Category: Main

The Black Box from the developer perspective

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

This is a great post :: http://stratechery.com/2014/black-box-strategy/

WHY TV IS SO ATTRACTIVE
As I’ve written multiple times, the scarcest resource for consumer tech companies, especially ad-supported ones, is user attention. There are only so many minutes in the day, and their consumption is zero-sum: a moment spent doing activity A is not spent doing activity B, and then that moment is gone.

Meanwhile, TV continues to monopolize a significant amount of that user attention. Although digital products have overtaken the amount of time spent on TV, primarily due to the accretive time spent on smartphones, the absolute time spent on TV has remained stubbornly persistent at about four-and-a-half hours per day per U.S. adult (source).

That four-and-a-half hours really is the gold at the end of the rainbow for tech companies: just over the next hill/technical hurdle, yet never actually attainable.

TV really is a cool spot to work in – or video to be more blunt. However what really annoys me is that every article from a tech angle is normally very US centric or US content centric. Of course there is a reason for that – America is where the best content is coming from, where the most ad dollars are and where most of the tech companies playing in the space reside. No argument there but the world is not just America and some of us are playing in the video space from other parts of the world with the hopes of attacking the global stage.

I won’t do a Spuul sales job here but just state that we are global and we are doing it from Singapore. Not easy but fun.

So the article breaks down the TV battle by naming the dominant players who are hacking on the problem. What is telling to me is what or who is not listed – Smart TV’s. I think in theory if you are skating to where the puck is going then possibly you can leave them out but if you are dealing with the video space today you can’t. They exist and users want to see your app there on whatever Smart TV they have but boy, oh boy what a mess. I don’t want to bash here but we know why most of them are not listed as players for the future – they are not going to make it in the future. Their ecosystems are just brutal – they want a cut of payments but they don’t have payment engines. They want a cut of ad revenue but they don’t have ad ecosystems. They have brutally ancient build and deploy systems that look like the early web development days. Frankly – they build shitty software and they are at risk of just going away or being dumb glass. They could fix it but it doesn’t seem like they want to.

Moving down the list we get into Apple TV:

I agree in that this is the one to watch – I don’t say this due to apple fanboyism but mostly cause it works well, they distribute internationally and for developers this stuff really is mostly magic. It just works. The work we go through to get chromecast to work is night and day when it comes to Apple TV which is dead simple. Apple has room for improvement though. They need to get into carrier billing, they need to open up their stuff for the rental market, and they need to open up Apple TV to apps. I don’t see all this happening but it would be awesome.

Amazon:

I don’t have a fire to play with so I can’t say much. Usually with Amazon though their international focus is lacking but when it comes to being open and such they do a good job. Since Amazon has video I find working with them tough because they favor their stuff and then America – but for them to win I think they need more content players on the box. I think if Amazon could make the fire really awesome for developers it would help but that remains to be seen.

Google:

What can I say but keeping up with Google and TV stuff is challenging. There was google tv the web based stack, then the Android 3.2 made for tv stuff, then chromecast and now supposedly a new Android TV. Very hard unless you have insider status to get good info here. They favor America for content and partners and their international stuff is opaque. But the hardest part with Google is they compete with all of us using Youtube, they reward piracy and they make it hard to want to go deep with them but you must go deep with them. There is no choice. On the plus side they have a better ecosystem for developing, they have some carrier payments, they are being open about other payments in android apps and they tend to try and break down the incumbents. We see this with adx, chromecast and the like – so Google is evil but you must work with them on some levels. Android is huge – bottom line. I hope Android TV is killer, truly open and Google courts international developers at some point.

Roku:

Roku is always the one I find interesting in this matrix – first off they are only in America and UK. Of course big markets but it can’t stack up to the other global players in any regard. Worse though is since being invested in by DISH the entire international content library is controlled by DISH. So if someone like Spuul wants to get on Roku we have to go via DISH who usually says no cause they have their own international content packages that they foist onto Roku. So when it comes to Roku being a player – I say not until the DISH deal is done. Roku is one of those funny things that purports to want to give the best experience to users but is really no different than a cable company deciding what you get and what you don’t. Roku claims now to be gaining ground by getting into all the TV’s but I don’t buy it. They should have opened up when they had the chance and gone big – now I think google and amazon will have their way with them.

