If Microsoft launched the iPod
Found an amusing parody that pokes fun at the difference between Microsoft and Apple in the product management department.
It’s amazing how well Apple’s approach works (in a word: simplicity). Why is it that so few companies emulate Apple’s approach? My take is that product management is generally more often feature-focused than user-focused. This is especially true at large companies, where many stakeholders insert their preferences into the product development process. Most of these stakeholders are not in tune with the customer (even if they think they are), because they don’t invest the time watching customers. And when they do, they draw sweeping conclusions from a sample size of 2. The end-product is then destined to become a mish-mash of trade-offs made to keep corporate stakeholders happy (all of whom have varying opinions, motivations, and priorities). This is just the nature of large organizations, and it takes a lot of leadership from the very top (sustained over a long period of time) to infuse a focus on the customer into a company’s culture.
Voting on Facebook News Feed stories
If this rumor is true, Facebook users may soon have more control over their News Feed, Digg-style. Currently, Facebook’s algorithm is the primary determinant over which of the 0.2% of its News Feed story candidates goes on your Feed. Yes, there are controls letting users tweak their Feed by story type, but not at such a granular level as this.
(note: “Vote Now” added later by ValleyWag for effect). What would be innovative is if Facebook allowed this information to increase the relevance of its ads. Seth Godin points out that Facebook potentially faces the the Hotmail problem, where users have no say in the ads they see. Google doesn’t face the same issue, because their entire model revolves around delivering relevant ads based on user intent. The better Facebook understands the intent of its users, the more effectively it can deliver advertising that is relevant to its users.
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Led Zeppelin II
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