bentsoapbox

Google and sins of omission

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:01:31 -0600

Google finally apologized for the Buzz launch today. As reported on GigaOm:

Within hours of the Buzz launch, users were complaining about a number of features (or flaws) in the service, including the fact that their Gmail and GTalk contacts were publicly revealed for everyone to see, and that the setting for making that public or private was enabled by default and/or difficult to find. Users also said blocking followers wasn’t as easy as it should have been, that they couldn’t unfollow someone if they didn’t have a Google profile, and that it wasn’t clear who would be shown in their list of followers.

In other words, Buzz was pushed out early with lots of features and poor usability. Not that this is a surprise. Google prides itself on its engineering culture - they don’t even hire product managers who aren’t former engineers. And that’s fine when you’re rolling out obscure products that will only be adopted initially by the technically proficient and can be improved over time.

But email is different.

Email is the one application used by everyone, which, by definition, means it’s mostly used by “normals,” not geeks. Any significant change to such a service must be well-vetted and tuned to consumer needs and habits, and must certainly be tested. And that’s where this story moves from tragedy to farce:

Many of Google’s new products and services first undergo testing with what the company calls its Trusted Testers program, in which a small group of users — primarily friends and family members of Google employees — get early access to the service and provide feedback before it’s rolled out in open beta. This was not the case with Google Buzz, the company told the BBC, although it had been used for some time internally by Google employees themselves. “Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild,” Jackson said.

Guess who is inside Google, and thus the only testers? Engineers. Of course they won’t realize that “settings are hard to find,” that “blocking followers wasn’t as easy as it should have been,” that things “weren’t clear.” They’re geeks, and to expect them to properly test a product that will be rolled out to millions of “normals” is ridiculous. Google needed marketers.

Marketing matters, and I don’t mean the fluffy stuff. Understanding who your customers are, what their needs are, and how you meet those needs are fundamental questions for any business, and absolutely critical for one that has more information on its users than any other. The cavalier attitude Google took towards Buzz makes clear they don’t understand this (and confirms all that I’ve heard about their culture).

Google employees go on and on about “Don’t be evil.” They really believe that, and I don’t think anyone intended Buzz to be such a privacy disaster. But that doesn’t leave out sins of ommision, and in this case, Google’s disdain for marketing is ultimately to blame for what was in reality an evil outcome.

The dusk of the computer age

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:21:11 -0600

Some have argued the iPad is the dawn of a new era. Oh wait, that was me, three days ago. But in another respect, it is the dusk of another, representing a return to the past when people did what they wished without worrying about their computer.

From O’Reilly:

The automobile went through a similar evolution. From eminently hackable to hood essentially sealed shut. When the automobile was new, you HAD to be a mechanic to own one. Later, being a mechanic gave you the option of tinkering and adapting it to your specific interests. In fact, that’s how most people up until about 1985 learned to be mechanics. The big changes came with the catalytic converter and electronic ignition (and warranty language to match). Now the automobile has reached the point in its development where you don’t even have to know whether it has a motor or an engine to use it, but to tinker at all requires highly specialized skills.

Is this really so bad?

Here’s the point: there is a lot of hand-wringing about the iPad being a closed platform, even as people acknowledge the advantages of that (everything just works, no viruses, etc.) What is clear though, is that it is geeks doing the handwringing. Which makes sense in a way. It really is the end of their era. But for everyone else, those people for whom a computer is a necessary accessory, but not their life, what the iPad portends is a future where the computer fades away, leaving only the art.

Consider photographers. Today’s photographers are among the most computer-savvy people in the world, but by necessity, not by choice. Computers are simply an essential component of modern photography, and if that means understanding things like RAM, cache, and the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit computing, then so be it. But the second revolutionary aspect of the iPad is the way it transforms a computer into an appliance, where what happens under the hood is indeed magical. No, iPad 1.0 will not be a photographer’s computer, but iPad 4.0 just might. All that matters is that it edit photos, or display pictures, or capture text, NOT that it be “open” with all the good and bad that implies.

A photographer wants to photograph.

A writer wants to write.

A grandmother wants to see pictures.

A teenager wants to chat.

