Quick Thoughts on Business Cases
Earlier today, Stewart Rogers asked on Twitter, “Why do a business case?”
My immediate answer was that a business case helps to answer the question, “why are we doing this?” and to define value.
But maybe “define” isn’t the right word. Read more
Thoughts On ProductCamp Atlanta
I’d definitely call ProductCamp Atlanta a success. Colleagues, friends and sponsors have been asking for a post-mortem or a wrap-up post, and now that I’ve had about a week to let it all gel, here it is. I’ve also got some survey results that I’ll post in a few more days. (If you registered for ProductCamp, and haven’t taken the survey yet, please do so, even if you didn’t attend!) Read more
The 5 Most Important Product Management Personalities on Twitter (Plus One)
I’ve seen a few great lists of product managers on Twitter. I think Cindy Alvarez “started it” with this post on her website. It’s certainly the first comprehensive list of “products” people I came across, and it introduced me to a larger world of active professional product management thinkers. Thanks Cindy.
There are a few great lists at WeFollow.com, and other places around the web. The other day Thomas Fuchs-Martin posted his list of 50 Product Managers worth following. It’s a great list too, narrowing down the hundreds into a few dozen key personalities.
But I got to wondering: “Who do products people themselves find most valuable on twitter? Who should I be giving more attention to?” So, like any good, thinking product manager, I asked. I made the question specific, and I made it hard. Read more
@Twitter Revenue Model Proposals Abound #metoo
I just finished reading Saeed’s post on Ideas for Twitter’s Revenue Model, and it was, of course, a good read. I’ve been meaning to write up my ideas as well, and it’s just never taken priority. By the time I finished typing up my comments at On Product Management, I realized I had a full blog post, so I just copied and pasted here instead. Enjoy!
Inspired By: (And about a million other blog posts I’ve read)
Ideas for Twitter’s Revenue Model - pt. 2 « On Product Management
It’s fun trying to figure out how and when Twitter is ever going to monetize the service. I think as fans we really want them to succeed, because we value the service so much and would hate to see it go away.
I’m a proponent of a four-fold revenue model for Twitter. Don’t limit it to four necessarily, but these are the biggies in my estimation:
1. In-stream advertising on the website. There is a tremendous amount of targeting data available to twitter to ensure that ads are relevant and highly targeted. The revenue from in-stream advertising may not move the needle much on its own, but it will drive people to more lucrative revenue producing access methods. Possibly consider upgrade to premium account removing advertising.
2. Tweet throttling based on account type. Free members would be limited to, say 10 updates per day (maybe even with the exception of DM and direct @ replies), while Premium members would be able to update more frequently. This takes a different approach to monetizing celebrities and power users. Trying to charge based on number of followers or follows I fear would devalue the service as a whole, unless the thresholds were extremely high. But monetizing heavier tweet volumes with a fairly low price would go a long way toward generating revenue on the users who actually cost the most to serve.
3. API Throttling based on account type. I propose all users be given access to an API key for their third party clients. Free users would be throttled to, say 5 - 10 API calls per hour, while premium users would get today’s standard 100(I think) and an elite or super-premium user would have a non-throttled (or nearly non-throttled) account. The Twitter API is one of the key reasons for it’s exceptional growth, and is one of the main value propositions of the service, even with all of its weaknesses. It is hard to think of anyone anywhere who has the volume of raw data available through APIs that twitter offers and, in my opinion, the company is absolutely insane to not be monetizing this. Note that I am still proposing that all this data be available for free, as it is today, through the Twitter.com website. It is access via third party tools that should be monetized.
4. Brand protection/resolution. Update the TOS to make free accounts subject to required name change in certain special scenarios. Allow brands to purchase their brand name. This will probably create a little negative PR in the process and there are definitely some challenges to implementation, and I’ve got some ideas for how to make it happen. Premium accounts would have the ability to apply for a username that matches their legal name or a registered trademark. In cases of conflicting names and trademarks, a combination of first-come, first-served and an auction/compensation system would be used to resolve. Twitter waited to long to protect brand names from the beginning, so squatters own names like twitter.com/kraftfoods. Twitter does have the ability to resolve this now and I think the financial motivation to do so.
