Conifer Consulting

Requirements for a Facebook "Personal Social Manager"

I've noticed lately that the first thing I check these days is NOT email but my Facebook and Twitter accounts! Most of my family, friends and colleagues are on here and I am bypassing email more and more. Not a surprising trend, I suppose. Is it happening to you too? As you've likely noted, managing all these accounts can be a little unwieldy and the like of Tweetdeck, threadsy, etc have made life easier across these apps.  

However I think it's time Facebook (I use them as the proxy for whoever will be the ultimate social network leader although they are getting pretty hard to overtake every day) thought about introducing features that would let me manage my Facebook account easier.  Here is what I mean: I think they should introduce a whole set of features designed to manage our social/professional life easier online, thus also reducing the need to start with email.  When I log onto FB I should be able to see and manage my social and professional interactions as I wish right from there.  

Here are some of the requirements that I would want:

• This "Personal Social Manager" would encompass a set of features that serve as a "social dashboard" of sorts.  Currently Microsoft Outlook does this for most email. Needless to say what I am proposing of course is a cloud-based dashboard but one that has the capabilities for becoming my default destination vs. Outlook or Mac Mail or Gmail. Think about what Outlook offers and does and what makes it a default email dashboard for people who manage multiple email accounts.  As an aside, Gmail has yet to offer this. I have multiple gmail accounts for various clients actually but cannot manage them from a single online Gmail manager. Sucks!
• When I get on Facebook I should be able to see Newsfeed streams by groupings I've created and selected to view - 'Friends', 'Work' or 'Family' or 'Vendors' (brands, service providers, products I am connected with) or 'All' if I so choose. I should be able to configure friends into multiple groups and how groups show up with a simple drag and drop.
• Privacy controls - powerful but SIMPLE.  I'll leave this one without saying more, since this horse has been beaten well enough.
• I should be able to see messages in a more fully-featured Inbox on the side; as you may have noticed Facebook Messages needs to acquire more email features so that email becomes an integrated part of social networking interaction (like chat is becoming), versus being a whole other thing I do outside social networking.
• The one thing I like about email which I miss on Facebook is the ease with which I can find old interactions (messages) when I want them.  Being able to search or browse through the folders or "labels" (in the case of Gmail) I've created helps a lot.  Facebook needs to provide this so I can easily find old interactions.
• Geolocation - coming soon - along with mapping and "search the web" from inside Facebook.
• Events and evites has done a good job and collaborative planning for events can be extended too.

These are some of my early, top of mind thoughts. I will add to this as I encounter more. How about you? What else would help make Facebook the online social dashboard of choice for you? Look forward to your comments.

Life is Short – Don’t Boil the Ocean!

Don't boil the ocean. Easier said than done.  Every product I worked on that failed can be attributed to the fact that we tried to do too much; as a result we forgot what was important.  Worse we did not even see our competition coming! Don’t make this mistake. Feature creep, feature bloat and various other sins happen along the way.  The “cost” of this is not simply in time and money but much more importantly in “focus lost”.

But this is hard to do. Embrace a lot of “nay-saying”. You have to say no to products and features and favorite ideas from one and all. Take a page from Apple’s philosophy of “Just Say No”.

Jobs's primary role at Apple is to turn things down. "He's a filter," says the Mac engineer Hertzfeld. Every day, the CEO is presented with ideas for new products and new features within existing ones. The default answer is no. Every engineer who has gone over a product with him has a story about how quickly Jobs reaches for the DELETE key. "I'm as proud of the products that we have not done as the ones we have done," Jobs told an interviewer in 2004.

One way you can do this successfully (of course assuming you’re not the all-powerful Steve jobs) is by creating two conditions 1) you’ve really done your homework and know your market and target users inside out; be prepared to speak to what your users value and why, and back it up with good data; note this data does not have to be quantitative numbers from primary research but can be well thought out conclusions from synthesis of industry trends, consumer interviews, etc. and 2) you show others the true “cost” of deviating from your laser-like focus.  This is not easy but must be done if you are to bring the team with you and not fight them over every feature.

So what are the features and functions you should include and work on? Understanding your market, coming changes, user habits and needs yield the answer to the question: what is the most essential set of capabilities I need to provide my users? And be sure to develop the product that solves that important – even if it's a small one – problem well.  It solves it deeply and completely (to a user’s mind) and may well be regarded as a narrow set of features, for starters. 

