Category Archives: Analysis

What has Product Management got to do with Ecommerce?

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Everything! No, that will be a over statement. But it is definitely an integral part of value chain, which is completely ignored by many Ecommerce services in India. Few completely clueless about it, on what product/platform to develop and often mistake UX as product management (which is also an important function in itself).

Ecommerce is (still) hot. In a domain that has many funded companies today in this space; everyone is struggling for differentiation. With an exception of few; to say that we do more products in one category; we have strong vertical focus; our cost of acquisition is low; our seo is better; etc, etc – does not make any sense. These differentiating factors can be replicated overnight. If everyone is on-board same plane, its absurd to claim that someone will reach destination before others.

Rather than subjective opinions about Ecommerce which are in plenty already, this post is specifically targeted towards one aspect – Product. Internet businesses are all about building awesome products backed by a super technology team presented in an intuitive user-experience, nothing else. Its kinda unfortunate to see dollars spent on advertising by companies that have raised investments that continue to run on ready to use Ecommerce platforms installed over-night.

I’d be happy to see fellow entrepreneurs implementing / following basics of ecommerce product management and investors emphasizing focus on product before writing their next cheque for yet another ecommerce investment. On twitter (@beingpractical), I have tweeted number of times about lack of product focus by Ecommerce companies in India – here is why I keep saying that.

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1. On-Site Search:

The way Google is gateway for searching the web, same applies for on-site search for users to discover the 100,000+ products in catalog. On-site search as a discovery tool should contribute minimum 15% of all sales generated. A kick-ass search algorithm should contribute to 30%-35% of total sales.

On-site search is broken if –

  • Total search queries per day < Total unique visitors per day
  • 20% of all search queries generated show zero results
  • Even a single search query of Top 100 searched keywords shows incorrect result in position 1. For next 400 keywords, in first 5 results.
  • Contribution of transactions generated through on-site search is < 15%
  • Order Conversion Rate of onsite search is < 2X of site average.
  • Option to search on homepage is not prominently highlighted; Take clue from Amazon.com – as you always do 😉

What users search for on your website is the true-indicator of what consumer demand is. Rather than bidding for expensive keywords on paid search, analyze how effectively on-site search queries can be converted to actual sales.

To simply put, if X effort is put behind search engine optimization & Y effort is put behind paid search marketing, then effort spent on on-site search should be X + Y.

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2. Search Engine Optimization:

Why SEO is mentioned here? Because content experience should be delivered as a part of product. Many Ecommerce sites continue to believe that search-bots transact online and their product pages forcefully include content snippets. Design web pages and build user experience keeping real users in mind and not for search-bots.

SEO should be integral part of product, not random content/text written and inserted across product or category pages merely to increase keyword density of the page. Understand dynamics of content wrt to product in catalogue. There will always be two types distinct type of products – standardized (eg. Canon PowerShot 550D camera) and non-standardized products (eg. Diamond Ring for your Valentine). Focus on each type of products should be separate. (Have explained a bit of how it works in this post – Junglee and how it impacts Indian Ecommerce).

Search Engine Optimization is about playing with Google search index. Don’t overplay with multiple pages, unwanted content – in short don’t spam Google index with similar content. Maintain a healthy product to page index ratio of 3X-5X (indicates if there are 100,000 products in catalog – the search index should not exceed 500,000 in any case).

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3. Persistent Shopping Carts:

By now persistent shopping carts have should have became a standard, but there are few who are yet to enable this. For starters, there are tons of resources available on the web on benefits of it; for advanced product managers – there is simply much more to do –

  • Link shopping cart data persisted with a user session whenever is in a logged-in session.
  • Send email notification to users to remind of items still in shopping carts (please don’t spam – just a gentle reminder).
  • Over a period of time product prices decrease, once the same happens for a product that is lying in user’s shopping cart inform him via email.
  • Abandoned shopping cart is still an incomplete intent, convert that into a sale at a right opportunity.

Enable smart product marketing through a product versioning system. New Apple iPad is a successor to Apple iPad 1 & Apple iPad 2, inform users when next version of product is available. Similarly for Books or Music, when next book by an author is available or even a new sound track by Madonna. Remarket abandon carts when such event occurs.