Microsoft:

Oh what could have been. To me they should have created something akin to the media center PC by creating a cheaper version of the XBOX just for the TV but they wanted TV and Games – both suffered. Now they appear to be tilting back to the gamers which means the TV will suffer. XBOX is cool but MSFT has to step up their game or build a home entertainment to rival the others. I will say this about them though – working with them is getting easier and they are trying hard to build stuff for media companies. If they open up playready DRM more and really cloudify the DRM plumbing then they could become a platform for streaming companies. Time will tell.

All in all the streaming world is booming but to me it is very US centric and I am waiting to see who will change it or maybe it can’t be changed but if so then I will be watching what the international players do more than the US centric ones since the playbook seems pretty well known at this point.

Wishing for more powerful app store payments

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Was sent this article by my bro @groovemonkey (with a lot more followers than me) and it got me thinking more about app stores and payments.

This is the read: http://dancounsell.com/articles/paid-paymium-or-freemium.

Paymium is still relatively unknown and gets pretty much no press coverage compared to freemium. Paymium is going to become increasingly more widespread over the coming year, and incase you’re wondering exactly what paymium is, here’s my definition:

Paymium: An app that is paid for up-front, with additional revenue being generated by charging for extra features via In-App Purchase.

As with freemium this type of model can work perfectly well in place of yearly paid upgrades as you can add new features overtime with IAP to continue to earn revenue from your existing customers.

Paymium apps currently only account for 2% of apps on the App Store, yet they generate the same amount of revenue as paid apps. I believe now is a good time for developers to start experimenting more with this revenue model, I know It’s something we’ll be doing with a few of our apps at Realmac Software over the coming months.

This is a very interesting model and was wondering how to apply it to Spuul but I don’t see a fit, however part of that reason is I think both app stores, Google and Apple (is there any other?), don’t offer a lot of flexibility when it comes to payments and customers. What I mean is everything is so rigid when it comes to subscription based payments.

For example with Apple they don’t offer any sort of trial capability. Example. Please buy this monthly subscription and you can use it for free for 7 days and if you like it just keep using it and we bill you after the trial period. If you can cancel during the trail period you don’t get charged but you get your 7 days. Google, Facebook and Amazon (they don’t let you set the time period though) all offer it with good results. People tend to try it and the conversion rates are good.

The other problem with almost all of these systems is that they offer fairly rigid subscription SKUs that do not transfer or modify across lines. For example – I have a 1.99 payment tier for a monthly subscription and I also have a 4.99. Customer A buys the 1.99 tier and a month later wants the 4.99. The app stores should provide an automatic upgrade SKU and just start billing the user at 4.99. Even be smart enough to charge the difference if customer A upgrades within the month. There is little intelligence in the subscription SKUs so usually one has to cancel one to get another versus upgrading or downgrading.

So when I think of the paymium stuff I think of interesting use cases like you buy the app for 1.99 and later if you upgrade in app to another tier the 1.99 could be credited by the system since the customers used the same app store for the whole process. There are other examples along this line I can think of.

What I am looking for is the app stores to provide all the bells and whistles to allow us, the developer, to craft any sort of payment and decision flow we want knowing the user is able to pay with the app store and we are able to offer what we want real time based on what the data is telling us might sell. Standard consumer sales type of stuff.

Bottom line is the app stores are generally taking 30% and I think the should offer more value for it. Don’t get me wrong – app stores are doing good things and the payment mechanisms make it easy to build mobile apps and extract money for services but their overall intelligence and feature level is still pretty rudimentary.

Wow. Where did 2013 go?

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Between the year of the baby and the startup – 2013 just blew by. I had wanted to blog a lot more than I did but as usual between work and diapers – I tend to run out of time. Probably won’t get any better this year but that’s okay – I have resolved myself to focusing on a few things so I do them well. Such is life.

I had an awesome holiday with the family this year to Japan. It was an ambitious trip, maybe overly so, in that we did 4 days in Tokyo then got in a car and drove in a very circuitous way to Kyoto. It was a bit much on some days given the 5 year old and the 1 year old can get car weary but we saw so many things and the countryside was gorgeous. The Thais saw their first snow and I enjoyed the great roads and awesome scenery. My friends over at http://japanbikerentals.com hooked me up. Look them up if you ever want to ride a motorcycle on tour in Japan. Great bunch of folks.

When I returned from Japan I was thrust back into the chaos of Spuul – what I mean is startups are chaotic and it is to be expected somewhat. I even penned an email to the founders about feeling too chaotic and wanting to reign it in somehow. Maybe it was just my state of mind after the trip and not thinking about work too much. Not even sure it was the right thing to but fortunately my relationship with the founders is very open and candid – I always feel like I can speak my mind.

