Content Matters

Apple Music - the Spotify Accelerator

 

Apple Music was finally announced this week at WWDC.

For months (years) we'd been hearing that Apple was ready to launch it's "Spotify killer". But, will Apple Music be a big threat to Spotify, Pandora and other streaming services?

 

Apple has proven that it can sell music. Before iTunes, digital music was the wild west, fraught with piracy and viruses. Kids and tech-savvy adults figured out how to download music, while the rest of the world barely could figure out how to rip a CD. Along came iTunes, creating a safe and user friendly marketplace for buying music. Yet, 14 years and numerous tries later, Apple hasn't shown the ability to deliver a compelling music service. Remember when Apple launched Genius as the "Pandora Killer"? Yeah right.

It's usually a safe bet that anything billed as a [        ] killer will fail to deliver on that promise.  Remember the Blackberry Playbook, the "iPad killer"? Or for those in fintech, the Reuters 2000 terminal aka "Bloomberg killer".  I love Slack, but it's not really an email killer. And Apple Music won't be a Spotify Killer. In fact, it could be a Spotify Accelerator.

What might the impact of Apple Music be? It might:

• Grow the audience for streaming music beyond the tech-savvy market
• Simplify the concept - Apple didn't use the word "streaming" once. It was all about having all the music in one place.
• Enroll millions of users into Apple Music trials, some of whom will cancel after the 3-month free period ends, instead adopting free versions of Spotify or Pandora.

The one way in which Apple Music could have truly killed Spotify would have been if the rumored deals with the record labels came to fruition, eliminating the free version of Spotify and other competitors. But there's no way that would have passed antitrust muster. 

So now, Apple Music becomes YASMS (yet another streaming music service). Bob Lefsetz said it best:

in order to succeed you’ve got to deliver something better, bring in those who were disinterested or scared to participate previously, and there’s nothing in Apple Music that isn’t widely available elsewhere, including its social network and playlists.

When you're the little guy, driving public awareness is tough. Advertising is expensive and word-of-mouth only gets you so far. Despite those challenges, Spotify has grown to 75 million active users, with 20 million of them paying. Apple Music will help to make subscription-based streaming music mainstream. Think of it as your mother's streaming music service. And as streaming becomes more mainstream, that means more users for Spotify.

 

The One Thing Missing From the Apple Watch Launch

The Apple Watch launch event was a spectacle. Thousands of journalists and industry luminaries lined up for entry into the auditorium, giving it almost a red carpet feel (though without the silly "who are you wearing?" questions). Once inside, the crowd hung on every word, with even journalists applauding each new announcement (something I don't believe they teach at J-school). 

The crowd oohed and aahed at each new device - ooh a gold MacBook, a pretty aluminum Apple  Watch and, ultimately, the gold Edition Watch.

 

But for me, one thing was missing. Compelling User Stories. How were these Apple Watches going to solve real problems or drive new behaviors.

 

"That's unfair" was the retort of the fan boys and girls. "When the iPhone launched, no one knew what it would be used for" was a common refrain.

 

But that's not quite true. The iPhone promised a computer in your pocket, with full Internet access wherever you went. And it offered features we had become accustomed to in other devices - an iPod, a phone, a GPS (the camera came later).

 

"What about the iPad?" was another common refrain. Well, the iPad added some core functionality - a larger screen for surfing or reading, but not a lot more. In fact, one of the weaknesses of the iPad model is that it relies heavily on 3rd party app developers to drive innovative functionality. And, to be frank, as an early adopter, I haven't seen a lot of innovation from those developers. 

 

One of the first innovative products for the iPad was the News Corp tablet-based newspaper, The Daily. The Daily, leveraging all the capabilities of the iPad, held the promise for immersive, innovative advertising. But most of the ads were simply boring. It turns out that ad agencies were ill-equipped to create immersive experiences what they were good at were creating static display ads and video ads for television. So, that's mostly what we got in The Daily. 

 

Fast-forward nearly five years and we see that the big challenge for the iPad is that upgrade cycles are long. Since app developers are not pushing the limits of the hardware, the version you bought 3 years ago is still just fine for the primarily tasks of reading and browsing. My iPad 3 does everything I need. And my wife only recently upgraded from her first gen iPad, only because Apple wouldn't allow that version to upgrade to the latest version of iOS. The app ecosystem around the iPad remains largely focused on reading apps, along with more expansive views of phone apps (calendar, mail, social media). App developers have failed the test of driving new use cases that Apple had not imagined.

