welcome the bots, porn, and spam

spamminess -- nothing can reduce the quality of a site or service so quickly.  from unwanted intrusions by bots to disconcerting porn (as opposed to the good kind)... it’s distracting at best and at worst will cause users never to return.  yet, the very presence of such intrusions means you’ve arrived.  

celebrate it.

if the spammers don’t care about your site, there’s a problem.  it means you don’t have the users, engagement, size, or scale to warrant their time.  if that’s the case, get back to making your product better until it’s spam ROI positive.

when first founding workables, probably the most frequent question from investors centered around this area.  unfortunately we never got big enough to worry about, as howard lindzon of stocktwits would say, keeping the stream clean (free of misinformation and penny stocks in their case).

recently i’ve noticed a few of my favorite services entered the promised land of spam -- foursquare and soundcloud.  as opposed to linkedin or twitter, i tend to keep my foursquare friends to -- well -- actual friends.  we go places together, we hang out, and so it’s cool to keep up with each other.  increasingly purely random people are hitting me up on foursquare, and it’s definitely not because i’m that cool.  not sure if they’re peddling localized spam or something else, but they see an roi.

as you can see from some of my thong-wearing avatar followers on soundcloud, they too are experiencing the high class problem of spam.  to soundcloud’s credit, while i received these notifications on my mobile app, i don’t see these followers when logging on to the website, so kudos to them for keeping their site clean -- for once you hit this promised land, you need to move quickly to rid your site of this.

empower the community.  improve your analytics.  get smart about what is *real* user behavior, for it’s only the promised land for a second.  your site has arrived, but it won’t last if it’s riddled with bots and users with way too sexy of avatars.

most importantly, if the spammers think they can make money off your platform, it means you can too -- whether that’s selling out to porn, or a revenue model more noble.

cross platform / cross device

despite the age of the cloud and constant connectivity, it's astonishing how poorly services interact from one device to the next.  apple and the ios ecosystem strive to keep their experience "consistent", while google focuses on "open".  yet, the very same apps are available in multiple play stores across these antiquated boundaries. 

while product inconsistency is still a good thing, the time has come for applications to build for a connected experience.

i long for the day that my favorite sites, services, and apps communicate across platforms.  after all, i don't need the same @ mention notification from twitter on my android phone and my ipad and my mac.  and i'd love for my three star levels on angry birds or my achievements on temple run 2 to carry over from device to device. 

evernote is one of the few exceptions, for whether you log on from your pc or ipad mini -- your notes are waiting for you in an interface optimized for your device.  rdio is pretty slick as you can not only take your music across devices, but you can control the output of another device (e.g. my ipad is plugged into my stereo, and i just changed the song from my android).

what it comes down to is a closer relationship to the user, which means a log-in.  stop tying my relationship to your service to my device, but rather to me.  this necessitates a log-in funnel at which traditional services might cringe.  between a quick conversion and a lasting experience, i'd sacrifice the low hanging fruit.

a tighter funnel with more engagement is where it's at.  try raising funding based on downloads.  try upselling your users when you make them start from scratch from a new device.

flurry, the leader in mobile analytics and related eye candy, put out a great piece on app usage.  on average, just 35% of users will still be engaging with your app after 90 days.  i'd argue that's because you've siloed their experience to a single device.

what is your favorite service that doesn't simply connect with your device, but connects with you?

product inconsistency (it's a good thing)

platforms aren't created equal.  they each have their own strengths and their own flaws.  whether you are talking about digital platforms (such as apple's ios versus google's android) or more traditional platforms (like doing business in different countries), the right answer is never to aim for product consistency across these platforms. 

spam, eggs & rice -- a mcdonald's tradition in hawaii

brand, quality, and service consistency should be invariable across all platforms, but that's where products and services should give way to inconsistencies that will make them awesome in each and every platform.

the most global companies in the world have been doing this years.  coca-cola uses local water (filtered, of course) and local sweeteners across each of its bottling centers, and don't we all love mexican coke or coca-cola light from france?  mcdonalds is an even more extreme example where the menu changes dramatically as you go from country to country, or merely hawaii (and their crazy fascination with spam), to serve local tastes.

