What shapes can you see in the (Tag) Clouds?

Today I was accepting a LinkedIn recommendation from a colleague of mine (thanks Prashant) when I thought to myself, wonder what all these 20+ recommendations say about me in aggregate.

So I started a 15min project to figure that out. Using a frequently overlooked social media capability called Tag Clouds I was able to get a feel of that.

Using Wordle I was able to quickly pull together the tag cloud and here's what it said.

Update: Here's another tag cloud that removes words like "Oracle", "Siebel", "Corporation", "Systems", "worked", "directly", "indirectly", "product", "manager". LinkedIn has these words recurring in all the recommendations as part of the standard format. So while these words were repeating at a high frequency they were mostly redundant. Unless you were trying to decipher from the cloud on where I've worked the most in my career (Siebel System) or in what roles (Product Management), that information was not useful in conveying sentiment.

I've used tag clouds in the past to sense the sentiment or direction of customer comments or issues. Often times we ask customers to classify comments and issues by asking them to select from a set of drop-downs so they can help classify their input. However I've found that tag clouds often give you the next level of insights that direct classification can never provide. A very social way of viewing customer input as sentiment.

So how did I go about doing this?

• Navigated to my public profile on LinkedIn
• Scrolled all the way down to where all Recommendations are listed
• Dragged the mouse across all the text and copied the content using Ctrl-C
• Pasted the content into Notepad
• Replaced all occurrence of "Siebel Systems" and "Oracle Corporation" the two organizations where I've worked over the last 10 years of my career.
• Copied and Pasted the text into the Textbox on Wordle
• Visualized the tag cloud
• Published the tag cloud as public so I can share it and put it here on my blog.

Try it out and see what your LinkedIn Network has to say about you, do come back and post them here in the comments :-)

Usability and Movie Making

As a product manager I've always been interested and involved with UI and Usability. However over the last few years it was a core area of focus, as my team was responsible for the current and next gen UI of the Siebel Application. In managing UI for an enterprise application that was deployed to 3M+ users I realized that usability is a lot like making movies.

Great Movies/Usability

• Everyone relates to them
• Everyone feels they have a killer idea for one
• Everyone feels they can make one happen easily

For anyone who's attempted one, you'll soon realize why there are so few blockbusters made each year.

Anyways here are 5 Tips on Usability that have helped me over the years.

1. Dont make users think (Thanks Mr Krug :-). Aim for simplicity and strive to design a transparent experience where the user can focus on completing the task more than anything else. Trust me, no user wants to be confronted with complexity. Its often (mis-guided) vendors who feel that exposing the complexity of an app to users allows them to demonstrate how rich the app is.
2. Leverage standards and patterns and be open to leveraging usability from similar products. Patterns (atleast proven ones) are structured responses to usability problems out there, so dont attempt to reinvent the wheel all the time. But do remember that patterns are loosely structured solutions and so adapt them to your scenario. Also if you're attempting to create a new pattern, remember that its a lot of effort to get a good validated pattern and the probability of success on one of these newer patterns is very slim.
3. Know your users and watch them use the product. DO NOT design from a white ivory tower. Also remember this golden rule, internal users especially ones on product teams are not ideal users.
4. Put designs back in front of users and iterate on the design.This is one area where I often see application usability initiatives fail. There is often this cover of stealth and secrecy and often some hesitancy to put designs back in front of customers. Well trust me, unless you're designing the next iPhone, stealth and secrecy is not going to work for your usability. As I've learnt in my days managing Siebel Security, stealth and secrecy do not make things more secure and they sure dont make things more usable either.
5. When the heat is on stick to your guns.Often I've seen UE folks fold up/cave in/give up (use your favorite phrase) when confronted on their designs. To me that's just a sign of a "not very well thought out" design. If you believe in your design then stick to it, be open to criticism, plan to defend with data, learn to isolate good feedback from criticism noise and even if you have to compromise dont give in on the core principles.

Ready to make blockbusters?

5 Technology Favorites from this decade - 2009

This is probably my last post of this decade so wanted to share with you 5 Technology Favorites from this decade that significantly influenced our lives (mine atleast) in a good way.

