OurielOhayon

Easy money vs value

A friend of mine was asking me the other day if some companies in our field were making more money than we do with Appsfire. I answered "Of course, lots of them"

He asked me, then why arn't you making more money then?

I answered because we're focusing on creating value and not making easy money. 15 years ago when the web started lots of companies were making big amounts of cash in no time but instead of creating value, they were destroying it. They were, for example, creating stupid "paid surf" systems, or intrusive ad units like popups. Most of those businesses are gone

Some other companies were also getting are making easy money by simply deceiving the consumers (for example making advertising look like content), or monetizing what i call the underground web (all those pages you only arrive through google search results, but would never go directly and that really look terrible), or by pushing aggressively or intrusively ads or commercial offers.

Those company make easy money.

I answered my friend: i could do this. This is quite easy to do. But we will not do it. A company can't last if they don't create value for the whole value chain. And the starting point is what you offer to your users. The experience has to be honest, right and better (than others). The other starting point is professionalism. Selling what you say and doing what you sell consistently, sharply, reliably.

There are many shortcuts you can take. Make a crappy product, be aggressive about how you market it. But there is always a backlash. Market forces take care of it. Look back on the history of the web, you'll find many companies like those. Gone now. There will be more in 5 years time. You can already spot them, if you are a fine observer of your own field

Creating value is not enough: you need also to make cash. Some companies focus too much on creating value and just expect to get acquired or something. 

The challenge is to find the right cursor position: generate revenues and at the same time create value that can last. 

But finally i answered my friend: i am not doing it, not just because this is not right. It's because this is not "me". I would not feel happy selling a crappy service, or a service i do not feel proud of.

At the end of the day, it s all about you, your values and the team culture you want to build.

 

 

 

Stop reporting BS

i have no doubt that Mashable is probably on the edge of getting acquired by CNN. This is something i anticipated a few months ago and CNN need page views (more than quality readers)

But i feel struck by the fact, so many publications are not even more critical about the valuation. There is no way on earth Mashable is worth 200m$. God Damn it this is a blog! A. BLOG.

Come on guys. Wake up. Be at least funny about it 

The blogosphere is loosing it lately. Too much "copy paste" is going on. Press Releases or Press Agencies are becoming the meat of blog post instead of being the "entry"

I remember a time, bloggers were critical, cynical, analytical. Down to business

Where is this time?

update: like i said, stop reporting BS [although denying is typical in an M&A process, just to raise the big]. Noticing this is probably the first post on Techcrunch about mashable...

The invisible features

What makes great web sites or apps great are not always what you can see and experience. Actually all the great apps i know have wonderful hidden features. Those are not features you need to search in order to enjoy them. They are just there, in front of you. But they are just not visible.

The most important and obvious features is speed. Remember when you first discovered Gmail coming from AOL mail or Yahoo mail. It "felt" fast. Messages were opening fast, sending was fast....

It was the best new feature ever brought to an webmail.

But most unvisible features are not visible because they have to do with how the developers have created the experience, so it feels natural to use it again and again.

Facebook's best invisible features, is in my mind, is how the page auto refreshes as you scroll. It does not feel that it is loading. It feels like it is there.

Google's best invisible feature is the way their spider indexes and structures new data so it becomes searchable. 

From a user perspective: all is obvious, natural. You don't even feel there is special there. But it is there. and it is not easy to make it work well.

But you should not create an invisible feature because it's cool or you can brag about it. It should only serve one purpose: make the experience much better

It's not jackson, but the rhythm is just incredible

 

iPad real education battle is not ebook creation: it is attention empowerment.

Apple is a fantastic enabler. It enabled thousands of developers to create great apps. It now will enable book publishers to create great educational books.

Anyone with children around him knows the power of attraction an iPad (or tablet?) has a on them. Porting books to iPad is the best thing that can happen to education since the creation of books.

But that is not the most critical one.

I have no idea how a kid can just *focus* on reading with an iPad in his hands. There are just too many great temptations: movies, games, social networks. 1 tap away.

This is worse than computers because they will be everywhere you want to be: at home, at school, on your way to school and even during classes.

Kids are suffering more and more of attention disorder because they love to stay "on" all the time. And the iPad is a source of distraction. Yes, i know apps are full screen, but it is easy to switch to something else.

The only way an iPad can become a good education tool is by enabling it with what i call "focus features". Locking the device out of temptation is critical. But this is not possible today

Don't expect kids to self discipline themselves. this won t happen. ever.

What is missing is an administration function that can lock the access to all or most apps. For example between 6pm and 8pm only those apps or books should be used. At school there should be the equivalent or Airplane mode: the "At school" mode that only allows school related app

Unless this happens: books on iPad will be as efficient, as..the "national geographic" TV channel to teach kids what animals are all about - HBO is only one button away. They will remain only a nice add on and won t become a subtitute.

