500

Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry :

I wrote about the scarcity problem with recorded music once before, and I think this article *nails* the future of the music industry: relationship access + ecosystem of fans + crowd patronage.

Whether or not artists like it, the inherent value of a record’s property value was in the scarcity of its physical distribution (i.e. CDs, tapes, vinyl). This scarcity has been permanently destroyed in the copy-and-paste internet era.

First, we must allow ourselves to be okay with music being free, or close to it. Second, we must recognize the anthropological value of music itself in human societies. Lastly, we must attempt a solution based on what the internet enables (direct fan-artist connection + community), as opposed to what it took away (scarcity of content distribution).

The DNA of Product Management

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 14:34:32 -0500

The DNA of Product Management:

1) Product managers wear three hats
Congrats, as a product manager you get three jobs:

a) Project manager: keep the wheels on the bus, the trains running on time and over-communicating about status, documentation, strategy, vision, etc

b) Product manager: the actual feature and requirements spec’ing, working with your x-functional team to get things built and shipped

c) CEO: the buck stops with you no matter what the org chart says. When your product succeeds lavish praise on the team. If your product is struggling you don’t blame sales or marketing - you help them get on track.

The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 14:32:00 -0500

The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard:

Who said websites need to be crammed with stuff?

Mastering the art of disruptive innovation in journalism

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 17:33:00 -0400

Mastering the art of disruptive innovation in journalism:

The value for news organizations now increasingly lies in providing context and verification—reporting the “how, why and what it means”—and facilitating communities around that news and information.

Amplification & the changing role of media

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:00:00 -0400

Amplification & the changing role of media:

With the rise of the social web, that has changed. Blogs, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other such platforms have made it easy for news makers to go direct to their constituents. So what is the role of today’s media person? In addition to reporting news, I think picking things to amplify is also important. Back in the day, news people made choice by deciding which stories to write. Today, we have to adopt a similar rigor about what we choose to share and amplify. In sharing (on Twitter or even re-blogging) we are sending the same message as doing an original news report. The easy thing is to share or reblog everything, but by being deliberate about it, we are essentially “editing” and telling the world: “this is how I see the world/this particular beat.”

How Apple Will Inadvertently Kill Pandora: The Genius of iTunes Genius & iTunes Match

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 19:38:00 -0400

I’ve been thinking a lot about the rumors that Apple is going to create a Pandora-like streaming radio experience. I don’t think that’s the whole story. It obviously can’t be.

Apple left an umbrella for streaming services, which explains why the Spotify’s, Pandora’s, iHeartRadio’s of the world have been able to creep in on Apple’s turf — there’s a gap. We all see it. Apple’s also maintained a pretty hardline that ownership (.99-cent download) is more important to them than access (subscription plans). It’s important to the music industry, too, as something like 80% of all music sold is sold by iTunes. You can’t just replace download dollars (ok, .99-cents) for streaming tenths of a penny and expect everyone to be ok with it.

So, it makes a lot sense for Apple to narrow this gap and strategically defend its position as the top seller of music, but also rejuvenate their huge install base of 400 million+ installs by creating a hybrid model. I see the standard iTunes Store experience (ownership) more clearly and seamlessly paired-up with a beefier iTunes Match (access to owned content anywhere) — essentially doubling-down on the iTunes Match promise that you can “access your music from all your devices and listen to your entire library, wherever you are.” Coupled with how much iTunes Genius has learned over the years (i.e. listening habits, including time of day, type of music, day of the week, type of device, etc.) and iCloud, you can see a clear convergence happening.

Additionally, we should expect to see a programmed, streaming radio model that uses your library as a guide, but relies on the millions of iTunes Genius data points of user listening history to dictate the music mix (i.e. Genius Mixes on crack). I’ll contend that iTunes Genius is more similar to Songza, which is why I don’t think Pandora is the correct analog. Songza makes more sense from their themed, bite-sized playlists that are easy to consume and navigate. The obvious assumption is that Apple would just create a streaming radio experience and slap their lagging iAds product on it and call it a day. That’s probably going to happen to an extent, but that can’t be the full story either.