 

Which brings me back to the Apple Watch. In the demos, the greatest benefit that Apple shared was "YOU DON'T HAVE TO TAKE IT OUT OF YOUR POCKET!!!"

 

OK. There's some value in that. If you get frequent notifications, you might find value in glancing at your wrist, rather than reaching into a pocket or purse. Then again, I shut off most notifications as I don't want constant interruptions for low priorities.  For high priority alerts I am fine reaching into my pocket.

 

It seems to me that Apple has not identified any really compelling use cases for wrist-based access. And the assumption that developers in the Apple ecosystem will identify those must-buy concepts seems a big risk to the model. I'm sure there will interesting uses. I think a voice recorder could be very practical, though I am glad there's no camera. But that alone is unlikely to drive adoption.

 

I've always felt that the wrist was not the most obvious place for a mobile device. The reason why Dick Tracy had a wristwatch phone was that, at the time, a watch was the only "device" most people carried (Maxwell Smart's shoe phone came later). No one at the time envisioned us all carrying a powerful computer in our pocket.

 

Wearables have the potential to impact the way that we work. I'm not sure that a wrist-based disruption device is the answer. Small screens have limited use cases, other than for quick alerts. I think there's more potential for an in-ear device ("smart earbuds") that can provide more useful information. And, perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised by innovative apps that emerge, but I'm a skeptic for now.

What makes a great product manager?

Most roles at technology companies are pretty easy to define. Software engineers write code. QA analysts test to ensure releases meet requirements. DBA’s set up and manage data schemas. Marketers market and sales reps sell. But ask the typical person to define the product manager role and they’ll struggle.

Perhaps they’ll say something like “they own the roadmap” or “they define the requirements”, which are certainly true, but that’s only a part of the product management role. Or, they’ll confuse it with project management, which can be a part of the role, but isn’t the primary function.

And, because the product management skills are not so clearly defined, almost everyone in a technology company, from CEO to field sales, believes they can define the product. While they’d never say “let me code that feature”, they all think it’s fair game to weigh in with “that button should be larger” or “we need a search by color feature”.

In reality, Product Managers own the full lifecycle of a product, from initial strategy through market adoption and ongoing enhancement.

image credit: Product Manager via OneDesk

By definition, the day-to-day responsibilities of a product manager will vary, depending upon where a product is in its lifecycle. But, regardless of where you are in that lifecycle, there are certain skills required to be a great product manager.

Evangelist: From the early moments of developing a product strategy, you need to get the rest of the organization behind your effort. Throughout the process, you need to communicate what you are doing and why it should be the priority for scarce dev resources to focus on. And when you approach product launch, you’ll need to rally sales and marketing, customer support and others to embrace it.

Listener: Product management is not done inside an office nor a garage. Product management is done in the field, understanding customer workflows, their challenges and their goals.

Business Process Analyst: The ability to fully understand business needs is perhaps the most critical b2b product management skill. A good product manager can explain, in simple terms, the exact customer need behind a feature request. Typically, this is done in the form of user stories. The key challenge is that customers will often try to explain what they want in the context of how they perform the task today (with your product or something else). So, they’ll say “we need a button here that loads the profile” when what they really need is to integrate data from two systems into a single view. The Product Manager’s role is to probe until they understand exactly what a customer really needs and what specific benefit that provides them.

Relationship builder: To successfully bring products to market, you need to build strong relationships with customers, with engineering, with QA, with UX, with sales, presales and training. Product management is about building mutual trust and respect with each of these groups, so you can constantly manage the balance and conflicts between their desires and the needs of the business.

Prioritizer: product management is about focus and prioritization. There will be constant trade-offs in terms of functionality, resources and timing. The product manager needs to be able to say no, or at least “not now” to feature requests from sales, marketing, customers and even the CEO.

Technical knowledge: while I’ve met a few product managers who come from a coding background, that’s not necessary for the job. But you do need to understand the technology stack and have a sense of what it takes to build something as well as understanding of how to scale to meet the needs of the business. If you don’t understand the technology, you’ll never earn the respect of the Engineering team nor will you be able to effectively translate user stories into technical requirements.