 

4. Multiple Sites, User Communication and more.

In recent days, couple of ecommerce services have gone ahead and created specific domain for every vertical they are expanding in. Abc.com for electronics and xyz.com for fashion. These are most pathetic executions of product management since they tend to leverage existing platform for efficiency and end up being perfect playground for chaos.

Here are the most common mistakes that happen (all real experiences) –

  • Register at one website, receive welcome message from another.
  • Same Order ID sequencing is followed for multiple sites.
  • Same database used to store user information – imagine the chaos with operations, customer support, logistics, packing, and do so on – order from abc.com shipped with xyz.com packing. Its a product management mistake, and employees in operations are suffering.
  • Using same platform to collect any behavior information (if collected) for all sites. All algorithms will work incorrectly, expect Apple iPad recommendations to include a T-Shirt or even a Diamond Pendant. To patch up with a fix will lead to further complications, cause basic data collected itself is incorrect.
  • All email sender names, communication, notifications, marketing messages, are mixed up.

 

5. Deals to Product sales; expanding to new category. 

Many deals sites have pivoted to pure play ecommerce or with every passing month ecommerce services move to a new product category. To use same catalog or database structure is the simplest thing to do, but in order to really conquer every new category or verticals, some focused effort is required.

There is a huge difference between selling a travel coupon and selling a complete travel package. To win in every category some focused effort is required, which typically takes a backseat once launch target dates are set and to meet them the team ends up utilizing the same platform used to sell iPad, Spa coupon or travel package.

 

6. Controllable v/s Non-Controllable Factors.

Their is a weird assumption with few ecommerce companies that product management is limited only to consumer facing aspects – like website or mobile app. Its not, let me explain with an example.

Recently ordered an product from an site, its order id was 20579512UE82852111. First reaction – even morse codes are easy to decipher! Of all the calls received on customer care, 95% are order related queries. Just imagine the situation of consumers trying to communicate an 18 digit order id in variety of Indian accents. Complete chaos! There are bounds to be mistakes in communicating leaving room for multiple mistakes. A simple product management mistake leads to an exponentially higher average handling time per customer at its call center and increased hold time for customers wanting to connect.

Controllable factors like number of transactions, quality of search, payment gateway approvals, cart improvements, etc should be measured in improved efficiency of funnel & micro-funnels (explained further) conversion rates; while uncontrollable factors which are mostly about logistics, customer support, operations, COD operations, repayments/refunds, etc should be measured in amount of time saved.

 

7. Micro-Funnels: 

For every Ecommerce service, the only one determining factor to look at how efficient its transaction process is the conversion funnel ratio. Only few players have actually gone ahead and have started measuring performance of micro funnels in an matrix format per product vertical or category.

A conversion funnel cycle is typically Visitors > Product Pages > Added to Cart > Payment Page > Order Confirmation page.

Micro funnels typically mean building such funnels under each of the following 3-4 criteria –

  • By Traffic source: Natural Traffic, Natural Search, Emailers, Affiliate Marketing, Paid Search, Social Media, etc
  • By On-site properties: Search, Categories, On-site promotion banners, Product Recommendations, etc
  • By Product Categories: Fashion, Electronics, Health, Books, etc

Deep dive in data, 1% improvement at any stage of any funnel – will significantly improve volumes of transactions. Keep constructing micro funnels, they are fun and they are plenty more – by transaction size, payment types, and so on. In addition to dull excel sheet reports that have number of transactions / avg ticket size / gross merchandize value – look at such micro funnels data. If you have $100 to spend, it will tell you where exactly to get $200 returns.

Label your weekly friday reviews as Funnel Fridays!

 

8. Payment Gateways:

Payment Gateways or Logistic services are usually most blamed in this country as hindrances to growth of Ecommerce services. About two years back just before the ecom boom started, I wrote a note about – “How Reserve Bank of India can facilitate ecommerce and online transactions in India“. Not much has changed, and Cash on Delivery became the default payment mechanism.

Order rejection rates on transactions processed through payment gateways successfully are < 5%, in most of the cases only if incorrect product is shipped or there is a physical damage. If 100 orders are shipped, 50 are pre-paid transactions and other 50 are COD, on an average between 20-25 will be returned. The operational cost involved in managing COD orders will be close to 2X of pre-paid transactions, dissatisfied customers not accounted for.