For this to happen, Apple and tablet manufacturers have to enable a new type of access mode to apps. They have to enable more than just content creation: they have to enable "focus" and "attention" 

I am certain this will happen at some point.

 

Parallel media consumption is the future

There was a time i was listening to music and only doing that. There was a time i was watching a movie and only doing that. There was a time i was reading a book and only doing that

That period is over

While i am consuming some form of media, i want, in parllel enrich my experience of consumption by adding layers of content on top of it and helping me enjoy more the primary material i am consuming

Watching a movie? i want to know the IMDB rating, who directed it, who are the actors, read maybe some of the reviews...While i am watching the movie

Listening to some music? Want to know everything about the artist, is there some transcription or chords available to play? A concert about it coming soon around me?

This has been enabled by the small connected devices we have with us. 

I believe i am far from being alone in that case and people want to optimize their consumption experience and make it optimal. 

Right now listening music on Spotify or Deezer or watching a movie on Netflix or even the TV is pretty "boring" 

There is nothing you can really add on top of it (natively). You need to run third party apps, or use an app or your iPad

Tomorrow's iTunes and Netflix will offer a 1 click access to a wide range of parallel related content.

The next step is to enable the conversation around a media (this starts to happen with media CHECK IN with services like iNTO NOW or GET GLUE) 

For that to happen, our TVs will have to be connected but also sport an experience layer no one has created to date. Not even Apple

Of course you don't need this layer to be available and on screen all the time: this should be available at ease as you need it. Probably during "pee time" or when a special moment triggers your desire to know more (the generic, scene transitions,..)

What i am dreaming of is a system that will save me the time to discover what i will really like beyond the content itself but also help me avoiding listening, watching and reading all the crap out there that is not made for me

 

 

[must have app] Airdroid

Sometimes you see an app on Android and you realize this is how things should be on iOS. This happens not so often. But device management, file management and anything that requires iTunes to manage your relation with your device is a mess

Airdroid allows you, over wifi, to manage easily and beautifully your phone (export, import files, send SMS, uninstall apps) All from your computer. I exported 50 photos on my Android Phone in a few seconds from my mac (where i could view them) to my mac (in my folders in iPhoto). I could not even find how to do it from my android device..

This app is a must have and it is free

 

Feeling the pulse

One of the thing i am obsess about when i start something new is to find the pulse of what should be measured on a daily basis to gauge the progress.

In a complex world, i believe in simple things to help you make decisions.

When i started music seriously i was measuring the number of new music standards i was able to memorize and play. I was simply counting them. The more i knew, the better i was getting at playing jazz combinations and harmonies

When i started blogging seriously i was measuring the number of comments for each blog post. That was to me the most important parameter, more than page views. 

It takes time to know what you should consider your pulse, because there are so many things you can measure

For a startup usually this is the number of users or paid customer. But how can you measure users when you don't have any at first. Or paid customers when you don t have any at first? A pulse should be meaningful to you but also to the activity you re in and the maturity of your activity.

At appsfire we started first by counting the number of clicks we were sending to the app store and android market on a daily basis. Then the amount of affiliate comissions we were getting (because it was indicating how impactful we were on the download generation).

Today we have a internal "on yammer" special signal everytime we sign a new promotion deal with an app developer.

We still count downloads and users. But the most important metric to us (and the most exciting one) is that one

Actually you should consider a pulse something that is relevant and exciting. It has to happen enough so you can have a frequent signal to be happy about

Finding it is not instant. but when you find it, it will resonate. 

Email@Linkedin : can someone create that?

Here is my problem and the simple solution

I consume most of my emails on the mobile and many times i want to invite the person i am in touch with to linkedin. I want to be able to invite people to linkedin from my email client (Mail in iPhone/iPad). 

Right now the only way to do it is: open the Linkedin App then copy/paste the email of the person i want to invite, send the invitation. Too painful

• I want a simple email adress [email protected] where i will forward the email of the person i will invite
• I will authorize once The service to use my linkedin account for forward invitations from my email
• I forward the email to the adress above. Done

I am sure it possible to create a simple web service with the linkedIN App and oAuth process to do that

 

Is Gmail losing its mojo?

Something is happening with Gmail. Ever since they introduced Google+ the service has consistently underperformed. 

it just drives me nuts.

It is slower, loads much slower, specially when this is a first time load. Recently they failed in launching their iPhone app. Their android app is one of the worse email client i have ever seen (it requires 2 clicks just to compose an email!)

What's going on? this used to be the Rolls Royce of emails

It still offers an impressive panel of features for a free service. But something is going on and it does not smell right

Do you also feel something is not right with Gmail lately? Maybe it should have stayed in Beta after all.

Is there an alternative? a better one i mean?