Being a great product manager requires all of these skills. You must be effective at cutting to the core of what customers need, while being incredibly focused, constantly reprioritizing and, most importantly, able to influence without authority.

And I wouldn't trade it for any other job I know.

 

(Part 2 of this post will explore the differences between being a product manager for a startup and for an established company)

 

On Loss (of Data)

There are two kinds of people - those who have lost data and those who will.

That was a truism for most of us who grew up in the PC-era. I learned my lessons early in my career and have been religious about regular backups. In the early days, that was tape and CD; today, it's a mix of cloud backup (Mozy), external hard drive and occasionally burning files to DVDs and storing them in a fireproof safe (as a fire or storm can take out your external drive along with your laptop).

But, as we move more and more of our lives to the Cloud, backing up your data becomes more challenging. 

My Evernote account has been quirky lately; any time I change networks, Evernote for OS X thinks I'm offline and I have to restart it. No big deal, but the fix that the support team proposed was to rebuild my database. Easy enough, but it brought an immediate panic. Where are my notes stored and, if the rebuild fails, how can I get them back? With Evernote, it turned out to be no big deal. I simply moved the existing notes folder to a temporary space and when I next loaded Evernote, it sync'd with my online account and rebuilt the database. But, not all apps make it that clear.

This morning, I saw a panicked post from Felix Salmon.

I'm hoping that Felix will be able to recover his notes. Staci Kramer pointed him to a potential solution.

In Felix' case, it's not the typical, oops - I deleted files from my device - but rather it's that he's deleted an account and a number of critical notes were tied to that account.

But, the bigger issue is how we can backup and manage our information that's stored across numerous services in the Cloud. For me, that includes Dropbox, gmail, Google Docs, Evernote, Flickr, Picasa, Instagram, SkyDrive and probably others. And that number continues to expand.

So, what are the services that allow us to manage and backup our cloud-based services? I could set up some rules in IFTTT to move files around, but what I really want is an easy platform that lets me backup, restore, move and access files no matter where they're stored and in what format.

What tools are you using to manage and backup your cloud data?

 

 

facepalm image courtesy striatic

 

 

A Secure Yet Simple Password Strategy On the Cheap

Another day, another major site getting hacked. This time it's eBay and, possibly (and frighteningly), Paypal. 

Everyone knows that passwords are a horrible way to protect your information, but until finger scanners or other systems are in widespread use, we don't have much choice. And, even where finger scanners are used (Android and, on a limited basis, iOS), you still need to provide a backup password for when the swipe doesn't register.

There are a handful of basic rules for passwords which we all know by now:

• Passwords should not be words that appear in the dictionary
• Passwords should have a mix of upper and lower case
• Passwords should have a combination of letters and numbers
• You should not use the same password on multiple sites

Yet, despite the fact that we know these rules, most people break them all the time. It's simply too difficult to remember dozens or hundreds of passwords.

The best approach is to use a secure password manager. Personally, I'm a fan of 1password. Their protection is about as strong as you can find, they have a simple browser plugin, and they support multiple platforms and devices (OS X, Windows, iOS, etc). Other password managers include LastPass, KeePass and oneSafe. I strongly recommend you use one of those tools. But, for those who don't want to pay for a password manager, or choose not to use one for other reasons, there are still ways to keep secure.

Here's an approach that I'd used previously, before I adopted 1password. It's free. It's fairly safe. And it's still easy to remember the password for hundreds of websites.

1. Start with a basic password you'll remember but that's not that obvious. For this example, I'll choose falcon.

2. Always capitalize one letter in the word. Now it's faLcon.

3. If possible, change one of the letters to a number. How about faLc0n

4. Add the current year to the password. faLc0n14 (or better yet split the year into two parts - like 1faLc0n4). Then, each January, update the password, so it becomes 1faLc0n5 in 2015, etc.
At this point, you have a fairly unique password that consists of a mix of numbers and letters, does not represent a word in the english language, etc. It can still be beaten by brute force (i.e. a computer trying tens of thousands of combinations) but would not be easily guessed.