Then today I read this. Lots of cold water thrown on my let’s slow it down theory:

http://steveblank.com/2009/04/10/good-enough-decision-making/

Love this excerpt:

Decision Making Heuristics for the Startup CEO

The heuristic I gave my friend was to think of decisions of having two states: those that are reversible and those that are irreversible. An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc. If the decision was a bad call you can unwind it in a reasonable period of time. An irreversible decision is firing an employee, launching your product, a five-year lease for an expensive new building, etc. These are usually difficult or impossible to reverse.

I realize now that this is what the founders practice anyway and what I have been doing a lot of. If it is just code and no one is harmed – just do it. We can also roll it back or alter it or even stay the course. No harm no foul. This is such a great reason to even be in a startup because you can move fast and change tactics at anytime. You still need the vision, the gut intuition and the confidence to move but you can always be moving versus thinking about moving.

I am trying to sort out how best to apply this to the way I run product at Spuul which is well – slightly different I think than most places. We just move – versus talk or meet a lot about moving. So far it is working but we have a long ways to go.

2014 is upon us. Make it count!

Hoping to try something new

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

I sent my first request out – let’s see how it goes.

I dig watching Pando Monthly Events and love the interview format.

In our region we have lots of people doing stuff – startups and other stuff.

I know many of this people and I talk to them from time to time but I don’t always know how they got here, why they do what they do and so on. I am curious – I want to get to know the people behind the products a bit more than I do. I think other people want to as well.

So I plan to interview these people via text and share it on my blog. It’s always about the people anyway – isn’t it?

Who knows where it will go but I am curious to try.

more soon…

Who you know and how you treat them…

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Was reading this today by Derek,  http://sivers.org/xn:

So if it seems that there’s an uncrossable canyon between you and your heroes, don’t forget that all it takes is one connection to catch your rope, so you can shimmy across. And you can do this from anywhere by creating great stuff online, and reaching out to potential friends.

So very true. I don’t think I would be doing what I am doing or having the career that I have had if it were not for connections. What strikes me today though is how far back the connections go and how much they would be affected by how I treated people. I have called upon old connections for new ventures and new connections but there would be no reason for the connections to help if I had treated people poorly. I am sure I have treated some connections poorly and it will come back to me. That is karma. So build your connections early, treat them well and do what you can to help others. It will come back you someday in the future.

 

My biggest fear is messing her up…

~ michael_msft ~ 5 Comments

I read this today on Daring Fireball : http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/01/15/swartz-curious

If you watch little kids, they are intensely curious, always exploring and trying to figure out how things work. The problem is that school drives all that curiosity out. Instead of letting you explore things for yourself, it tells you that you have to read these particular books and answer these particular questions.

This is so true. I am very thankful as a kid I was homeschooled for a while since I think that allowed me to maintain some of my curiosity. Now that I am a dad, when I look at my little girl I realize she is perfect and that the world and my stewardship could mess her up more than she would on her own. I need to maintain her curiosity and protect her from losing it.

Just look at that pic?

I have some work to do…

 

 

Fuck you, I’m the ‘D’ on this – part 2 (#marissadidit)

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

It’s time for a reboot

http://www.nokpis.com/2012/04/01/fuck-you-im-the-d-on-this/

I was at a local Singaporean event the day after resume gate, chatting with a great friend, who just left yahoo btw, and I told him straight away Scott Thompson would have to go. He joked saying it was a big deal but it would blow over. We bet a lunch at my favorite steak joint on Duxton hill in Singapore. I collected it last week.

Scott Thompson would have made changes at Yahoo but I am not sure he would have made Yahoo better. Yahoo might be big, it might have 700 million users (It is in no way signed in users or proven to be unique), but Yahoo is in a state of decline. Slow and steady but a decline nonetheless. Marissa may not be the one to turn it around but at the very least the shear optics of the move will benefit Yahoo bigtime. Already the peeps that I talk to who are still holding on at Yahoo feel there is some hope. Only time will tell since it will take years for a proper turnaround if it all possible.

Some housecleaning first. I worked at Yahoo for 2.5 years. I was in global product management – I worked for Sunnyvale but was based in Asia. I was deeply involved in 2012 planning and I know a lot about how the Yahoo tech stack works.

I will also preface that I just call it as I see it but I am a longtime user of Yahoo as well and you can never stop bleeding purple even if you have stopped working at Yahoo.