Its nothing philosophical and obviously excludes family events, where we were blessed with 2 wonderful kids ... and the other defining events of this decade like 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So here's my 5 Technology Favorites from this decade ...

3G

I think in many ways 3G was the backbone of a lot of other technology trends today and I believe that it will be remembered historically kinda like the x86 architecture for PC's as the place from where all real mobility enablement started. Maybe I'm over exaggerating a little here but that's how I feel.

The first commercial launch of 3G was also by NTT DoCoMo in Japan on 1 October 2001, the second network to go commercially live was by SK Telecom in South Korea, then came the European networks and then the first commercial United States 3G network was setup by Monet Mobile Networks, on CDMA2000 1x EV-DO technology, but this network provider later shut down operations. The second 3G network operator in the USA was Veriz on Wireless in October 2003 also on CDMA2000 1x EV-DO.

The Nokia 6650 was the world's first 3G phone supporting the W-CDMA 2100 MHz band a far cry from the current 3G iPhones for example. Interestingly the phone was "unlocked" ... eat that AT&T and other Telcos

iPod (and then the iPhone)

I think that this was probably the best invention/creation that came from Steve Jobs and company. Now I know Mac fanatics might chew my head off on this, but I'd say if you cant make the product #1 in its category then it'll always be good and amazing but never "great". I believe iPod delivered for Apple and Steve what they were craving for years in the PC market.

Deeming existing portable music players poorly conceived, Jobs ordered a team of his engineers and designer Jonathan Ive to develop the first iPod in under a year. Launched in October 2001, the product would go on to claim more than 70% of the digital music player market and, with its companion iTunes Music Store, revolutionize the distribution of digital music.

While the iPhone and its new touch paradigm revolutionized the smartphone market to a large extent, its impact was nowhere close to what iPod and iTunes did to the music and entertainment space.

Youtube

Not enough credit goes to this service, which has now become woven into the fabric of our lives Youtube now has a billion or more views a day and is an alternative media outlet all its own. Never does a day go by when we don't watch something interesting out there. Youtube was started in 2005 and here's the very first public Youtube video.

Facebook

Facebook is poised to change the way we interact socially with our friends, family and acquaintances (depending on who you've let into your Facebook network ;-). I know parents, grandparents, folks in villages and towns all over the world jumping on Facebook to keep in touch and find out what's happening with people they know.

You can read up on how Facebook got started here. It was started as something called Facemash on October 28, 2003 when Mark Zuckerberg was attending Harvard as a sophomore. Then he began writing code for a new website in January 2004 called "thefacebook.com". When Mark finished the site, he told a couple of friends. And then one of them suggested putting it on the Kirkland House online mailing list, which was, like, three hundred people," according to roommate Dustin Moskovitz. "And, once they did that, several dozen people joined, and then they were telling people at the other houses.

So its not clear who the very first person was to get onto Facebook, so based on the Wayback Machine here's a look at what it looked like when it was launched.

The Facebook domain between 2003 - Aug 2005 and then post Aug 2005.

Twitter

Twitter caught me by surprise. I think its one of the most innovative medium for unprompted public exchange confined to "140 characters x infinity". I was already a big fan of Blogger which by the way didn't make it to this list cause it was launched in Oct 1999. Depending on how Twitter deals with things like spam etc I believe its here to stay and will be woven into the online fabric of how we interact. Here's a glimpse of the first public Tweet ever.

5 Technology Favorites from this decade - 2009

This is probably my last post of this decade so wanted to share with you 5 Technology Favorites from this decade that significantly influenced our lives (mine atleast) in a good way.

Its nothing philosophical and obviously excludes family events, where we were blessed with 2 wonderful kids ... and the other defining events of this decade like 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So here's my 5 Technology Favorites from this decade ...

3G

I think in many ways 3G was the backbone of a lot of other technology trends today and I believe that it will be remembered historically kinda like the x86 architecture for PC's as the place from where all real mobility enablement started. Maybe I'm over exaggerating a little here but that's how I feel.

