As a mobile guy, I am really frustrated by most of the content being built for mobile. Even the best examples seem to be mere skins that cram content into a smaller screen with a more touch friendly layout.
As a mobile guy, I am really frustrated by most of the content being built for mobile. Even the best examples seem to be mere skins that cram content into a smaller screen with a more touch friendly layout.
StreetFight Mag published a piece today in which I argue that instead of trying to force web paradigms onto mobile, advertisers should be rushing to localize their message and take advantage of the 1-2 punch of smartphones' portability and location. I'd love to hear what you think.
http://streetfightmag.com/2012/03/12/why-isnt-mobile-display-advertising-huge...
Successful advertising is a function of how much you spend versus how much you bring back. No matter how you slice it, if the ROI when all is said and done is not positive it doesn’t make sense. This is why context in advertising is so important. If you can reach the likeliest buyer in the fewest impressions you can directly impact your conversion rate and ultimately ROI. On the web this is done through behavioural targeting on the premise that your online activity is a reflection of your interests and purchase intents. This makes sense to me as I think of my own online use case. I read what I am interested in, I research what I want to buy, and I generally leave a nice trail that can easily be compiled into an accurate profile of who I am.However, on mobile, using me as a data point of one, the metaphor changes. I spend a tremendous amount of time consuming media on my phone, but it is under different circumstances and it reveals a different side of me. I don’t have a set of websites I visit everyday on my phone and I don’t do much pre-meditated research on it. Rather, I find myself using my phone to reactively research something either because I need the info right then or because I am in a location and want to get quick info / price on something. The other scenario is when I have a few spare minutes either waiting for someone, on my commute, or during ordinary downtime. I might check a website or play a game. For the most part, my consumption of media on my mobile phone is much more sporadic and less coherent than online.So if my mobile profile (assuming cookies worked and it could be compiled) is weaker than online, how do you target effectively on mobile?LOCATIONIf advertisers want to target me, knowing where I am is even more rich than my online trail. Think of the relevance of my location; at a sporting event (sports enthusiast), at an airport (traveler), in a business park (corporate employee)...talk about rich targeting opportunities based on the real-world.Even more importantly, rather than relying on the type of page I visit to deliver a contextually relevant ad, advertisers can use my location. Think about the use case I described above and ask yourself which is more relevant to deliver an ad against; 1) I am playing Angry Birds, or 2) I am in an airport. My disposition to take action is much more oriented around the fact that I am in an airport than what I am doing for 10 minutes to pass the time.
Culture is such an important part of a CEO's role. A good working environment not only attracts new employees, helps with retention, and keeps people happier, it can also lead to more productivity, greater innovation, and better results all around. Think of a company where failure is unacceptable and where decrees are handed from the top...I would bet that innovation is stifled, creativity is non-existent, and that ultimately, the product suffers.
So how do you create a great culture?
My thoughts are still forming on the subject, but I think, as most things, it is a fluid effort that changes as the company matures. In the initial stages, it is about bringing on people that embody the character traits you want in your company. The problem is that as the company grows, culture stops being the representation of the personality traits of the various team members and it becomes a living and breathing organism that begins to define social interactions in the company. It is extraordinary to watch individuals morph to meet the culture of the organization, usually in just a few months. So the team size grows, it becomes more important to define the traits and help new employees fit the existing culture of the company.
We are growing our team at a rapid-rate, and as we do, we are relying less and less on the team to drive culture and are starting to proactively define and encourage certain elements of our company's culture. This is a work in progress, but never too early to start.
A couple of weeks back I was in NY walking from one meeting to another. I had a few minutes to spare and kept noticing people were using their phones as they walked. I spent about 5 minutes taking pictures because for all the data we have about how much people use their phones on the go, there is something really powerful about actually seeing it in action.
Whether they are using Google Maps, Pandora, Poynt, AngryBirds, Email, Text Msg, or some long tail app, consumers using phones while they are out and about are a great aduience to reach with a geo-targeted ad and actually drive them to your business.
Apple (Febuary 2010): “If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store”
In iOS5:
So let me get this straight: mobile publishers on iOS are not allowed to pull location to serve more targeted ads. However, Apple owned iAds is allowed to pull location just to serve ads targeted to a customers location regardless of what the publisher says. To add salt to injury, this feature is turned on by default and buried in the menu system not under ‘Location Services,’ but under ‘System Services.'
Did you know that even if you turn off location for an application (i.e. you don't want it to know where you are), if it is serving iADs Apple will still target your ad by your location?
The FTC really needs to crack down on Apple's anti-competitive practices.
Self-awareness is in my opinion the most critical component to growing as a person, as a leader, and as a productive human being.
Understanding what we do right and wrong is the cornerstone of being able to improve; one need to understand what is working and what isn't working to know what to focus on the and to find ways to get better. Much like building a startup is all about getting data and adjusting, our evolution as leaders functions the same way.
Sadly, most startups don't pay enough attention to developing their people and tend not to provide enough feedback. There is just too much to do and there are no formal channels for getting feedback. This was happening at ThinkNear and it was bothering me. I wasn't improving on a daily basis and neither was our team. I did not want to add a performance evaluation or some rigid process that you do once a year and is meant to judge a person rather than give them constructive feedback about what is working and what they can improve.
