Netizen

Monday, July 23, 2012

Character Limits In Email

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Imagine an email service where when someone emails you for the first time their message has a character limit of something like 200. If you never open up their emails, they stay put at 200. And their messages don't count against your inbox space.

But if you open up their email, their limit goes up to 300 or 400 characters. But if you don't reply to their email, they stay there. On the other hand you could simply ban them and their privileged 200 characters are also gone.

But if you read and reply, the character limit goes up to 500 or more. Unless you specifically click on a button that allows them limitless space.

At one end are email concepts like on Facebook where you message me because we are connected. At the other end are regular email services where anyone can send you anything.

The inbox has to be like a cellular membrane. It has to protect the cell, but it also has to selectively allow outside stuff.

Beyond this "membrane" there have to be hard core demarcations. Facebook seems to have nailed social communication. Seems like people you know really well are only so many. And I feel like Asana is cracking the code on work communication. I have been reading up on it.

Marissa Mayer: Towards Products

Yahoo Has Seen Its Future; In One Word, It's Products

the board was unconvinced that Mr. Levinsohn's deal-making and media savvy would be enough to save Yahoo. The economics of content aren't good enough, and Yahoo doesn't have the firepower to pony up, say, the $100 million YouTube is spending on original channels or the hundreds of millions more Netflix is spending to acquire rights to TV and movies..... By all accounts, Ms. Mayer wowed the board in interviews. While Mr. Levinsohn made a case for maximizing what Yahoo is today, Ms. Mayer represented what Yahoo could become, a company that builds products... Yahoo spent 18% of revenue on product development in the first quarter..... "Yahoo's entire value is built around starting points -- the home page and email" ..... "The only reason [Yahoo] can afford all the good content is the scale of the homepage and email." .... Yahoo will have to create new, powerful products in areas such as mobile

When David Filo Gets Excited, I Get Excited

Yahoo! Co-Founder David Filo said, “Marissa is a well-known, visionary leader in user experience and product design and one of Silicon Valley’s most exciting strategists in technology development. I look forward to working with her to enhance Yahoo’s product offerings for our over 700 million unique monthly visitors.” .... for the longest time after Yahoo! IPO’ed and David was a billionaire he continued to drive a beat-up Datsun to work every day ..... He still works every day at the company in a slightly messy cubicle. ..... One former engineer told me a story of how David jumped in and stayed up all night helping pitch in to solve some platform problem the company had several years ago and how he was always available to help with problems on IM. ...... “Why isn’t David on the board?” I asked a Yahoo! executive a few years ago........ “He doesn’t want to. They’ve asked him many times. He goes to most board meetings anyway. Besides, he’s happy to let Jerry be the public face for the two of them.”

Marissa Mayer enters the Yahoo pressure cooker

Make Flickr Free Again

One fine day Yahoo decided it was going to charge for Flickr. When the rest of the industry was going in the other direction. And I remember feeling, Yahoo has lost its way.

Photo is so central to the mobile experience. It has proven to be the central mobile experience. And Yahoo almost shuttered a crown jewel. That was a dysfunctional move by a dysfunctional company.

How Marissa Mayer handles Flickr will tell me a lot about if she has what it takes to bring the sexy back to the Yahoo brand. For one, make it free. People should be able to upload as many pictures as they want. And they should be able to embed the pictures wherever they want. That sharing part is key. And then see if Flickr can be given a mobile version.

Marissa Mayer: Google News Item

I think I just created a section called Marissa Mayer on my Google News page. This is the first time I have done so for a tech CEO. I think I am going to watch the moves she makes as she makes them.

Mayer's Products

It is interesting that people are making it sound like Steve Jobs just came back to Apple, a dying company!