Yahoo is neither wholly a tech company or a media company. It is a mix and it mostly happened by accident. Yahoo can no more solely become only a tech company or only a media company anymore than I can change my race. Think of yahoo as a zebra – the white stripes are the tech and the media is the black. It’s impossible to turn a zebra into an all black horse or an all white horse. It is and always will be a zebra. Yahoo should embrace and extend its zebraness – not try to become something it isn’t.

Being a media company only, means Yahoo would need to shed an enormous amount of staff to reign expenses inline with the cost and revenue of a media company. To become only a tech company during the reign of such competitors as apple, google, facebook and twitter would be suicide. Yahoo couldn’t compete but staying a zebra leaves lots of room for carving a niche that only the size of a company like Yahoo could pull off.

Here is an updated list of my pointers:

– Yahoo must start killing the things that dont work ASAP. Nothing feels better than making the hard decisions to close things and move on. I am not going to make that list here but within Yahoo it is pretty well known what needs to go.

– Yahoo should double down on messenger and follow through with the unfunded plans that were created for messenger during the 2012 planning sessions. Messenger is practically the only cross platform messaging product. Sure it has seen its better days but with some funding, some vigor and integration into the media products – it could easily shine again. Only in America has it truly been pummeled but overseas it is still big.

– Yahoo should get back into ecommerce in a big way. Yahoo is sitting on some amazing payment infrastructure, has tons of traffic and could easily partner with many of their advertisers (consumer good companies) to offer a first rate buying experience. In the emerging markets Yahoo could have been a first mover in ecommerce but in typical Yahoo fashion – the powers that be would take years to mull over an decision to enter a market will other companies pounced.

– Yahoo needs to start moving ideas from whiteboard to execution much faster. Livestand took forever but it didn’t need to. Project zed is also taking too long and should have already shipped in pieces. Yahoo is plagued by an old, but recently instigated, planning process that requires too many meetings, too many bodies and still uses spreadsheets. It’s unreal.

– Yahoo needs to quit inventing standards and relying on y! versions of products to bring things to market. Recent security blunders point a much needed harsh light on the fact that the paranoids win too many infrastructure battles at Yahoo but yet it really didn’t prevent a proper security blunder – stupidity and lack of proper code reviews did. Yahoo invests far too much time inventing standards. Forcing old y! approved code stacks on engineers and spends far too much time inventing a standard while also trying to ship something. This is what killed Livestand. Trying to invent cocktails and it’s various node.js counterparts was waste of time. Livestand should have been a native app and later, once it was winning, the various teams could have worked to make it more of a hybrid web app. But who needs that when competing with the likes of flipboard? On top of the standards issue there is also the fact that yahoo is still primary c, java and php. Name me a competitive global startup building their wares on that stack? Yahoo needs to embrace new stacks and worry about product innovation – not allow the internal standards committees to hamper the company.

– The sports franchise needs to power up now. Open up more, turn the fantasy mantra into a Yahoo franchise and go deep on mobile. Sports is killing it at Yahoo but like everything else it is underfunded. Everyone who really needs the money is sharing the money with other products that don’t make any money.

– The tv products need to go. Yahoo waited too long to put the pedal to the medal – google & apple have completely out innovated Yahoo. It is another time and money sink.

– Yahoo groups should be properly revived and tightly integrated with Yahoo email. This combination has a lot of eyeballs and can be easy monetized. Yahoo must not give up on email it is an incredible distribution tool.

– Yahoo scale disease is well known and real. Between brickhouse, catalyst and acquisitions – Yahoo struggles to take small, new things and stay with them long enough to make them big. Internally people shoot stuff down for not reaching millions of users or having revenue in one year. Sure – not everything deserves to live but there needs to be a balance struck if Yahoo is going to incubate and build new things internally.

– Yahoo is essentially 4 companies – Americas, Europe, Asia and the joint ventures. Too many silos, too many decision makers and too many competing stacks. For Yahoo to really get back to competing it must regain a top down approach and realize that strong corporate leadership will be needed to compete with truly globalized players.

– Yahoo might want to explore doing more joint ventures to enter new emerging markets – like Africa, parts of southeast Asia and Russia. Yahoo can offer the tech and the local partner can bring the media and run government interference.

– Yahoo will probably need to get back on the acquisition horse and buy some companies. My guess is only a big company will move the needle at this point but Yahoo’s track record is nothing short of abysmal when it comes to buying companies. It can be fixed but management must make compromises around integration issues and must take the long view.

I love Yahoo and I look forward to seeing how it all plays out.