A couple of weeks back I heard about a startup called ClearGears that sends every employee a question a day about another employee. I decided to implement it at ThinkNear with a few slight changes. We decided that we couldn't just rate someone, but we actually need to provide a comment with feedback. We also made it clear that this was not a tool that was going to be used to evaluate anyone - the only purpose was to create a channel for constructive feedback. This did away with the common practice of just saying everyone is excellent. The point is to get good feedback that no one sees other than the person receiving - this made folks think hard about what advice they would give co-workers to help them improve.
Since we implemented it everyone on the team is getting quick feedback on a daily basis on a range of topics. It takes less than three minutes a day, but has been giving us daily concrete feedback about how we can get better. Not just from a manager / but from everyone on the team. Just as helpful, we now have an easy channel by which to give feedback across the company. This is helping create a culture where we are all open and willing to give and take feedback...and I am starting to see it happening outside of ClearGears as well, its happening in the hallways, meetings, and email. Its all constructive and helpful and appreciated by all.
I personally have found the feedback incredibly helpful. I am learning about things that I am doing that people appreciate and now will make sure to continue doing them. More importantly, I have heard about the things that I am not focusing enough on or doing poorly and it has been revealing and helpful. Most of these items are easy to change and now that I am aware, I will definitely work had to improve on them.
In the past few months I have spoken to multiple people who have a good idea, an itch to build it, and the chops to pull it off - but who have never done product development or built a company from the ground up. In those conversations I find myself discussing many of the mistakes I have made and the lessons I learned while outsourcing. Most of it is intuitive if you have done it before, but for many it is a necessary stumbling block on the entrepreneurial journey. I was thinking it might be interesting if I wrote about the lessons I learned here. Please me know what you think.
For some context, I built my first web-business back in 2005. I had been a mgmt consultant and wanted to develop tools to help the low-wage demographic find jobs using the power of the Internet, but via a medium that they had more regular access to. This was my first foray into product development and I made pretty much every rookie mistake.
Many of the lessons I learned were related to the outsourcing of the development work. So I'll start there. I am a big believer that getting an initial proof of concept developed by a third party can be a good idea. At that stage it is all about proving the idea and not scalability or functionality - and using an outsourced firm can usually be really cheap way to get there. This is especially true for teams without a founding engineer or for those that want to test the concept while maintaining their day job.
So these are some of the pitfalls to avoid with outsourced developers:
1 - Never hand off design and development to the same person or shop. With incredibly rare exceptions, the skills that make a good software engineers are VERY different from those that make for a good designer. You want to find people who have specialized and become very good at engineering to develop software and those that have honed competencies in UX/CX/design to work on the information architecture and design. You will have a much better product if you find the best help at each of these functions than if you just go with one person or firm who claims they can do both.
2 - Design first. Most people instinctually think that they should begin the software development efforts and then or in parallel figure out the designs. The problem is that with design you often need to see what something looks and then request changes because nothing ever looks right after one pass. Getting the right look, feel, and functionality ahead of time is critical because developing software for a moving target will result in very unhappy engineers, a lot of wasted time, and spaghetti code. Also - its much easier to get software that does exactly what you want if you hand off fully developed designs than if you just give an engineer a word doc. So first find a designer you like and create the designs for the entire websites. There are so many others reasons to do this (you can get feedback on the concept, you can better visualize your idea, you can think of other or better features).
3 - Write incredibly detailed specs. When you do give a designer and an engineer a write-up of what you want, try to be as detailed as possible. Find all of the potential issues that might arise from people doing crazy things with your software. Ask yourselves questions like "what happens if the user clicks the button twice and then hits the back button on the browser." Giving a clear indication of what you expect to happen will make it much more likely that you will get back what you want. And when you do give your developer your spec you will also have designs to give them so they know exactly what they are going to build.
4 - Always cut the project into bits. There is such a huge discrepancy between the good and the bad development partners out there and it is often impossible to know the difference ahead of time. Being able to cut the project into bits and testing the relationship and the quality before going all-in is absolutely critical. If you make a mistake you can quickly course-correct with minimal wasted investment. Most firms will really fight this, but no matter how many references you have or how good you think they are, make sure the first project is just a few hours and get a sense of how much you like their work and their ability to translate what you want into software. This is true of designers too - ask them to design one page first before you give them the whole project.
5 - Manualize everything. Another gut instinct many people have when starting a business is to automate as much functionality as possible. Its usually better to go in the exact opposite direction and try to find ways to simplify the software needed. If you need to process orders, maybe start by having the software email you an order and you entering it into the system. Or if you are building a reservation system, maybe instead of integrating with a dentist office to send them a notification just call them initially. Whatever you are building will require lots of changes and the less you build up front the easier time you will have changing it. Plus you have no idea if your concept will work, so spend as little as possible proving it out before you start thinking of efficiencies.
Those are generally the five most important things I can think of, but there are so many nuances to each of these. Hope this is helpful.
I recently did a video interview with Rob at Untether about ThinkNear and where we see local & mobile heading. The interview is a bit long, but hopefully somewhat interesting: http://bit.ly/rgSo7a
