Robert Sandie » Product Development

Owning My TwitPic

Rob — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:22:55 +0000

Today, Colin criticized me on my choice of Twitter photo hosting solution as it included very intrusive ads next to them (plixi).

He told me that he personally blogs vs. Twitpic, capturing the long-tail on the content with Google. It was really something to think about as he was getting thousands of views on an old piece he did.

I didn’t want to blog as that would dilute the high value of this feed (please know I am mocking myself).

Anycase, after a quick Google, found a nice plugin by @michaeltyson. Recently, been using it and results are not bad. The bad side is Twitter clients don’t work with just anyone for previews. They really need to adopt OpenGraph like facebook.

What do you think I should do? Own my own Twitter photos or host them on Twitpic, Plixi or yfrog?

Consumerization of Business

Rob — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 02:11:19 +0000

Consumerization of business is by far my favorite new tagline. It’s also known as “Consumerization of Enterprise” but screw that, it’s bigger then that. It’s all business.

Recently been hearing it on the interwebs.. on Techcrunch.tv introducing Bullpen Capital and then Techcrunch Disrupt.

It’s a new buzz phrase thats caught on but Jason Fried from 37signals was talking about this wayyyy back in 2007. I personally remember hearing Jason talk about this at 2007 SXSW “we do extremely well in small departments inside of large enterprise”.

What this buzzy tagline is formalizing:
- new products becoming indistinguishable from enterprise apps
- reduction of large gatekeepers in the enterprise
- going directly to end users in companies
- consumer’ish startup price points
- self service FTW
- end of the IT department
- very low signup friction (google app integrations, etc)
- one hell of a marketing/customer penetration strategy for growth companies

As Viddler has started as a consumer company and worked its way upstream to business services, this tagline is golden and plan on overusing it like Web 2.0 in 2007.

Being Low Key

Rob — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:55:22 +0000

In a recent strategic conversation someone recently said “wow, you guys should be marketing this more” when referring to # of customers, big accounts and profitability.

We do put much of this stuff on the blog and on Twitter but she was referring to the more traditional marketing techniques: Sponsoring events, parties, keynote speaking, press releases, email newsletters, etc.

This brought me to defend staying low key. Allow me to share reasons….

Benefits of Staying Low Key:
- Competition doesn’t pay attention (we have features implemented better then our competitors and they still haven’t caught up)
- You wouldn’t believe the amount of people buying into video hosting that don’t attend big shindig conferences or give two cents about press releases.
- Save time and money. What matters and what sells is usually how good your product is and how fast you are innovating. Also if your not spending a wild amount on marketing you can offer your customers with a more affordable product.
- Other companies do operate like this and succeed. For instance, has anyone seen Getclicky? Two guys building one of the best analytics toolset in the business. They are low key, no mainstream marketing strategy, and after investigating have a outrageous # of customers.

This isn’t to say we aren’t looking to improve our marketing strategy. Just a slight argument for staying under the radar.

And I will keep the company name I work for out of this, cause I know I have google alerts setup on our competition. #stayinglowkey

Export CSV Icons

Rob — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:39:29 +0000

Was researching CSV icons for viddler analytics. Found some interesting examples from the different vendors we work with. Shared them below, let me know if you know any other good examples!

Geni in a Bottle

Rob — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 06:11:19 +0000

Sorry for the cliche title, but Geni deserves it as it is one of the most genius services I have truly connected with in a while. I remember viewing the service a while back and thinking it was a good idea, but implementation was still lacking. Regardless, I added a few family members and tree more or less looked like this and I started with 4-5 family members (girlfriends I added as partners):

I recently revisited the application to see how well it was growing. First of all the application is 100x more functional then it was a few months ago. Major kudos to the Geni development team! Second, my family picked up on it. My mother added everyone in family tree. My mothers uncle Frank was adding people. As of now it’s 55 immediate and many more extended family members in the tree.

Check out family tree (via flash embed):

View more of Rob’s tree | Get your own family tree at Geni.com

Using the site I really think all Geni needs is a few minor extensibility product improvements and it could be a top 100 internet property within a year. These are the same feelings I had when I was one of the first users of thefacebook.com in college .

Product Suggestions for Geni:

Flickr Integration – I already upload my photo’s to Flickr and treat that as my management toolset for photo’s (yes I upload to facebook but who wants that). Machine Tags preffered. Importing would work as well.
Email Photo’s – 100,000% needed if you want me to keep on updating geni as often as I update flickr via my iPhone
Viddler Integration – last thing I want to do is upload more 150 Meg videos. Somehow I need the ability to store family videos on Geni. Machine tagging Viddler videos would be awesome use for this.
Family Privacy – after going over my girlfriends there was a few divorces and family history that she didn’t want to get shared. Certain family members weren’t able to be put under a “unclassified person” so father-daughter relationships weren’t able to be fulfilled
Girlfriends – my girlfriend is not a partner, she is a girlfriend. I want the ability to be able to classify her as that on Geni.
Facebook Geni App – Hijacked – someone else sitting and profitting on Geni’s name on Facebook. I invited family to use the app without seeing the full functionality and painfully regret it. Geni should contact facebook and needs to develop a full on Facebook Application (none of this Gigya confusion).
BONUS: iPhone app similar to Facebook’s telling me of my families happening.

Geni is a great application with a long bright future. I highly suggest signing up and joining in on the family fun.