The first commercial launch of 3G was also by NTT DoCoMo in Japan on 1 October 2001, the second network to go commercially live was by SK Telecom in South Korea, then came the European networks and then the first commercial United States 3G network was setup by Monet Mobile Networks, on CDMA2000 1x EV-DO technology, but this network provider later shut down operations. The second 3G network operator in the USA was Veriz on Wireless in October 2003 also on CDMA2000 1x EV-DO.

The Nokia 6650 was the world's first 3G phone supporting the W-CDMA 2100 MHz band a far cry from the current 3G iPhones for example. Interestingly the phone was "unlocked" ... eat that AT&T and other Telcos

iPod (and then the iPhone)

I think that this was probably the best invention/creation that came from Steve Jobs and company. Now I know Mac fanatics might chew my head off on this, but I'd say if you cant make the product #1 in its category then it'll always be good and amazing but never "great". I believe iPod delivered for Apple and Steve what they were craving for years in the PC market.

Deeming existing portable music players poorly conceived, Jobs ordered a team of his engineers and designer Jonathan Ive to develop the first iPod in under a year. Launched in October 2001, the product would go on to claim more than 70% of the digital music player market and, with its companion iTunes Music Store, revolutionize the distribution of digital music.

While the iPhone and its new touch paradigm revolutionized the smartphone market to a large extent, its impact was nowhere close to what iPod and iTunes did to the music and entertainment space.

Youtube

Not enough credit goes to this service, which has now become woven into the fabric of our lives Youtube now has a billion or more views a day and is an alternative media outlet all its own. Never does a day go by when we don't watch something interesting out there. Youtube was started in 2005 and here's the very first public Youtube video.

Facebook

Facebook is poised to change the way we interact socially with our friends, family and acquaintances (depending on who you've let into your Facebook network ;-). I know parents, grandparents, folks in villages and towns all over the world jumping on Facebook to keep in touch and find out what's happening with people they know.

You can read up on how Facebook got started here. It was started as something called Facemash on October 28, 2003 when Mark Zuckerberg was attending Harvard as a sophomore. Then he began writing code for a new website in January 2004 called "thefacebook.com". When Mark finished the site, he told a couple of friends. And then one of them suggested putting it on the Kirkland House online mailing list, which was, like, three hundred people," according to roommate Dustin Moskovitz. "And, once they did that, several dozen people joined, and then they were telling people at the other houses.

So its not clear who the very first person was to get onto Facebook, so based on the Wayback Machine here's a look at what it looked like when it was launched.

The Facebook domain between 2003 - Aug 2005 and then post Aug 2005.

Twitter

Twitter caught me by surprise. I think its one of the most innovative medium for unprompted public exchange confined to "140 characters x infinity". I was already a big fan of Blogger which by the way didn't make it to this list cause it was launched in Oct 1999. Depending on how Twitter deals with things like spam etc I believe its here to stay and will be woven into the online fabric of how we interact. Here's a glimpse of the first public Tweet ever.

What do LinkedIn users do ;-) ... they're playing Farmville on Facebook

Just posted on my other blog CRM 2.0. Couldnt decide whether the topic was more 2.0 or product related so cross posting here as well.

I truly believe that LN is one of the most capital rich networks. In the sense that a network connection on LN is probably worth much more than connections on other networks. Maybe FB is the only other one.

One of the issues I've had with LinkedIn since its inception is its lack of ability to make a user comeback everyday and check on things. While I do swing by there every few days, ... Click here for entire post

What do LinkedIn users do ;-) ... they're playing Farmville on Facebook

I truly believe that LN is one of the most capital rich networks. In the sense that a network connection on LN is probably worth much more than connections on other networks. Maybe FB is the only other one.

One of the issues I've had with LinkedIn since its inception is its lack of ability to make a user comeback everyday and check on things. While I do swing by there every few days, there's nothing really out there that compels me to. Now I'm sure there's recruiters out there that do this on the hour 24x7, but for the rest of the 50M users out there its pretty drab.

Well to correct myself I do swing by there every few days when someone sends me an InMail or LN Invite or to check on the LinkedIn portlet about who looked me up (that always makes me curious) and more recently to see what updates the LN to Twitter feed integration gets. But nothing compelling really.