Only a geek wants to hack.*

The iPad is the first of a new paradigm that will free people to do what they want, what they were meant to do, with a tool meant to aid, not frustrate.

I think that’s pretty awesome.

*I self-identify as a geek, but diverge on this point: I am interested in technology to the extent it can solve normal people’s problems, and much less interested in technology for technology’s sake. It’s a slight but crucially different point-of-view.

Frasier Speirs, who I linked in the article, really said it much better:

The tech industry will be in paroxysms of future shock for some time to come. Many will cling to their January-26th notions of what it takes to get “real work” done; cling to the idea that the computer-based part of it is the “real work”.

It’s not. The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table’s order, designing the house and organising the party.

As you can see, I couldn’t have said it better myself…

The iPad: it's for everyone else

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:49:47 -0600

For what it’s worth, we’ve been here before. Apple product is rumored, hype builds up, it’s revealed, and people are disappointed. In this case, “It’s just a big iPod Touch” is the new “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”

And, once again, it’s because the hype aimed too low. The iPad isn’t Apple’s attempt to make a tablet or netbook; it’s the first of what Apple believes is the future of computers. And, taken in that light, everything makes so much more sense.

I think a lot of the confusion stems from this slide in Steve Jobs’ presentation:

There’s the iPad, in the middle. And that, many argue, isn’t a particularly compelling place to be.

They’re right, and wrong. The middle isn’t a great place to be, but the iPad isn’t in-between an iPhone and Macbook. For a significant segment of the population, it is meant to be their Macbook. And, for those who need a Macbook, the iPad isn’t for them. But it will be.

Let me explain, with a new take on Jobs’ slide:

Remember the beginning of the Keynote: Jobs said that Apple is now a mobile devices company. What the iPad does is give Apple a product that offers a superior experience in every dimension of the mobile experience, namely, content creation, content consumption and mobility.

The reason this matters is that the vast majority of users are primarily content consumers. These are the people buying netbooks as their primary computers, or simply avoiding computers as much as possible. They simply want to go on Facebook, check their email, watch YouTube, and at most, upload pictures. Apple’s value proposition to these customers is:

The iPad is a superior content consumption experience with sufficient creation capabilities to meet your needs.

That is why iWork figured so prominently into the Keynote - it was reassurance that the iPad can pass as your only computer (more on iWork in just a moment).

Of course the vast majority of geeks and business school students (the two crowds I’m most familiar with) completely missed the point. They’re power users, and the iPad isn’t directed at them. In fact, Apple has a perfectly good solution for their needs: the status quo:

But here’s the deal. Most people aren’t power users. And now, there’s a solution for them as well:

I think that’s a pretty good market to be in.

And now for the caveat:

This is a 1.0 product. Just like iPhone 1.0, there are missing features both in hardware and software, and the Apple fanatics will be the de facto beta testers. So in that regard, the picture I just laid out is more applicable to the medium term.

BUT

It’s the long-term picture that is particularly fascinating, and gets back to my contention at the beginning of this post. For while the laptop has all but reached it’s potential - the consumption experience will never improve beyond what it is now - the creation experience on the iPad will only get better with time. In fact, I believe the iPad will be looked back upon as the pioneer of what will become the default way of interacting with computers just like the Macintosh.*

Go back and watch the Keynote, especially the iWork demonstration that begins 57 minutes in. The iPad doesn’t just let you create documents. It lets you create documents in a way that is simply impossible on a normal computer. It is so much more natural, so much more intuitive, that users accustomed to a keyboard-and-mouse will adapt quickly, and more importantly, users accustomed to multitouch will never understand the attachment to a mouse. I truly believe my two year-old daughter, who has already taught herself to use my iPhone, will never seriously use a mouse. To flip John Gruber’s famous headline on its head, the mouse will be the new command line, beloved by geeks and graybeards, and puzzled at by everyone else.

*Ironically, in this case it could be Microsoft who claims they were first.