I have a hunch that Apple will use and reward users for having a vast library they own (i.e. relying heavily on the music that’s been previously paid for) and then fill in the blanks in the streaming radio programming from the 28 million+ songs in the iTunes library. I believe that the rewards for having a large library of owned music will be realized through less restrictions in the streaming radio space (i.e. no caps on skips or number of artist plays per hour, or amount of “free” listening per month per user, etc.). It’s important to remember that iTunes Match is like renting your own music. Every time a consumer re-downloads or faux-streams their own music, the copyright holder is getting paid. I can’t underscore that enough: for $25 a year you’re putting money into the music industry that was previously lost in exchange for access to your own music. Jeff Price, president of TuneCore, sheds some light on the economics by saying, “Apple keeps 30% of iTunes Match revenues for itself — the same percentage the company keeps from the iTunes and App Stores. The remaining 70% is divided, with 88% going to record labels and 12% going to songwriters. The royalties are split amongst artists based on ‘how many times someone accesses your song’ via iTunes Match and it doesn’t matter if a song is matched or uploaded — the royalty is paid either way.”

Think about it: you’re paying to access music either way. It’s either a subsidized version of your music library paired with the iTunes library of 28 million songs ($25/year + whatever you buy + ad revenue), or it’s Pandora’s 800,000 songs ($36/year -or- just ad revenue) or Spotify’s 15 million songs ($120/year -or- just ad revenue) you pay to access. But in either scenario, the music industry is going to make more money from Apple. And, by Apple keeping people in their ecosystem longer and rewarding them for owning music in the form of subsidized streaming radio, they’re able to sell more music and put even more money in the pockets of the music industry — something none of the other streaming competitors can provide sans potentially Amazon and Google, which we haven’t even talked about. In a nutshell, the pitch is that for something like $25 a year, you can get all your music anywhere at anytime on any device — oh, and one more thing — you can also listen to exceptionally awesome iTunes Genius-powered streaming radio, too. I’d buy.

The Best and Brightest Music Industry Minds on Twitter

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 10:30:50 -0400

I’m incredibly excited to say that I was included on Hypebot’s list of top innovators, industry leaders, and all around resourceful people in the music industry and tech space who are worthy of following on Twitter!

I put together a complete list (plus a few of my own suggestions!) of my favorite wonks in the music industry and technology space.

The Music Industry's Perception Problem

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:47:00 -0400

I stumbled into this article today by Steve Guttenberg where he suggests that music has become unimportant and simply a soundtrack to other activities. He blames everything from the “loudness wars” to mobile devices being a distraction to fewer records being made (!?) for music’s lack of importance today. He argues that artists aren’t making money the traditional because of Napster and piracy, saying “Once paying for recorded music became a purely voluntary act the value of music plummeted. What’s potentially free is certainly worth less. How can bands survive and make record music when the old revenue streams are drying up?”

I think that’s kind of the point: the music industry got disrupted and failed to innovate. Music never lost its importance, the perception about paying for recorded music simply changed. There was no single event, or product that caused this turmoil. Not even Napster. Selling records is yesterday’s business model. Selling an experience is today’s.

One of the most important truths that became transparent falling out of this changing industry is that music is abundant. It always has been. It’s just that the music industry spent the better part of a half-century indirectly convincing consumers that music was scarce — only so many records could physically be stocked at a time, played on the radio, or promoted by labels. More importantly, the industry (also indirectly) taught consumers that the music was free (think radio) and you paid for the medium (think vinyl, cassettes, and CDs). A good example of this is the CD. It never cost $18.99 to produce a CD. You were paying for the medium, because it theoretically offered superior audio quality to the cassette, which (allegedly) offered better quality to the vinyl record before that. There were other value propositions, ranging from the CD being easier to listen to on the go (remember G-Shock protection anyone?) to it being more durable. We all know how these turned out.

Music is finally, truly part of our lives in every aspect, in every moment, and at every event. It’s become ubiquitous and more important than ever, really. That’s not without saying that the experience around discovering music, and later consuming it, sucks. It does. You have interoperability issues where platforms and services don’t talk to each other — I can’t share a Spotify song with an iTunes user, just like I can’t share my vinyl record with a guy holding a CD player. The abundance of choice on Spotify can make enjoying music hard. The question “what should I listen to?” use to be an easy one. You only had so many physical objects on hand — a perceived scarcity. Now you have the entirety of recorded music at your fingertips — an abundance; a commodity. It’s not that music lost its importance, it’s that consumer’s perceived value of recorded music changed as the medium evaporated.

Ultimately, fixing the industry’s woes will be about creating a compelling experience for music discovery and consumption where the consumer votes with their dollars.