Note this approach does not preclude you from having a future plan for a “whole platform” that enables much broader set of capabilities.  But be sure to solve a few problems well vs. offering a shallow “solution” for a larger set of problems – unless of course “shallow” is good enough.  This latter point is very critical too.  Don’t get lost in what YOU consider important – show users and ask for their opinion.  Again, run a whole bunch of experiments – quickly and nimbly – and apply the learning.  When I say “shallow” I mean shallow and useless to users – and not to you.

So the key stages of thinking to develop are:

1. Define what’s most essential in terms of capabilities to your target users – whether they can articulate it or not.  Demonstrate how you know this.
2. Evaluate the following honestly: Can you offer capabilities to solve crucial user problem well (good enough for users) so that it’s unique (no one else does it this way), meaningful (users think it's a substantial benefit), relevant (they can use it frequently enough) and valued (and they are willing to pay for it)?
3. Develop your strategy so it gives you a leverage point i.e., build barriers to future switching, for future expansion and market capture.
4.  Prioritize the building of capabilities mercilessly (SAY NO) by taking into account the above as well as timing/resources needs.

Paranoia as a force for good - Rethink Your Competition!

“Only the paranoid survive” is a good mantra to adopt from Andy Grove. When it comes to business Andy says there’s plenty to worry about including competition, “of course, I worry about competitors. I worry about other people figuring out how to do what we do better or cheaper, and displacing us with our customers.”  The key to remember is that: You always have competition. Always.

 Every start-up I talk to claims: “we don't really have a direct competitor because we are so unique, blah de blah!...”  Don't catch yourself saying this.  Wear your customers' hat when you speak about your competition.  I mean that. Truly wear the hat and then write down one single reason why they are better. 

Here’s what I mean. Even the iPad, which I believe is a “magical” product and has created arguably a new category (hard-to-use tablets of yore not withstanding), has competition both from my iPhone and from my laptop. Think about all the occasions and uses that an iPad may be used for. For each of those occasions and uses, I the consumer, may choose from myriad devices and will pick the one, that gives me the best experience depending on factors important for that use e.g., for media consumption, battery life, lightweight nature and “always on” state of the iPad are all godsends. A second example: Quicken has always competed with Excel for very small businesses. A third example: All product upgrades compete with the “do nothing” mind-set when users don’t see enough value in upgrading; this is because in vast majority of cases users don’t utilize 80% of the features/functions and often we cannot visualize what’s better when our basic needs are being met.

 So what should a stellar Product Manager do? Ideally you should take the time to follow a bunch of target users of your product to first hand observe and deeply understand what they do today to meet the needs/wants your offering will fulfill.  Such studies constitute ethnographic market research. But they can be expensive and time consuming.  I understand that.  But there are other effective ways to get the 80 for the 20.  Talk to your target users. Recruit them and call them up or find them among your colleagues, family, friends and people you know through people you know. Put social networking to good use here.  Talk to potential users and ask them to describe a couple of the “use case” scenarios you’re going after or those that your offering will render extinct.  Ask them what they do today, how they do it and why? You can even ask what they’d like to change but beware of ­how you ask, exactly how you phrase it and the “answers” it yields.  As Apple CEO Steve Jobs likes to quote Henry Ford (paraphrase) “If we had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse…”  This is an important insight but it can cut both ways but that discussion is for another day.

Once you have an understanding of what users do today note what your competition is.  What are all the tools, products, services your potential users are using today and may continue to use when your product comes to market.  Why may they continue to use it? What’s attractive about these substitutions? Why would a user not switch to your offering? Remember inertia is a powerful force in the world.  Go to work on making sure that the benefits you offer are fundamental enough, big enough, and convincing enough to activate the switch.  Test your hypothesis with well-designed market research experiments.  Use the power of social media to enable quicker, smarter answers. Conduct this exercise internally with your team: If you introduced your product (or if your product is already in the market) and 6-12 months later you had the awareness you wanted but not the adoption, what could be the top 5 reasons people had not adopted your offers? Be honest.  Really work on this exercise – in detail.

As you think about what/who your target users may choose over your offering be sure to also consider the broader changes, trends and tech innovations that are coming to impact your industry. Develop frameworks and hypothesis for what impact these changes will have and what else may begin to encroach upon your market space.

Be All You Can Be – Think like a General Manager!

Following up from last week's post, a few people asked me what I meant by "being a GM" so I decided to expound on that further.

As I said before, product management is a unique, central, powerful function when structured properly.  You have all the responsibility but may feel like you have no authority. But you do have something very powerful at your disposal – influence. When a question arises about product direction, all eyes turn to you. Or they should. If that’s not happening ask yourself if you’re being a true product leader.  You can - and should - be a key influencer in your company.  But for that you need to think like a general manager - not merely a product manager.