The Google China Cynics

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:02:03 -0600

Despite the fact Google’s decision to stop censoring www.google.cn in response to Chinese cyber attacks is right in my wheelhouse (<— this is where I link to my archive full of articles on China, which haven’t made the trip over to Tumblr yet), I’m not going to bite. Rather, just a quick note on the cynics, of which there are two types:

Google won’t follow through (1) because the China market is too big to ignore.
Google is using this as an excuse to get out because they’re getting their rear end kicked by Baidu.

My response to the first is that Google would be risking a huge amount of credibility by not following through, especially after the public relations beating they took in 2006 when they launched Google China. Moreover, publicly calling out the Chinese government is a recipe for disaster if you actually want to continue to do business there. As for the second, 35.6% share in 4Q 2009 (an increase from 31.3% 3Q 2009) is extremely respectable, and, I’m sure, profitable. Why leave now?

More broadly, though, these two criticisms are fundamentally at odds. If the first is true (Google wants to make money, and they’re performing decently, so they won’t leave), then the second is false (the proper response would be to redouble efforts, not abandon the investment). Similarly, if the second is true (Google can’t cut it in China), then the first must be false (the China market isn’t worth fighting for).

Or, it may just simply be the case that Google actually meant what they say, and that the whole “Don’t Be Evil” motto actually means something (2).

1) From what I can see, results are still censored. Here’s the link to a search on Google’s China site for “What Happened on June 6, 1989?” (天安门广场89年6月4日发生什么事).

2) It sounds corny, but Google employees totally buy in to that motto. It’s definitely not just cute lip service.

Stuck in the past

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:03:25 -0600

My earlier observation that technology companies too often don’t appreciate the needs of normals is hardly groundbreaking. What is less intuitive is how often geeks are the ones stuck in the past.

During a recent discussion about the future of the PC, a friend posited that the PC as we know it wasn’t going anywhere soon - after all, netbooks and upcoming Internet-only devices don’t play games, for example.

So let’s consider games. Here are the top 10 PC games of all-time (via Wikipedia):

The Sims (16 million)
The Sims 2 (13 million)
StarCraft (11 million)
Half-Life (9.3 million)
Half-Life 2 (6.5 million)
Myst (6 million)
The Sims 3 (5.9 million)
SimCity 3000 (5 million)
Doom (5 million)
Riven (4.5 million)

Right off the bat, you can see that casual games - aka games played by normals - have a significant presence on the list. But that’s not even my point - the reality is that these numbers are tiny, at least in comparison to a game like Farmville.

The number of players? 22 million.

A day.

It may be controversial, even radical, to say that the PC as we know it is dead, especially to a geek. He can list off any number of things he can only do on his computer. Edit photos, use a fully-featured spreadsheet application, and even little things like a real email client. Those aren’t random examples - they’re applications I use every day. But that doesn’t mean my wife does. Or my mom. Or the 22 million farmers on Facebook. It’s to the geek’s peril that their affinity for and ability to use fully-featured desktop applications obscure the fact that the normals have moved on.

UPDATE: A fantastic article about Normals and iPhone apps:

The people who are consuming software now are a vast superset of the people who used to do so. At one time, especially on the Mac, we’d see people chose software based upon how well it suited their requirements to get a job done. This new generation of software consumers isn’t like that – they’re less likely to shop around for something rather they shop around for anything. These are people who want to be entertained as much as they want to have their requirements met. They’ve not bought into a tool they’ve bought, either financially or emotionally, into The Future. The Future is never about the most practical and useful outcome, it’s about flying cars and cute robots who shit talk but will still mix you up a killer G’n’T when you need it. The Future isn’t a service that’ll send you a text message when you’ve been out too late on a work night, The Future will get you laid on a Tuesday and make excuses to the boss the next morning.

How did applications that make farting noises or make you sound like T-Pain do so well on the App Store? The answer is simple – they made people laugh.

That should have been the first sign that the software market was changing. It’s obvious in retrospect; people were buying software that would make them laugh. This runs counter to the common understanding of an Application. An Application represents the developer’s best effort at creating software that applies the capabilities of the device to solving a specific problem. Making people laugh is not a problem an Application can solve; it’s not about the device it’s about the person using it.

It’s worth noting a lot of geeks hate the app store, not just because of Apple’s policies, but because of the kind of apps that proliferate. The article actually addresses that too, quite elegantly. Go read it.