Product Managers, make payment gateways work. There may be no science to this – but work with multiple payment gateways. Alternate the transaction flow between them and figure out the best time, best payment gateway from time to time. When payment gateway transaction fails, then offer Cash on Delivery or payments by Cheque.

Take clues – Number of transactions for online recharge services for prepaid mobile services are on increase; they allow users to only pay electronically through either credit cards or net-banking. Then why not for Ecommerce services? This is the same mobile subscriber base living in missed-call economy and maintaining average balance of less than INR 100.

 

9. Cash on Delivery and Logistics:

Since the last point discussed on Cash on Delivery, this comes next.

A strange equation about COD is, if an additional convenience charge between 25 to 30 INR if levied on all transactions below the avg ticket size of Ecom service, their entire cost of COD operations tends to break-even (Try this with historic order data, the number will be close). Maybe Cash on Delivery should be the last attempt to acquire a customer instead of first motivation to transact. But this does may not happen in real world, so COD is the biggest USP of this business now.

For any post-paid order (read COD) that is delivered within 48 hours of order, rejection rate is less than 10%. COD order delivered after 7 days of transaction, rejection rates might be as high as 70%. Product Managers need to find out smart ways to make this complete process efficient to ensure 90% of deliveries within 72 hours, this includes –

  • Maintaining dual address (work / residence) of users to ensure prompt delivery.
  • Call / SMS / Email notification before delivery to ensure user keeps the said amount ready.
  • Maintain performance of COD acceptance or rejection rates by users / pin codes / and logistic partner; shuffle logistic partners by performance for every delivery location. Some logistic partner will always deliver better than other for every pin-code. Find them and route more deliveries to them.
  • Extend this to pre-paid orders as well.
  • Work closely on technology with logistic partners that ensures quick reverse logistics, which is the biggest challenge in operations and also nightmare for customers.

 

10. Track Performance of every Property owned:

Heard of an website called – milliondollarhomepage.com? Have similar approach about every pixel on homepage.

Go insane about about deriving value of every homepage property (search, banners, browse, featured products, etc) similarly as retail outlets do about shelves – sale per shelf. Once every homepage property is labelled similarly, figure out its value based on transactions/revenue generated per day, get the average value of sale generated per property on homepage. More microfunnels to manage for homepage.

Shuffle between product categories, price range, images, product offer text, etc for every property. Understand distribution of transactions by every property, gather such information in logs, mine data and productize this marketing strategy – strive for efficiency.

 

11. Affiliate Marketing. Show Respect and build this Channel.

There are only few categories that have a lower acquisition costs, but with the amount of competition coming up in every horizontal / vertical segment – this is bound to increase with time. The average customer acquisition costs for any Ecommerce website in India today varies between 400 INR to 1200 INR, one company acquires customers at 2000 INR to sell them – pen drives worth 399 INR.

In between all this, there are few really effective business channels like affiliates, price comparison portals and so on who really work hard and acquire customers by sending qualified shoppers. Most of them have extremely poor affiliate commission structures which are typically between 100 to 250 INR, much lower than cost of acquisitions on paid search or display advertising. Show respect, they are acquiring customers at a cost that is usually less than half of the site average.

Nurture this channel and make them available with a series of affiliate tools similar to the Amazon Affiliate program. This channel is currently under-developed / un-explored, any ecommerce service providing better affiliates product and awesome commission structure can actually take a big leap ahead!

 

12. Email Marketing

I had once tweeted this – ‘Buying from you is not my consent to SMS/Email spam’ mentioning few brands I admire. Later Hursh (Cleartrip) wrote an interesting piece about it later on their blog – ‘Why we don’t spam our customers.‘

Email Marketing has a diminishing value proportionate to the rate of emails per user per month. Though an important channel for traffic/transactions; if abused, at a certain period of time the cost involved in sending a mail to million subscribers will be much larger than the revenue earned from the email campaign itself.

Product Managers need to put in rules in place to ensure that the marketing activity remains contextual to users interaction on the site and also user is sent the emailer at a certain time where buying intent by user still holds true. Ensure adequate gaps (of about 30 to 45 days) between two marketing emails if sent to same user. Consumers behave much like us, will they really buy watches or sunglasses on a daily basis? Find a context!