What does this mean? A general manager is a manager of the business, usually responsible for the all the business aspects including the P/L (profit loss) and revenue and growth goals.  Note the “L” of P/L means you have to think about not just growing the business but also the cost and operations side.  While this might seem like a lofty goal when all that you’re thinking about is getting the requirements defined, it will greatly increase your chances of success to think like a GM vs. merely a PM.  Take the time to step back and think about the overall context for your product. Here are a few categories of thoughts to consider:

• Market Dynamics: What is the market you’re (about to enter) in? Is it a new category you’re creating or is it an existing one? Is it growing, stagnant or declining? What impact will your (new) product have on the market?
• Customer & Share of Market: Who are your target customers and who are your competitors? Think about both direct, obvious competitors as well as deeply ponder the answers to the question, “what else do/can your customers do if your offering does not exist and/or if they chose not to use your offering? And if they don’t choose you, why not?”  Given what emerges from this type of thinking you might want to more deeply consider how you differentiate your offering. And finally, what kind of market share do you expect to capture? How?
• Business Model: Why will customers or other stakeholders pay for the benefits your product/service provides or ancillary value it creates? What’s your business model or how will your make money?
• Pricing & Value: What will you charge for your services? If your offering is “free” to customers, do you have a “premium” offering in mind and/or are you selling ancillary offerings to other stakeholders (e.g., targeted ads, virtual goods, etc.)? What’s your planned margin structure for what you’re selling? What other costs might eat into your planned margins? What cannibalization can you expect from your new product among your existing ones?
• Total Customer Experience & Operational Impact: One of the great promises we ask product managers to deliver on is “How can you promise and deliver on an excellent total experience at every customer touch point?” While this is a worthy goal and a fruitful exercise, what gets left out is the answer to the following question: “What will it take operationally for the organization to deliver on this promise?” Is your organization set up for this? If you build it, they might come but will they stay? The answer might depend on how easy it was for them to “buy” what’s right, use it and even the after-sales experience. Are your customer service operations, tech support and online buying experience up to the mark?
• Product Lifecycle Management: Is there a natural lifecycle for your product? Is there an industry / strategic / technological inflection point coming? Do you have a plan for making your offering obsolete -- before the market does?

While fulfilling the above is a tall order, even being aware of these questions, bringing them the table and showing your team what matters, is a great first step.  Be sure to ask these questions and engage actively in discussions and decisions before the fate of your product is sealed. You may not be the person with the authority to solve all these problems but you will be seen as a leader and a key influencer if you’re raising them, seeking the sources for answers and collaborating in multi-functional teams to make sure these are being addressed. 

Inviting you to Product Marketing & Management Roundtables

by Reena Kapoor

I invite you all to the Product Marketing & Product Management Roundtables for the BMA in Northern California.  I am going to be hosting these starting October 15th.  These are typically held as breakfast meetings in Palo Alto on the 3rd Thursday of every month.

Launching your Product: What to Avoid

by Reena Kapoor

I've worked with many clients to help bring new products (and services) to market and even when the offering has real value to offer and a strong, differentiable place to occupy in its universe, I find some common mistakes get in the way. Often a launch that can be great, is simply good or worse, mediocre.  Such an undesirable - and in many cases, undeserving - fate can be avoided. I offer here a check-list of some of the most common mistakes I've observed. These are based on my experience helping consumer-focused companies but they apply just as well to business-to-business (B2B) enterprises:

Finding a home for Product Management: Part 2

by Reena Kapoor

So it took me longer to get back to my blog than I thought  (I had to be out of the country at short notice). But I want to get back to reasons for why product management belongs in marketing - and not in engineering.  The first factor was of course around defining marketing properly (it's much more than marketing communications).  Another key reason is that product management needs to reflect the voice of the customer and market realities in the product requirements.  If product management is part of engineering then this imperative risks being lost. 

Finding a home for Product Management

by Reena Kapoor

Product Management is a key function in any company involved in innovation; and that includes all the tech companies I have the opportunity to advise.  And often I ask myself this question: where in the organizaion should this function reside? More often than not the choice posed is: Should product management report into Marketing or Engineering?

Consumer Product Management & Other Follies

by Reena Kapoor

I've worked in consumer product management in a few different industries — tech and non-tech — and want to talk about that I've observed about successful product management.  Even that terminology "tech vs. non-tech" in itself is telling.  I started my career nearly 18 years ago in the new product development function at Procter & Gamble (P&G). We defined requirements and developed the detergent formulas that would go into products like Tide, Cheer, etc. And while that was not a "hi tech" job, it was very driven by technology — AND consumer need.