while this strategy is much more clearly correct with physical products, a lot of digital products are failing at this -- producing far too consistent products. 

across mobile (from phones to tablets, and everything in between), i'm seeing apps dumbed down to the lowest common experience.  if for no other reason than more screen real-estate, an ipad has more potential for a better experience than that of an iphone.  yet twitter, with a recent update, simplified its ipad app to match the experience of the iphone.  i don't know if that was the goal, but the sliding panes and cool gestures were gone -- resulting in an all too consistent experience.

across platforms (from apple to android), i'm seeing unfortunate design decisions that create boring similarities, instead of building on the strength of each platform.  taking android, for example, you have the potential to create lock-screen widgets, become the 'default' app (something i'm very keen on), and communicate more easily with other apps.  why then aim for the same functionality, features, and design as that of an ios app?

evernote is the shining example that is embracing inconsistency.  different platform teams compete against each other, steal from each other, and push each other to create the best experience for their respective audience -- creating product inconsistency of which everyone can be proud.  i'm not always of fan of every update, but appreciate how they are focused on platform innovation and platform excellence.

which products do you find too consistent? which are doing a good job at being inconsistent?

business requirements

never before have employees been more valued.  the race to the bottom is reversing, and high quality talent is being rewarded.  the best companies in the world are empowering their people to take ownership, make decisions, and focus on solving their customers' problems.  the exception to this autonomous, customer-centric utopia are "business requirements" -- a still too frequent relic from the past.

when something must be done, despite no good reason for doing it...  that's a business requirement.  so whereas southwest empowers its employees to make logical decisions, other airlines have business requirements that require x hours notice to change seats or flight.  some retailers make exchanges the best part of the experience (such as bonobos or zappos), while others make exchanges a dreaded part of doing business (make sure to bring your receipt, blood sample, and pristine piece of shit back within 45 minutes or we can only offer store credit).

when too many people get involved in finding solutions without a problem... the result is a business requirement.  so while some companies (i'll restrain from naming names) are losing customers by requiring such form fields as industry or address in order to merely register, others are working to eliminate every extraneous input and gesture so that they can get you engaged as quickly as possible.  right on cue, alex from dwolla emailed me saying that they launched a new homepage with registration now simply requiring email and password.

when people acquiesce to the way things have always been done... a business requirement fails to die.  so while the rest of us fight the good fight to rid needless "business requirements" from existence, it's important to recognize needless bureaucracy -- and maybe even give in to get the deal done.

365 days later

one year ago today i landed at jfk.  i immediately felt at home and haven't looked back.  before long i knew exactly which direction to go when coming out of the subway, discovered favorite local places, and checked in all around the city.  i even went to jersey a few times...

the year was filled with a lot of new experiences...  i completed my first race (a 10k through central park).  i dined at my first three star michelin restaurant (le bernardin).  i survived my first hurricane (oh sandy).  and most of all, i got married to my amazing wife!

my wife and i sometimes discuss if we could / would want to live somewhere else.  pei loves california and it's sunshine, and i would be interested to live in shanghai one day -- just need to work on my mandarin a bit more.  who knows if or when that day comes.  whether it is next week or never, i'll be enjoying life in nyc until then.

collaborative consumption

having invested a few years of my life, not to mention at least a few quarts of blood equity, in this space -- it's one about which i'm very passionate.  yet, it's also one bloody tough battle.

zaarly (now home to my beloved workables) is rocking, albeit after a significant pivot.  task rabbit continues to grow, and at least within techie circles is a phrase i hear thrown around a lot -- usually as a way to outsource laziness.  now even the mainstream is abuzz following the acquisition of zip car by avis.

for bleeding edge angel investors, however, this trend has been growing... check out this graphic from @noahmp, founder of @luckysort, which charts the chatter of 'rentals' on angel.co over the last quarter.

as mary meeker noted in her 100+ slides of the internet, people are becoming 'asset light'.  we don't need boxes of compact discs or dvds when we can stream from amazon.  we don't need to own cars, when we can rent them by the hour from zip car.

what else do we continue to consume that would be far ________ (easier, cheaper, better, etc) to rent?