Christmas Letter 2009

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 02:25:16 -0600

Here I am with our annual Christmas letter. Sure, it’s a bit late, and not nearly as pretty as past efforts, but such is the life of a father/graduate student. I wrote last year about the big changes that were in store; this year has been all about the realization of those changes. After deciding to attend the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, we spent most of the late spring and summer preparing to move, well, back from Taiwan, from my prospective, and abroad, from Jasmine and Aliana’s. That move has been a good one, for which Jasmine and Aliana surely deserve the credit.

I am keeping extremely busy; I took five classes last quarter, and will take another four starting in January. Meanwhile, recruiting is starting to heat up; earlier this month I, along with several of my classmates, traveled to Silicon Valley to visit several prospective companies with an eye towards a summer internship with a technology company. Jasmine has been staying home with Aliana, a welcome change of pace for her. She is a tremendous cook and is adapting pretty well: we were both shocked when, after a trip to the store in -8°C (18°F) weather, she remarked, “It’s not too bad out!” Aliana is amazing. She loves to sing, dance, and draw, and already knows her ABC’s. Like all children, she is clearly above average. No matter how busy I may get, knowing she and Jasmine are waiting for me makes it an imperative to get home as soon as possible. Every day she learns something new, and if there is anything I myself have learned, it’s too not miss a single bit of that.

The coming year looks to be more of the same. In addition to classes, this spring I will (hopefully) finalize a summer internship; ideally, I will have the opportunity and desire to continue with that company in a full time capacity when I graduate in 2011. Regardless, there is a decent chance I will know where this part of the journey will end by the time I write you next year.

In that respect, this Christmas is a time for rest and reflection, both to recover from a momentous 2009, prepare for a defining 2010, and enjoy time spent with my extended family for the first time since 2002. Once again, here’s to you, our friends. May your year be similarly filled with appreciation for the past, anticipation for the future, and the joy that each individual day brings.

Merry Christmas, and a very Happy New Year!

Ben, Jasmine & Aliana

Dropbox and the Entrepreneur's Blindspot

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:12:33 -0600

I love Dropbox. Seriously, it may be my most essential app/service. When I save a document, it’s backed up instantly. No matter what happens, I will always have access to that file from any computer. I can even sync it to a second computer if I happen to have another. Of course most people don’t have two computers, but everyone is interested in protecting their files.

So why is Dropbox so focused on sync?

Dropbox’s homepage consists of little more than a video. The opening analogy, of a magic bag, is fine, but the kicker is 20 seconds in.

“The same thing is true for computers. If you have more than one…”

BAM! Dropbox just lost 90% of potential users. In fact, It’s not until the 1:36 mark that the video reveals Dropbox’s most marketable feature:

“He can still get to his files on the website, where they’re always backed up.”

Just about everyone who has worked with computers for any length of time has lost files. It sucks, and Dropbox fixes it. It even fixes corrupt files, or unintentional changes, as you always have access to previous versions (1). But instead the video, website, everything prattle on and on about sync (2).

Why?

I needed [Dropbox] badly. I worked on multiple desktops and a laptop, and could never remember to keep my USB drive with me. I was drowning in email attachments trying to share files for my previous startup.

That is Dropbox founder Jon Ying, explaining what was his inspiration for Dropbox. And here’s the thing - he has achieved his goal. Dropbox is an amazingly elegant solution for sync (and, to be clear, the company is doing very well for itself). But I don’t think Dropbox is doing as well as it could, because, as currently presented, it is not perceived as meeting the needs of the “normals.” And that’s where the money is.

Ultimately, this isn’t a post about Dropbox. I’m certainly not bagging on the company - I love the product (3), and by all accounts, the crew that works there is equally awesome. Rather, it’s about an all-to-common flaw that strikes even the most brilliant entrepreneurs: once you’ve developed a product that meets your needs - and many products start out this way - how do you market it to a population that is not like you at all? Dropbox has a product that is extremely appealing to the “normals,” but the current Dropbox message is tailor-made for the geeks.