However wouldn't it be killer if there was a Farmville for LinkedIn ;-)



So when I saw this TechCrunch tweet today;

TechCrunch: Zynga To Launch Smash Hit FarmVille On FarmVille.com http://bit.ly/22xAA2 (expand) by @jasonkincaid

.. thought I'd blog about it. Here are some ideas LinkedIn and Zynga ..

1. A build and sell your own virtual business (strategy) game that you can play with your LN network?
2. A virtual job hunt/interview game where you earn credits and improve your work-experience and education/credentials and then move up the corporate ladder at various virtual companies.
3. How about Mafia Wars with a corporate twist would be a hit on LN .. considering all the corporate wars and games ;-)
4. If nothing else how about a plain old board game like monopoly or scrabble
   

Now one might argue that LN is all about professional relationships and has no place for this stuff. I'd strongly challenge them with what I said in the title. Also wouldnt it be great if you published yr "Build and Sell your own virtual business Empire" score and potential recruiter saw how you were a virtual tycoon ;-)

Besides keeping users like me interested, I'm sure it'll boost LinkedIn's social capital by increasing "Visits/Person" and "Average Time Spent" as well.

Any takers??

What is Value?

Had an interesting discussion yesterday about "Value" and what is high vs low value and interestingly in that discussion we settled on the term lesser value.

I'm sure other PM's get into these discussions as well and often times the closing lines for those discussions if they are external customer focused are something like " ... value is all about perception, so if the customer thinks its valuable they'll pay for it ..." or if the conversation was more internal focused then something like " .. that's obviously more valuable to us because its core ..." This prompted me into writing a post about how PM's can define value.


First lets talk about the value your product or service will deliver to customers;

The very first version of defining value (usually from a sellers perspective) is associating it with all the benefits that a product or service would provide. So for example lets list all the benefits that our product offers and then convey that as the value we provide. Looks great on datasheets and in marketing glossies.

However the moment a purchaser or buyer enters it would look like a one-way street. Cause the buyer is obviously going to pay for this product or service. So it leads to the second version of value where its the differential that you would get once you've paid the cost for getting all the benefits from a product or service. Now to create the third version of it lets invite the tangibles and intangibles. They play on both sides of the equation (Benefit and Cost), however the more tangible benefits you have in there the better the value can be conveyed. On the cost side though they play out as direct costs and indirect costs or something that's not apparent upfront but will accrue over a period of time and could include the opportunity cost as well. Some would view it as the total cost of obtaining those benefits over the life of the product or service.

So in summary I would say that the PM's should look at product value as benefits being provided at a low cost. Now its still not a slam dunk as purchasers will not always go with the lowest cost option and neither the lowest price option. They will usually go with benefits that match well do your benefits match with the needs and wants. Now is it within their budget and can they afford it is a completely different discussion.

Now lets look at what value means to an organization. For simplicity we'll focus on for profit organizations. Whether you're a publicly traded or private organization the ultimate goal is to increase in shareholder value. All organizations have investors and are funded and that determines their share of the company and they are looking at maximizing that share.

There are many ways shareholder value can be increased. Top-line revenue growth, Bottom-line cost savings by operating better, better utilizing all your available assets I'm sure an accountant can come up with more. But from a PM's perspective I think these three are key. Each area has its own levers that need to be evaluated to identify what value a product brings to ultimately increase shareholder value.

Top-line growth can obviously be increased through new customer growth, retaining existing customers and increasing wallet share, upselling and cross-selling. Driving product innovation and further investing in existing capabilities helps drive this.

Bottom-line can be improved by ensuring that there are streamlined, integrated processes in delivering the product, cost of selling to and servicing the customers is low. As PM's how can you do that? Look at rationalizing your product portfolio, better product quality, reusable and scalable designs, lower cost of development and most important focus on the right customer segments. Dont lose sight of this as in the larger scheme of things the CFO is looking at this and so should you.

So in a long winded way I'd say that value can be identified to a large extent and PM's should use value models in making product decisions. Ultimately the two values discussed above are intertwined (some might say even the same) and as PM's one should look at how your product can provide value to customers and in turn increase shareholder value.