Do Users Want Innovation?
This is a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately.
When a product reaches maturity, meaning it works as designed (mostly), the ugly bugs are resolved and you’ve got a good number of users, inevitably, as a product team, you begin planning for new features.
Most of the time, your initial release doesn’t include everything you [...]
PubSubHubbub: Cool, but Hard to Say
PubSubHubbub, a 20% time project of two Google engineers, Brad Fitzpatrick and Brett Slatkin, launched a few weeks ago.
In addition to being a tongue-twister, PubSubHubbub is:
A simple, open, server-to-server web-hook-based pubsub (publish/subscribe) protocol as an extension to Atom (and RSS).
Parties (servers) speaking the PubSubHubbub protocol can get near-instant notifications (via webhook callbacks) when a topic [...]
Do You Think Social Has Jumped the Shark?
Way back in April 2008, Paul remarked that Web 2.0 had jumped the shark, at least for him.
For the last six months or so, I’ve been feeling the same way about social, which is essentially analogous to Web 2.0, but more focused on applying social aspects to everything. I’m not alone in this belief; it’s [...]
You Know You Love Email
Everyone loves to complain about too much email.
But face it, you know you love it, or at least, you have a love-hate relationship.
Email is today’s busy meter. You know, that measuring stick that shows how busy you are. By the way, is it uniquely American to brag about how much work we do? Seems like [...]
On Product Management
I’ve been in software product management for about ten years now.
Connect, my latest product, has reached a critical stage in its life. It’s the first product I’ve managed from its inception, so I’m getting interesting new experience as it grows.
It’s pretty robust and has most of the big features people need in a social platform. [...]
I Need to Use FriendFeed More
Did anyone notice a larger than normal bump in their FeedBurner stats last week?
Last week, the FeedBurner numbers shot up from about 1,000 readers to more than 1,500. I’m behind on my reading, but so far, I haven’t seen this covered anywhere but on the FriendFeed blog.
Some movement in subscribers is common. However, this was [...]
OpenSocial in the Enterprise Session from Google I/O
As promised, Rich’s session from Google I/O has been posted, and I’ve embedded here for your viewing pleasure.
It’s a panel so, if you don’t want to invest the full 60 minutes, you can skip to Rich’s demo, which happens between 13:24 and 20:59.
He gives a quick demo of Connect and shares some OpenSocial gadgets that [...]
Google I/O Sessions Live
Some of the sessions from Google I/O have been posted, including the Wave breakout sessions.
I know one of these conflicted with Rich’s panel session, “OpenSocial in the Enterprise”. Rich was both bummed he had to miss it and worried that after the morning’s rousing keynote, no one would show up for his session.
Although he didn’t [...]
OraTweet Leaves the Nest
First off, thanks for hanging in there while I caught up on my R&R.
I came back today to hear the happy news that OraTweet will soon be available to anyone who wants to give it whirl. Noel is prepping the final package for distribution, but if you’re interested now, head over to oratweet.com and sign [...]
Twitter’s #fixreplies Boo-Boo
Update: Twitter founder Biz Stone has posted exactly the explanation we (all 3% of us) wanted, and I completely understand the hurry to rush out without fully thinking through the loud ramifications of the squeaky 3%. Kudos.
You’ve probably heard about the Twitter @replies fiasco by now.
Marshall has a good recap and explanation of the “fix” [...]
What’s New in Connect 4.0?
As I mentioned last week, we’ve released the 4.0 version of Connect, which includes a boat-load of new stuff.
Our main goals for this release were:
Put the focus on people, not on objects.
Make it dead simple to share anything.
Aggregate information by supporting multiple sources.
Provide intelligent filtering for easy viewing.
Consolidate output of the information we aggregate.
Give groups [...]
I Guess We’re a Product Team After All
Well, our big redesign of Connect, version 4.0, is finally live. Anthony and Rich are knocking out some final issues, but we cut over earlier this afternoon.
Luckily, it’s the weekend. So, our users aren’t using right now.
Unluckily, it’s the weekend, and everyone on the team has plans.
Next week, I’ll fill you in on the new [...]
Connect Flirts with 200,000 Pageviews
April was a big month for Connect, if you consider 195,000 pageviews and 11,000 unique visitors big anyway.
If you’re Facebook or Twitter, that’s a slow morning, but for our little network, which has a capped number of possible users somewhere around 80,000, it’s gangbusters.
Since January, Connect has been growing each month, and I wonder [...]
OraTweet in the News
Our buddy Noel (who has a new blog) got some mainstream news coverage today from Michael Hickins at Information Weekly.
Hickins mentions OraTweet, calling Oracle as the “unlikeliest company to launch a product of this nature”, and quotes Noel in his post. Very cool indeed for Noel, whose little side project is all grown up now.
It [...]
Musings on Relationship Symmetry in the Enterprise
The title sounds pretty highbrow academic. It’s funny to me.
Anyway, I just read that according to ComScore, Twitter grew 131% in March.
Insanity.
That number doesn’t include international or client-based usage. While I read through my feeds today, I got five new follows, all from people I don’t know. Oh, and there’s the whole Aston Kutcher vs. [...]
What’s New with Connect?
Glad you asked, or didn’t either way, you’re still reading.
It’s been a long time since I blogged about new features on Connect. I know not everyone can see the goodness (or care), since it’s internal only. But I figure some of you might be interested anyway.
When last I wrote about Connect features, we were launching [...]
What is it about Kudos?
Last week, Paul spoke on a webinar panel hosted by Communitelligence about social networking inside the firewall. Also on the panel were Lee Aase of the Mayo Clinic and Polly Pearson from EMC.
I didn’t attend the webinar, but Paul mentioned that Kudos was well-received. We did a follow-up meeting with some folks from EMC, Jamie [...]
I Want VLI
Back in 2006 while on a trip to HQ, I sat in a meeting with some folks from the User Experience (UX) team. I don’t remember exactly what the purpose of the meeting was, but we wandered off topic and were just bouncing ideas off each other.
I threw out the idea of a zero interface, [...]
On Browsers
IE6 is like that cold that just won’t go away; you feel well enough to go to work, but it keeps sapping your energy.
To many users, IE6 is the Internet. It came with your computer, and it’s the way you get online. Resisting the urge to put online in quotes. Like many web apps, we’ve [...]
Trying Pivotal Tracker
Last week, Rich proposed that we try Pivotal Tracker for Connect.
Our work on Connect can be loosely described as agile. We generally meet, either in person or on the phone, to hash out major feature releases, and then Rich and Anthony build and deploy. And I test. Every six months or so, we rinse and [...]
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