 

13. Product Recommendations

Unlike what many think, the amazing product recommendations of amazon cannot be build overnight with correct context. It requires tons of data which can be only generated post millions of transactions, product views, buying patterns and an platform that really enables up-selling of products.

There are different aspects of an Amazon Product page – which can be observed on any one of its product page. The experience is so delivered that it brings multiple benefits to Amazon – highly content rich pages that affects search engine traffic positively (as mentioned in point earlier, productize the SEO content), Promotions available at that time, Up-selling related products,  customer actions, product details, description, related purchases, customer reviews and related products.

Enough to satisfy consumer of all his questions, alternatives and options. All packaged beautifully with appropriate content on a page with multiple opportunities to up-sell or cross-sell. Ain’t that good? See how far it seems to go. Love data, insights and bring it to users, don’t be satisfied with plain jane product pages.

 

14. Behavioral Data Trends and creating Marketable Insights.

This completely comes from the stuff we build at my previous stint with Ohana Media – capabilities to track every user interaction, generate tons of data and segment that into trends and actionable data. (They call it bigdata these days).

A brief explanation of the same is on this presentation – Audience Clusters & Intent Analytics and also another deck that Shameek presented at Adtech 2012 on Online Marketing Success Strategies for Ecommerce companies.

While at Ohana, we had pitched this platform to one Founder & CEO of an funded Ecommerce company. Answer – “Not sure if this stuff works.” Result, we went ahead and signed an exclusive non-compete deal with their competitor and today their cost of acquisition has reduced by more than 50% in less than 12 months. Another Ecommerce founding team we proposed replied, “Cannot use this product. Data collected by this platform resides on the same server as our competitor.” That stumbled us, don’t 1000s of Ecommerce sites run on Amazon instances (every customer had his data stored in private cloud). Having a product person driven by data & analytics is essential in every founding team or should be one of the first people to hire in senior management.

Discover cross-channel marketing efficiency like –

  • Natural search keywords converting are automatically bid for on paid search.
  • Automatically decrease bids when competition stops bidding or lowers their bids.
  • Email intent data is used to remarket category banners on-site
  • Search to Display remarketing
  • Onsite customization based on users previous intents.
  • This list could be endless…

Respect data and figure out capabilities to increase its efficiency across medium. Same users reaches you through multiple doors – Search, Paid Search, Social Media, Display, Emails etc. Unless you are able to gather his intent-cycle over a period, it will be impossible to have efficiency in marketing. Every 1% increment on top of funnel conversion may lead to 2X at its bottom.

Full Disclosure: I led product & marketing for Ohana Media in my earlier role. Its founder Shameek Chakravarty is on Board of Advisor of my startup. Both presentations linked are in public domain.

 

15. Team Structure

Since last point touched based on the people aspect, want to extend it bit beyond the purview of direct product management. While one big mistake could be not having a product focused person in founding team or in the senior management team – other simply is how teams are structured within an organization.

Have noticed that in multiple organizations, the User Experience, Product Team, Technology and Online Marketing teams working in silos heading in different directions. It will be subjective to mention what is a right structure and there is no thumb rule to decide that – one common criteria should be love for data, numbers, & micro funnels. Stitch it all together and build an rocking platform.

This pointer is a filler, 15 is a round number. Nevertheless, message is important.

 

Concluding Notes – 

There are couple of posts I wrote earlier which might be also in line for Ecommerce services –

Signing off. Oh yes – a $75+ Mn valued company is still running a Facebook advt since its day of launch (about 2 years back) promising a Blackberry for INR 1999. Its CPC must be 8-12 INR and I have clicked on it innumerable times trying to find out that phone. Online marketing inefficiencies? – maybe will reserve that for another post. This one is already too long.

Going back, product / platform is the core differentiation for every Ecommerce service. Love data and believe in numbers. Every aspect of ecommerce business can be divided into two aspects – controllable (managed internally) and uncontrollable (managed externally like logistics, operations, etc); measure efficiency of everything that is online with improvements in micro funnel conversions and everything that is offline with improvements in time.

Want more inspirations – for online look west (at Amazon); for offline look east (at Taobao).

