much has been ballyhooed about google getting rid of reader and the impending death of rss, which to be fair is antiquated technology.  yet, people have never been so bullish about email -- still arguably one of the best ways to contact people, generate traffic, create awareness, spread news, or instigate a transaction.

neither the death of rss, or immortality of email is in itself that surprising... but the concurrence of the two is given their similar delivery and experience.

mailchimp, constant contact, and so many other *boring* email providers are peaking in terms of use and valuation... or at least hitting new highs (new six-month highs in the case of $ctct).  in the case of the former, mailchimp is rumored to be so profitable that it won’t take on investors.  just ask @jason.  and still, rss is dying.

while there is value in email, there is diminishing value in receiving news via email.  in the case of google, i get it, and rss may not make sense for them anymore as a large and growing number of people now get their news from twitter, linkedin, etc.

with that said, i’ve always been a bit a bit of a contrarian... being pro-mac in 2001.  adopting android in 2009.  and shorting krispy kreme ($kkd) at its peak.  granted a lot went into all those decisions, the least of which being luck, but i’m keeping my contrarian streak going and today i’m integrating rss into hegranes.com.

you can now receive every new post on this blog conveniently in your inbox.  just follow this link...

hegranes.com/subscribe

true, this is largely for my dad, whom i’m pretty sure doesn’t follow me on twitter and isn’t on facebook, but hopefully there’s a few more out there who would enjoy a fresh copy of the hegranes.com blog: ‘lower case letters, capital ideas’ landing in their inboxes every now and again.

Posted
Authorjonathan hegranes
*note, a version of this post originally ran on medium.com 

 

“so if i drink this beer with my right hand (my offhand, and the one on which i wear my fitbit flex), will it register all the calories i’m burning...”

yes, that was an actual thought i had the other night.

how quickly behavior can change when it’s measured.  granted, in the case of my fitbit, it was a present from my wife after a lot of research and something i was excited to receive and wear.  though in a matter of days it had already changed my behavior.  i began to push myself a bit harder during workouts.  when going for a run, regardless of how i felt or how bad the weather was, i wouldn’t stop before i hit my goal.  

that celebratory vibration and light dance from my fitbit was enough to keep me going.

while i’ve heard other such stories from friends who wear similar devices (like nike’s fuel band or the jawbone up), i merely expected cool metrics from my fitbit.  i hoped for a better way to capture and retain data (something of which i’m huge a proponent)... what i did not expect was actual behavior change.

no wonder the quantifiable self (the really cool venture capitalist term used to describe this space) is such a powerful trend these days, and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what’s possible.

--

i remember one of my favorite slides during my mba related to this point about measuring the right things.  to build a functioning organization you need to put in place metrics that capture the most important elements of the business.  not merely the elements of that job or function, but of the business.  for what gets measured, gets done.

simple, but so often poorly executed.  it’s easy to think myopically about one group’s metrics and how to best measure and hopefully optimize their performance without thinking a few steps ahead as to how that affects the rest of the organization, much less externalities.

flopping in the nba is perfect example.  the best player on the planet, lebron james, just got fined for flopping and a number of players have been fined throughout the season and into the playoffs for oncourt theatrics.  overall, the nba has gotten more strict about it’s no flopping rule, but they are measuring the wrong things.

the root of the issue stems from how referees are measured.  

referees used to have more leeway.  they could stop calling fouls -- even if a player was clearly fouled -- if that same player had a reputation for flopping.  they had the ability to maneuver and correct behavior... then the nba officiating committee started breaking down a referee’s performance by the accuracy of his calls.  his whistle was no longer a way to adjust behavior, but the means in which he would be measured.  a good officiating game was not about how players played or behaved or how in control the games was, but rather how precise his calls were.

this might sound like a great idea in theory as it’s also more quantifiable.  far easier to say referee x isn’t cutting it because his calls were below a certain percentage or that referee y should do the nba finals since his call accuracy is the best in the league.

accuracy got measured, and so it was done... and now we have flopping as one of the unforeseen results.

flopping aside, some referees and the nba might still prefer this approach.  they know exactly how they are judged.  certain employees and managers might prefer this too.  it’s easier to remove judgement and ambiguity.  when it comes to bonuses and reviews, it’s black and white.  did your sales meet the quota?  did your product ship on time?

however, i would argue for metrics that leave more room for interpretation.  strict rules and behavior too far down the org chart doesn’t account for the fluidity and interconnectedness of an entire organization.  simply optimizing one person’s function rarely results in maximizing value for the whole company as people in any function will invariably wear a lot of hats.  particularly in a knowledge economy, with constant movement and behavior changing rapidly, i’d encourage the measurement of hard to measure things.

customer service, for example, has seemingly straightforward metrics.  calls per hour, call duration, and so on.  yet none of those get to satisfaction.  zappos is famous for its customer service, and it’s succeeded largely because it doesn’t focus on easy metrics.  satisfaction is all that matters, and that doesn’t even mean a long phone call -- for that could be gamed in the other direction.

satisfaction really boils down to repeat and referral business, but that’s tough to reward your customer support team on things that are also affected by product and operations.  thus the need to measure what matters, cognizant of second and third derivatives -- sacrificing accuracy of measurement for impact -- and then tying rewards into individual, team, and organization-wide results.

qualitative metrics have far more room for impact, and will challenge employees to be -- as mark pincus, the founder of zynga, likes to say -- the ceo of their jobs.  brad feld, managing director at foundry group, wrote a great piece about this.

an organization with the right employees and right culture will value qualitative, imperfect goals.

--

when thinking back to when i was founding workables (now part of zaarly), i often thought one of my mistakes was trying to solve a problem that required a change in user behavior.  as the saying goes, people are creatures of habit.  if they are used to a certain process or product, it’s tough to make them think differently.

now i’m not so sure.  many of the great products and services today taught us to do things differently, from adding a filter to a photo to making reservations and appointments with an app instead of a phone call.  linkedin helped us to better fill out our profiles, largely because they helped us measure our progress.

whether you’re trying to start working out or trying to stop playing candy crush, changing one’s behavior is always a challenge.  it’s hard enough to try to change our own behavior, much less have someone else or something else change us.  as terrible as each of us is (at least in some way), we’re pretty happy that way...  but increasingly i think we’re willing to change, collectively as a society and individually.  

where we work, where we live, what we eat, and even how we think has never been so fluid.  for those who create organizations that measure and reward creatively, there’s never been more opportunity to capture share of both mind and market.



Posted
Authorjonathan hegranes

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.

Posted
Authorjonathan hegranes

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?

Posted
Authorjonathan hegranes

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?

Posted
Authorjonathan hegranes

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.


Posted
Authorjonathan hegranes