And so it goes for all too many tech companies. Amazing technology is followed by lots of funding and backslapping in Silicon Valley, and far too few “normals” from the rest of world.

More later on what it takes to fill that gap, and why most traditional marketing types don’t cut it.

1 The number of old versions of a file is limited in the free service, but still useful

2 Make no mistake - sync is hard, and Dropbox does it better than anyone. At my last employer I built an entire update system across six locations and 30 classrooms using Dropbox, but I know I’m definitely in the minority.

3 I pay for the Pro 50 plan

That Internet Revolution? It's Not Here...Yet

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:37:24 -0600

The Internet will change everything. Not did, will. That’s what is going to make the next few years so interesting, and so pivotal.

Mentioned this to a friend today who gets it. And, well, he got it.

“You can see that with the iPhone maps application. 10 years ago, before I went somewhere, I looked at a map. Five years ago, I went to Mapquest or Google Maps. Now I just walk out the door, because I have the best map I’ve ever had in my pocket.”

Exactly. He lives his life differently because of the Internet (what makes the iPhone and other similar smartphones special is the ease with which they connect). Instead of planning, he just goes, and that’s a big difference.

That’s why, despite widespread assumptions to the contrary, the war to capitalize on the Internet revolution is only getting started. And as this post on the VentureBeat blog suggests, Microsoft is still very much in the game:

Many new Bing improvements, such as maps with interactive driving directions, are mere catch-up to what Google has done for years. But others, driven by heavy market research aimed at finding ways Google is missing the mark, show how very much the kind of people who use the Internet has changed since a few years ago.

In short, the people who use search engines today are nothing like the people who build them. Online, the normals have finally displaced the geeks.

Microsoft lost a lot of ground among the geeks over the last ten years, but not nearly so much among the normals. And that’s where the true prize lies (which is why Apple so assiduously ignore the geeks - XMac anyone? - while focusing like a laser on normals). Bing is more than just another search engine - it, and more importantly, it’s development process, is a harbinger of where the true action will be over the next ten years.

I think the blog post got one point not so much wrong but not quite right: the normals may have overtaken the geeks in terms of number of users on the Internet, but for them, the Internet is just a welcome addition to their lives. For geeks like my friend and I, the Internet is an essential component of our lives. The revolution will be the movement from addition to to essential component among the population as a whole.

Rupert Murdoch = Misguided Gas Station Owner

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:57:00 -0600

I’m not sure what would be more amusing: if a gas station owner thought that he was responsible for the superhighway outside his door, or if he thought drivers on that highway would care if he closed his driveway.

Winter Awaits

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:53:45 -0600

Dusk

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:14:34 -0500

Busy Corner

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:45:14 -0500

I'm Ben, and I used to have my own website

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:50:59 -0500

She cheated on me. Heck of a birthday present, to say the least.

My plans shot and my heart broken, I spent most of my 22nd birthday designing a new version of my webpage. I had actually first gotten server space and set up a page the year before — I had hosting and a blog before it was cool. And the first version had garish colors and a default template that most definitely weren’t.

Setting up my own platform was a pressing issue; I had just left my previous one — the student newspaper — and like all good columnists, felt giving the world a chance to continue hearing my opinions was of paramount importance. That’s what was so neat about the Internet; no one knew who I was, but that didn’t mean I was finished writing for an audience, one potentially far larger than the University of Wisconsin.

The particulars of why that audience never really materialized isn’t that important, although the fact this is about the seventh version of bentsoapbox has something to do with it. After letting each version die on the vine I’d redesign and do it again, an activity I both loved and hated all at the same time. Regardless, it had to be done.

Even as blogs exploded in popularity in the middle of the decade, it still required a bit of technical knowhow, especially if one wanted to establish their own online brand. Having a site in your own name required hosting, setting up blog software, and putting up with the annoyances associated with such things. The Internet as publisher was available to everyone in theory; in reality it required a minimum level of technical knowhow.