Junglee and how it impacts Indian Ecommerce

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Junglee has once again got us to debate on our current favorite topic – Ecommerce. Many of us doubting that if current Ecommerce models did it right because Amazon chose an completely diagonal approach to enter Indian market with Junglee.com.

Facts first – Junglee.com has not invented product discovery and price comparison. Pricegrabber.com is one of the best products in this space for US. Shopping.com is owned by Ebay, and many other players in India as well.

There are already lot of posts talking about how Junglee has got it right and it will be the door or gateway to drive traffic and enable transactions on Indian Ecommerce sites. Well that may be true, but honestly I find this really weird, just because Junglee is backed by Amazon – does not mean it will be success or that it is the correct approach. Herd mentality thinking! I guess it is too early, driven by speculation without valid reasoning.

Google Buzz went wrong; Google+ is a disaster; Google Search plus your world is a messed up product. Facebook withdrew from daily deals, Twitter launched activity tab (silently withdrew that in new roll-out) or Netflix tried Qwikster. Point is – big companies make big mistakes.

On the other hand – Amazon has a thing of entering market at very early stage by introducing new products/verticals like AWS, eBooks, Kindle or making an very thoughtful late entry like Kindle Fire (Tablet) or by acquiring category creator or owners like Audible, Diapers or Zappos.

 

Here are some points I would want to specifically highlight about Junglee –

Competition –

  • Junglee is not competing against Flipkart or Letsbuy or any other Ecommerce player in this market at this stage. Product discovery & product transactions are distinctly different verticals., but what Junglee is attempt affects these players.
  • Junglee is not competing even against Google. With 1.2 crore products, it means Junglee will contribute more pages to Google’s search index than any other Ecommerce site in India. Most consumers will discover Junglee through Google.
  • Amazon.com has unmatched resources/experience in Search Engine (paid & natural) expertise; it clearly highlights it as one of the reasons for partners to list on Junglee. (Read point 3 here: http://services.amazon.in/services/product-ads/how-it-works/#/services/product-ads/faq/)

 

How Junglee might change the rules through discovery –

Ecommerce services have limited options of online marketing – Direct Traffic, SEO, SEM, Display Advts, Affiliate Marketing, Email & Social Media. (The funded ones get to do – TV, Radio & Outdoors). Compared to the cost associated with other formats of marketing – SEO guarantees long term and sustainable traffic acquisition mode. Overall high cost of acquisition in other formats of marketing is leveled down only through Direct traffic or SEO. Yes, Social is free but cost of acquisition is still a big proportion as users are acquired through discounting coupons.

Taking previous point ahead, SEO is pure content play and Amazon is master at that. With 1.2 crore products – Junglee will add approximately 3Mn+ pages to Google index, index size is typically 3X-4X for factors like review pages/ recommendations pages / category pages and so on. Due to this sheer size of index and high quality content placement, Junglee will quickly start rising in its natural search rankings. This will affect both – partners who has listed on Junglee and others like Flipkart who have chosen not to.

Here is why –

All products listed on Junglee (or any Ecommerce site) can be classified as two

  • Standardized catalog products (Books, Digital Cameras, Laptops, DVDs, etc)
  • Non standard products (Jewellery, Toys, Clothing, etc)
  • For standardized product like say this Canon Digital Camera – the content includes product description which is standard on every site; but will be enhanced on Junglee with recommendations, reviews and more.
  • For non-standard products like this Mayur Pendant Sapphire offered by CaratLane, despite content being exactly the same, even without reviews or recommendations – Junglee will quickly be listed above CaratLane for multiple factors, key being vastness of catalog for Pendants & Jewellery.

And this is one of the key reasons why natural search traffic on both websites listed or not listed with Junglee will be affected big time. Over time, a high proportion of natural search traffic will be taken by Junglee and will be distributed by it.

This also provides a very large opportunity for small players (including unfunded) or offline retailers (who are lost at times on online marketing) to acquire qualified users.

For those who have not listed, it makes some perfect sense to get their products listed on Junglee as they will witness a gradual decline in natural search traffic. And to get traffic & acquire those customers from Junglee – they will require to be competitive on pricing.

 

Product listings are Free.

Really? and you believed that.