5. Now - here's the key part. For every website, take the 1st 2 letters of the URL and insert them at the beginning or end of your password. So, for Facebook, the first 2 letters are fa. If I put the f at the front of my password and the a at the end, my Facebook password becomes f1faLc0n4a. For Yahoo, my password would be y1faLc0n4a, etc.

Now, I recommend you modify this approach to your own requirements. Perhaps you put the numbers in the middle of the base word. Or, maybe, instead of the first 2 letters of the URL, you take the last 3 letters before the .com suffix. Make it your own. But there's no excuse for using weak passwords or using the same password on multiple sites. 

Out of the Ruins: Lessons from Thunderdome

Yesterday's announcement by Digital First Media's John Paton, that DFM would be shuttering it's Project Thunderdome has provoked quite a bit of chatter. Much of that came in the way of schadenfreude, or "patonfreude", as Lucia Moses called it.

And, some of that is to be expected. John Paton has a big personality and he was not shy about touting the bold steps that DFM was taking in an effort to redefine their business. But most of the response was supportive, recognizing that bringing change is difficult, and we should celebrate the efforts, regardless of the results.

Ultimately, there were many huge challenges that DFM and Project Thunderdome faced.

As Mathew Ingram notes, a private equity-backed structure, does not lend itself well to long-term experimentation with new models. 

But digging more deeply, there were many structural issues. 

The basic idea behind Thunderdome was to create a centralized newsdesk to handle all big, national stories, with local properties handling local news. In many ways, that made sense, and DFM assembled an all-star team of digital news professionals, led by Jim Brady and Robyn Tomlin to lead it.

But that model may have been one of the big challenges for DFM. 

While shared resources make sense, transformation of a business from print to digital can't be done by a centralized, shared unit. Innovation is not something that can be created externally and dropped into an organization, as though by an Amazon drone.

As Ken Doctor notes: "Thunderdome wasn’t universally received well within the company. Talk to the locals and you heard grumbles. Traffic to the new Thunderdome sections didn’t impress them. They didn’t like national imposition on local news judgment."

Successful transformation has to come from a blend of new and old. Embedding new capabilities, while empowering existing editorial resources, is probably the best path to success. Of course, there is always resistance to change, and we've seen many cases where the legacy organization rejects the implantation of an innovation team. But it seems that positioning Thunderdome as the future, and the local papers as "the past" left DFM with no bridge to navigate the present.

 

With Office for iPad, Microsoft Aims to Drive Its Cloud Services

The long-awaited Office for iPad was launched today.

Office for iPad is clearly aimed at driving users to adopt Microsoft’s cloud-based tools. It’s fine as a document reader, but to edit or create documents requires a $99.99 per year Office 365 subscription.

To access cloud-based documents, which is the primary way you'll work with documents, they have to reside on Microsoft OneDrive (the relabeled SkyDrive service). There’s no option to access your docs on Dropbox, Google Drive or any other third party platforms. You can get a free OneDrive account with 7 GB of storage, but for those who actively use Dropbox or another service, the idea of adding another cloud host for documents doesn’t make much sense. That leaves an opening for tools like QuickOffice Pro, acquired by Google, which integrates with both gmail and Dropbox.

The applications themselves seem robust. They didn't just take the desktop apps and shrink them; clearly a lot of effort went into building device-appropriate apps. I'll leave full reviews on these to others, but my quick thoughts are that the apps themselves are solid.

If you're an active MS Office user who doesn't use Google Docs or Dropbox, Office 365 and OneDrive would make a lot of sense. But, for the gmail/dropbox/google docs crowd, I don't expect much takeup. For me, the biggest benefit might be to use the PowerPoint viewer as a way to more easily run PowerPoint decks from my iPad to a projector. I typically use Keynote for that, but they're not 100% compatible, so a solid PowerPoint viewer will be great for that occasional need.

The big winner here is Apple. Microsoft has resisted developing iPad-specific versions of Office applications because they still held out hope that those applications could ultimately sway users to buy Windows Mobile-based tablets. Clearly, Apple is winning the BYOD war by a large margin and this serves as Microsoft's endorsement of that. Where that leaves Microsoft's mobile strategy, in the long run, is an unanswered question.

 

The Smartwatch Must Be More Than a Remote Control For Your Phone

This week begins the hype all around the new Samsung Smartwatch, to be introduced on Wednesday. 