That’s why the biggest news about this, the latest relaunch of bentsoapbox, is that I’ve given up my hosting. Twitter is the perfect vehicle for 90% of what I want to post; longer stuff, like this article, is hosted on Tumblr. My personal landing page is on Mobile Me. Pictures are on Flickr; contacts on Facebook and LinkedIn; and everything else on Posterious (nothing there yet!). More importantly (at least to me), I’ll never have to deal with another Wordpress update, borked plugin, comment spam, or anything else that sapped my time and made having a web presence a job, not an opportunity. These tools are good enough, even for a guy like me that knows his way around HTML and PHP.

And that’s the big deal - most people don’t know HTML and PHP, but a lot of them do have something to say. What makes “Web 2.0” such a big deal is that it extends the promise of the Internet to anyone and everyone, and everyone is on the same page (or host).

That birthday breakup was a turning point in my life. I took off for Taiwan and soon met the girl who is now my wife, and “my platform” fell by the wayside, a victim of a busy life and six years of learning how little I, in contrast to my earlier assumptions, really knew. But in the meantime “the platform” has been opened to everyone, and I’m honored to be back, this time on the same level as everyone else.

There is a dark side to this story; the day after I switched bent.tw over I was blocked from Twitter for reasons that remain unclear. It’s worth remembering that for all the hassle that comes from hosting your own site, it’s still yours. No censoring, no limits, and no bans. Something worth thinking about.

Christmas Letter 2008

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:54:44 -0600

A lot can change in a year.

Not exactly a groundbreaking observation, but having a baby simplifies and clarifies a great deal many things. One year ago we propped Aliana up so that she could see the Christmas tree; this year I made sure to put the cheap ornaments on the bottom and tie the tree to the wall for fear she would tear the whole thing down when we weren’t looking! She’s talking a bit, although only a few words are legible (and I’m afraid most are Chinese), but her comprehension is remarkable, and she loves to “help” (also known as making a mess of things). She’s definitely the sort of little girl you want to hang out with whenever you have the chance.

That desire is a major part of my decision to pursue a major life change: I am currently applying to business schools with the intention of enrolling next fall to pursue an M.B.A. I believe a career in business will best maximize my talents and experiences, while offering the variety and challenges that I crave. Moreover, something approaching a 9 to 5 will be particularly attractive once Aliana starts school, as opposed to the evenings I work now. Finally, I am excited to give Jasmine the opportunity to take care of Aliana full-time, at least for the next two years. I hope to have news soon as to which school I will be attending.

I have had an amazing six years in Taiwan. To say it has been life-changing would be, well, true. To quote a powerpoint I made for one of my applications,

I came to Taiwan to travel, I found a home. I came to Taiwan to learn Chinese, I learned a culture. I came to Taiwan to make friends, I formed a family. I came to Taiwan without focus, I leave to build a career.

We may be back someday, at which time I’ll have to update that powerpoint, but for now this chapter of my life, remarkable and formative as it has been, is slowly closing.

Jasmine continues to excel at work. The branch she manages for HESS Educational Organization (my former employer) has been honored as a branch of the year for four years running, and she is regularly assigned the most challenging and important tasks for her entire area. Still, she also feels that she has accomplished all she can in her position, and is looking forward to a change. She recently traveled to Melbourne, Australia through her work, and loved the city and country. Still, I think she was even more happy to hear how much Aliana missed her - she’s a great mom!

Aliana is turning out to be quite the athlete; she runs everywhere, can throw a ball, and the strength of her hands is exceeded only by the strength of her will. She’s a good girl though; she loves to share, and is quite the showoff. Shades of someone, not quite sure who…

I am doing well also, although I have been extremely busy with business school applications in addition to my job. I currently work for another English as a Second Language school, and have multiple responsibilities, including creating and maintaining a new computer-based teaching system, teaching several classes in both English and Chinese, and directing our test preparation program. In many ways, I hope my future career in business aspects similar to my current position, including the opportunity to innovate using technology, as well as teach and lead.

In the end, one could argue that maybe not much has changed for our family. Jasmine and I have the same jobs, and Aliana is simply a year older. But to see her is to barely recognize last year’s infant; for Jasmine and I it is the vision itself that has changed. Here’s to you, our friends, with the hope that this year will bring similar clarity and purpose.

I miss you all!

Merry Christmas, and a very Happy New Year!

Ben, Jasmine & Aliana