What social music really means

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 14:22:00 -0400

We like to talk about “social music” as it pertains to music shared with our friends across social networks. Spotify and Rdio’s integration into Facebook being the obvious example of social music. But, that’s not social music. Nor is Facebook’s “Listen with” feature. Even Turntable.fm for all its interestingness is close, but not an actual social experience.

This is social music:

Imagine a venn diagram. In one circle is music I like. In the other circle is music a friend likes. The overlap is the sweet spot where music crosses over from being an individual experience, to music as a social one. In the vastness of the canon of recorded music, this is the spot at which the two of us intersect — this is where our musical compatibility and relationship begins. That’s powerful knowledge. Now take that concept further and extend it to music recommendations: music you like that your friend might also like.

Think about it for a second: we don’t actually know what our friends will like. Do you really have a good answer to “what should I listen to?” for every single one of your friends? I’m an outlier and spend an extraordinary amount of time listening to music, and as good as I am at recommending it, my success rate is pitifully low. A “normal” person would have an even lower success rate.

The ability to make recommendations “smart” and personalized on a person-to-person level is what I love about working at the intersection of music, media, and technology.

If we could take this concept of social music and apply it to entire friend circles, the results would be incredibly interesting since it would highlight the natural affinity groups centered around particular artists and genres. Further, it would reveal the sub-sub-groups we form when we listen to music communally. Which, in reality, is what being social is about.

Untangling the Culture of Distraction

Thu, 31 May 2012 15:17:00 -0400

Fantastic read by Joe Kraus on the culture of distraction we’ve created for ourselves with new technologies.

Gaps used to happen all the time. Now they’re disappearing. You’re eating lunch with a friend and they excuse themselves to the restroom. A gap. Now, you pull our your phone because being unstimulated makes you feel anxious. Waiting time in a line at the bank? Used to be a gap. Now it’s an opportunity to send an email or a text.

We didn’t think gap time and “boredom” were valuable. Now that we’re losing it, we get a sense of just how valuable it was.

Simply put, at the heart of creativity, insight, imagination and humaneness is an ability to pay attention to ANYTHING – our ideas, our line of thinking, each other. And that is what’s most threatened.

(via Joe Kraus)

Mary Meeker on the State of the Web

Thu, 31 May 2012 15:06:15 -0400

Mary Meeker on the State of the Web:

This year, Mary Meeker brings her famous annual Internet Trends report to D10, where she just appeared onstage.

Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and former financial analyst, is describing what she calls “the re-imagination of nearly everything” powered by mobile and social, with a torrent of slides tracing what was then and what is now. For example: News outlets are reimagined on Twitter, note-taking is reimagined on Evernote, scrapbooking is reimagined on Pinterest.

Life Advice from Pete Rose

Tue, 22 May 2012 12:00:19 -0400

Be Aggressive
Be More Aggressive
Never Be Satisfied

(via Here Now)

Avoiding Depression While Not Running a $1B Company

Fri, 18 May 2012 14:09:52 -0400

Avoiding Depression While Not Running a $1B Company:

So good.

smalldogsbigdogs:

Instagram sells for $1B. Evernote is now valued at $1B. Pinterest at $1.5B. 3 month old companies coming out of YCombinator are getting investments based on $10M+ valuations. And today will be the Facebook IPO which will likely put a market cap on the company north of $100B.

SPIN Play for iPad Wins Digital Tablet App of the Year Award from the Society of Publication Designers

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:53:00 -0400

On Friday, the Society of Publication Designers honored SPIN Play for iPad with the tablet app of the year award at the 47th annual SPD’s. Marisa Gallagher, VP/ECD of CNN Mobile, said “SPIN got me back into wanting to listen to music.”

For those keeping score at home, this is the fourth major award that SPIN Play has won. Previously, we’ve won awards and honors for being inducted into the Apple iTunes App Store Hall of Fame, winning a 2011 Media Vanguard Award and a 2011 HOW Interactive Design Award. SPIN Play was also recognized by the American Society of Magazine Editors as a Digital Ellies finalist in February.

Best Media Links of the Week

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:04:00 -0400

Here’s the quick, weekly roundup of links you need to read. It’s interesting that this week all but one link centers around the evolution of digital publishers, from The Atlantic downplaying SEO, to audience development trumpeting content, to former Huffington Post members starting a new kind of journalism incubator. Go forth and create awesome!