What are your thoughts?
Technorati Tags: Product Management, Twitter, Product Strategy
Privacy and Transparency: Are They Mutually Exclusive?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is looking out for you and me again. But this time, I’m a little worried that their appropriately principled position may get in the way of real progress.
Essentially, EFF is worried about the significant presence of third-party technologies being used by the Whitehouse.gov website and their standard practice of collecting personally identifiable information.
Specifically at issue are YouTube.com, Akamai, Inc. and Amazon S3. EFF asserts that by collecting cookies and IP addresses (as is part of their normal course of business), private citizens are being put at risk. The theory is that the government (or some other nefarious organization) could come along and piece together a profile of private citizens and their interaction with government websites.
Alternatively, EFF suggests that the federal government host more of its own content and outsource less.
So, in this effort to create an administration that is as open as possible, the White House is partnering with third parties and creating a (presumably unintentional) privacy risk.
How does the administration need to prioritize the various requirements being presented by its constituency in this case?
Is it reasonable to expect the White House to be open and transparent (online) and also guarantee that no third party collects any personally identifiable data?
If so, do we extend this requirement to a search engine’s collection of personally identifiable data by anyone who clicks a link leading to a government website?
Or do we accept that privacy online is a utopian concept that cannot effectively be guaranteed by anyone, anywhere, and instead focus on legislation that regulates how private information must be protected by companies doing business with the government?
Sound off in the comments below!
Technorati Tags: privacy, product strategy, open government, eff, electronic frontier foundation
Yesterday’s Thoughts
These are a few of the articles and events that influenced my thinking yesterday, along with a few comments.
How Not to be a Key Online Influencer | David Henderson - author, journalist
There’s been a lot of flap about @keyinfluencer’s tweet, and FedEX’s response.
In the world of social media, nothing you say is private, and everything you say can have repercussions, even if unintended. No great leap of thought leadership there, I know. But here are my lessons (or reinforcements from this episode)
1. If you don’t have something nice to say, at least try to say it in a constructive, or explanatory way. If you’ve just gotta say it on twitter, 2 tweets is better than 1 misunderstood one. Sometimes, one word can make the difference in clarity. Mark Twain once wrote “The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
2. FedEX has some really unprofessional snippy people in their corporate communications organization. The FedEX response letter to Mr. Andrew’s unclear and unwise tweet was completely reasonable. Their indignation was justified and deserved explanation.
The intentional release of the letter to the public by forwarding to Peter Shankman for publication was unprofessional and inappropriate. I’m a fan of Shankman, and of FedEX, but this display–using a misunderstood “soundbyte” (tweet) to provide a platform for a press release extolling the virtues of FedEX at the expense of a so-called business partner–is PR at its worst, worthy of the cheapest grade of political spinmeisters.
So there is plenty of reprimand to go around, and in my opinion, both parties owe each other an apology.
(For those who don’t know the details of the story, Andrews claims that his tweet was actually inspired by an encounter with an “intolerant” individual when he arrived at the Memphis airport.)
AppleInsider | iPhone developer: App Store rewards “crap” apps
The market on simplicity has not been cornered. According to the article, a single free app with a simple function drives $200 per hour in advertising revenue.
Not bad for a lunchtime effort, huh?
PDMA • Product Development and Management Association
I went to the Georgia PDMA meeting last night where Amanda Setili spoke about “Developing Winning Value Propositions.”
Above all other thoughts from the evening, I was reminded that the concept of the “defining a value proposition,” as old as it is, is still largely misunderstood and misprioritized even in some of the most notable companies, as is the true nature of product innovation.
At one point, a light back and forth emerged between two attendees on the result of successful innovation. Ms. Setili suggested that ultimately, innovation results in delivering greater value for a lower price. Ken Westray (the founder of the Georgia chapter of PDMA) challenged that premise, although I’m frankly unclear as to the exact point he was making.
My view: the root of innovation (in purely academic terms) is delivering the greatest value at the lowest cost. Cost and Price are two entirely different concepts, which should have little bearing on each other, save as a check for viability.