While many are envisioning Dick Tracy and video chat on the wrist, it doesn’t sound like that’s what the focus of these initial devices will be. And I’m not sure that very many people want the Dick Tracy watch today, anyway.

Fifty years ago, when people thought about mobile devices, they naturally assigned these capabilities to things we already had on our person - a watch, or, in the case of Maxwell Smart, a shoe. Today, we all have powerful communications devices in our pockets, so moving it to our wrist is not that exciting.

And that’s one of the challenges in terms of a smartwatch. What should it be? Is it simply a remote control to access data on your phone, tablet or computer? And will that be enough to become a mainstream “must-have” product?

The core functionality that everyone seems to be focusing on is health and fitness. And there’s definitely an audience for that. Despite the fact that I’ve stopped wearing a watch, I wear my Fitbit 24/7. One good thing about the Fitbit is its low profile. I can work out with it, shower and even leave it on while sleeping (it monitors my sleep). But a big, bulky smartwatch will be cumbersome and I’m not sure it will fit the Fitbit/Fuelband niche.

The other obvious function for a smartwatch is communications. And while Dick Tracy and the Jetsons envisioned videophones as the killer apps of the future, that’s not how people choose to communicate. My teen daughter and her friends use a lot less Facetime and Skype these days, spending most of their time texting. And while receiving texts on your wrist may be compelling for some, sending texts requires a decent typing platform and I’m not sure that a watch interface will lend itself to that.

That’s not to say that there’s not a place for smartwatches. It’s early days for Fitbit and Nike Fuelband and entries from Samsung, Apple, Google and others can certainly expand that market. And certain niche segments may want a texting watch or a wrist-based television remote. But none of these are true killer apps in my opinion.

Dick Tracy doesn’t do it for me. But if you want to get me excited, how about a built-in jetpack? Now that would be a killer smartwatch.

Chromecast - Instant Review

My Google Chromecast arrived today. I was excited to get my hands on it, since my daughter commandeered our Roku box to her room about a year ago, so Netflix for me has been limited to the 9.7" ipad screen since then.

I'm usually quick to bash Best Buy, but I want to give them kudos here. While the Google Play Store and Amazon were out of stock, BestBuy.com processed my order and delivered it right away.

The great thing about Chromecast is its simplicity. When you unbox it, you get a dongle, a USB power cord and a flexible HDMI adapter, without which I would not have been able to plug mine into the TV, which sits against the wall.

It took about 5 minutes to setup the Chromecast, and 3 of those were spent trying to locate the HDMI port by feel without removing the big screen TV from the wall. Once I had it plugged in, the website instructions had be connected in about a minute or two.

And the results...

It's great. So far, I've watched a 1982 Clash concert from Tokyo, on YouTube and am about to watch Orange is the New Black on Netflix. Don't Joe Strummer, Mick Jones and the gang look much better on the big screen?

So, is it as good as a Roku or Apple TV?

Well, today both of those have more content than the Chromecast. But that gap will soon close. GigaOm is reporting that Chromecast has struck deals with Vimeo and Redbox Instant, with HBO Go and Plex to follow soon after. And you have to expect that every website doing video will add the Chromecast button soon (with the possible exception of direct competitors like iTunes and Amazon). 

What's great about the Chromecast is its portability. I can definitely see buying a second one to use for travel. Since it takes only a minute to set up, why not use a Chromecast in your hotel room? It's a great chance to catch up on those episodes of Bob's Burgers you've been meaning to watch.

Visualize your email network with Immersion

The team at MIT Media Lab have launched an interesting data visualization tool called Immersion.

Immersion maps relationships between your contacts, leveraging metadata from gmail. They don’t read the content of the emails, so, similar to the NSA Prism app, they just give you an indication of who you’ve been in email contact with, clustered together by who was involved in those conversations.

The app is pretty cool and the clusters it generated for me made sense.

MIT is not the first to provide a tool to track and visualize relationships by email. There was an enterprise knowledge management app about 7-8 years ago (can’t recall the name) that mapped relationships via email across the enterprise, looking to identify the informal reporting structures that weren’t obvious.

What’s interesting about Immersion is just how much information can be identified simply from email metadata. More compelling would be to allow Immersion to index all of your gmail content, then be able to create these visual maps based on specific content topics.

Try Immersion on your gmail account.