Marissa Mayer Has a Secret Weapon

For the past decade, she has been the doyen of a collection of some of the most talented young engineers and product managers in all of technology. These are the hand-selected prime talents of an accelerated leadership program at Google called Associate Product Manager (APM)...... Consider the first APM, a fresh Stanford grad named Brian Rakowski. He became a key leader of the team that built the Chrome browser and now is the VP of the Chrome operation. The second was Wesley Chan, who made Google Toolbar a success, then launched Google Analytics and Google Voice. He’s now picking winners for Google Ventures. Another early APM was Bret Taylor, who earned his bones by launching Google Maps. He left Google and co-founded Friendfeed, then become the Chief Technical Officer of Facebook..... there are over 300 who have been through the program. .... And the glue to the whole shebang was Marissa Mayer, who was the APM boss, mentor, den mother and role model. ..... Mayer thought up the program in early 2002. Google had been struggling to find PMs who could work within the peculiar company culture — team leaders who would not be bosses but work consensually with the wizards who produce code. Ideally, a Google product manger would understand the technical issues and sway the team to his or her viewpoint by strong data-backed arguments, and more than a bit of canny psychology. But experienced PMs from places like Microsoft, or those with MBAs, didn’t understand the Google way, and tried to force their views on teams..... The ideal applicants must have technical talent, but not be total programming geeks — APMs had to have social finesse and business sense. ..... They would undergo a multi-interview hiring process that made the Harvard admissions regimen look like community college. The chosen ones were thrown into deep water, heading real, important product teams. (As the first APM, Rakowski was asked to launch a nascent project called Gmail. By the way, I hear Rakowski is taking over the program now that Mayer is gone.) “We give them way too much responsibility,” Mayer once told me, “to see if they can handle it.” Also, Google had APMs perform tasks for top management, like note-taking at high-level executive meetings or drawing up white papers on ambitious potential products. ..... The program has been so successful that Google has created a variation for leaders of non-product teams. These are called Marketing APMs. ..... Kevin Systrom was an MAPM — before he left Google and founded Instagram. ..... You didn’t get to be an APM unless you connected with her; she was the last interview in a long series, and she’d typically make ultimate decision. (“Tell me about a product you love,” she’d ask candidates. There was no right answer. But not describing the choice with passion was the wrong answer.).... a high percentage of APMs go elsewhere. APMs are chosen for their ambition and independence. Those traits are often at odds with working at a big company...... Naturally, one of the first e-mails that Mayer sent after accepting her new job was a blast to the entire APM network, informing them of her move and assuring them that she will still be in touch.

One Week of Mayer at Yahoo: Whither Ross? New Old Yahoos? More Search? Product Side “Elated!”

“Let’s be clear, she is our last hope,” said one board member to me, a sentiment that I also heard from another; and so, too, from a lot of execs and rank-and-file around the company. ...... former Googler Shashi Seth, who has been in charge of a number of product areas at Yahoo for a while now ... “Shashi has been smiling from ear to ear since Marissa arrived — he can’t contain his glee,” said one person. ...... “I think we have a ballgame now! It’s amazing how fast the sentiment changed internally,” said one person in the product org, in what has been a common refrain. “Everyone [is] ELATED. People I know that were close to leaving (including myself) are now giving it another shot.” ..... She has appeared getting her own lunch in the cafeteria, which has delighted more employees than you might imagine at Yahoo. ..... In what appears to be a whirlwind of fact-finding meetings with Yahoo employees since right after she started last Monday — no all-hands for her off the bat — Mayer has been asking questions and taking in information. ..... “curt,” “whip smart,” “suffers no fools,” and “a sponge.” ..... Mayer’s most critical ally in her early stages appears to be the quiet and retiring Yahoo co-founder David Filo, who emerged to be a vocal supporter of her from the start. That he gave a quote in a press release and did interviews — my nickname for him has long been “Silent Bob” — should say a lot to anyone paying mind..... the heart of the company is still with both Filo and also Jerry Yang. ..... all about building up tech again at Yahoo. ..... Some big initiatives on the burner at Yahoo that she must mull: A wide-ranging integration with Twitter, which would be similar to Yahoo’s efforts with Facebook ..... many think a halving of the company’s workforce is in order ..... What about a new kind of commerce hookup with retail giant Walmart, for example, where Mayer serves on the board? Why not become a video Switzerland for all the competing content makers out there? What about really committing to content all-in, a la AOL and its Huffington Post Hail Mary? Could she make a startling purchase of something big, such as Hulu or Zynga?

Asana And Enterprise

English: Photograph of Justin Rosenstein, creator of "Asana." (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I think Asana is upto something.

In It to Win It: Asana Raises $28M Series B, Peter Thiel Joins the Board
The Root of the Problem: Asana Boldly Aims to Kill Email

“Social business is an oxymoron,” Rosenstein says. “In your personal life what you want is a system to help you track relationships with people. At work, it’s less interesting to follow people. You want a work, task graph that tracks all the units of work, what has been done and what still needs to be done. You want to track all the piles around those work items. That’s what’s central the story — the items of work, not the people.”

Or put more simply by Moskovitz, “If we felt that a Facebook for enterprise was what businesses needed, we would have built that.”

It is a really interesting enterprise company. They are saying some sensical things about the work space.

The problem with your email inbox is it is many different companies/applications crammed into one. Just like Craig's List was 50 different companies, your email inbox is 20 different companies.

5, 7 And 10 Inches

Cover of "Kindle Wireless Reading Device,...

Cover via Amazon

I think those three are the right sizes. And all three should be similar in functionality. As in, all three should be able to make phone calls. And I don't necessarily mean cellular. An app working over wifi is fine. Don't deprive it of a camera, front and back.

With the smartphone we are already in the four and a half inch territory. We are almost there. Amazon cracked the 7 incher with the Kindle Fire and Google nailed it with Nexus 7, and Apple is scrambling to get in there.

10 inches is almost Macbook Air territory. Things start getting a little fuzzy around there. And if touch is not to stay put at smartphone and tablet levels, if it is also to be part of the PC experience - Hello Windows 8 - then the size thing becomes even more important. It is just about the size. Otherwise it is pretty much the same thing. Which probably means you don't need them all. I think it is possible to get by with two.