Amazon is selling Kindle Fire below its cost, because it is confident that it will recover revenues of the device through content consumption. If you are thinking that Amazon will not make anything out of Junglee.com – you are wrong. When it comes to churning out online user behavior data and consumption patterns, no other Ecommerce service can do it better than Amazon.

Junglee has the entire product catalog required for Ecommerce. Soon Amazon will have all the insights it wants to know about Indian consumers – Products consumer are searching for, Product-Price ratios or even Demand / Supply for all products categories.

 

Challenges for Junglee –

A product discovery catalog with 1.2 Crore products is not easy thing and Amazon is doing this more efficiently than anyone else with its own core product – amazon.com. Challenges for updating inventory, prices, reviews or recommendations exist, but are not big for Amazon. Junglee can really force upon real-time price and inventory updates to its partners and get them to standardize it.

What would be more interesting is Amazon could localize the product – showcasing partners who can ship in least amount of time to say – Panaji or Kolhapur; deep integrate with offline retailers and help making purchase decisions – like a Apple iPad 2 is available now in Croma (2 Kms away from your location) at Rs.500 discount than buying at an online store.

From what I know – Croma maintains a list of products available for sale in every store on its central inventory management (I was once asked to visit another Croma store to pick up an mobile phone, the staff kept the last piece off shelf). Currently Junglee.com is a minimum viable product, but can Amazon get to this?

 

Where does this all lead to for Amazon – 

Two options ahead for Amazon –

  • Amazon Market Place
    If Amazon is keen – this can happen tomorrow. Junglee has the product catalog, simply enable an payment gateway and instead of redirecting traffic to partner sites, start sending customer transaction orders which its partners can fulfill.
  • Amazon Store
    Keep it slow, learn more about users / markets. And when the time is right launch a full fledge Ecommerce service.

And its very likely that Amazon will take the route two. Feel like investing in Amazon now? Ouch.

Google in its mid-life crisis!

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Few days back, read an article about Larry Page, Founder and now-CEO of Google attempting to pull Google out of its mid-life crisis. The article headline was catchy, but no justification of what exactly is this mid-life crisis about.

Below are my views on what I believe are the 10 biggest challenges Google is facing right now and why it might be a tough-time forward for the Internet giant. Flip through the presentation below or read the long post below.

 

Google in its Mid-Life Crisis

View more presentations from P J

1. Search

Yes – Search. Google’s core product is facing threat from another format of search: Real-Time Search.

Google continues to add more capabilities to index real-time information to its search algorithms; but fails to realize that traditional web-index based search is different from real-time search. Last year (April 2010), in its caffeine update Google claimed to provide 50% more fresher results. Nov 2011 it rolled out another set of changes to its search algorithms that affects 35% of all search queries. Again same month, it was discovered that Google started indexing comments on Facebook.

In real-time search, the context in which the information retrieved is no longer valid after sometime. In case of Twitter it does not last beyond a day. Or a week? Same with Facebook. At this same point while consumer search for this information on Google – it is impossible to figure out the context of that search query – real-time info or traditional.

Example. Apple launches its next smartphone – iPhone 5. Consumers looking for “smartphone” on Google Search are shown iPhone 5 results, even when they are not looking for it.

Methods of information indexing, querying, trending, and even consumer mindset for real-time search are different than traditional search. Google may end up killing product experience of Traditional web search with such attempts.

Content index based web search & real-time information search are different products. If Google intends to capture a mind-share of Real-Time web search; it needs to build a different product.

 

2. The Rise of Discovery Platforms

For years, Search was our only means to discover websites, content, products, services. Google was our gateway to the Internet.

Today, with social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and similar; consumers are discovering more and relevant websites, content, products or services. They come to us with recommendations, shares, comments from our contacts – and are more relevant. Interpret this as – Google is no longer the only discovery mechanism.

User adoption for Social Networks is increasing; they continue to have high mindshare and also consumers are spending more time on social platforms today. In addition to this, a whole new wave of innovative products are launched on top of Social Graphs enabling contextual discovery.

Social discovery methods are threat to Search.

 

3. Social

After 750+ Mn users on Facebook, 380+ Mn on Twitter, 115+ Mn on LinkedIn; Google now does understand the importance of having a Social Product.

Its earlier attempts – Orkut, Buzz, Wave failed. It is making a big push with Google+, trying to create a new Social Graph, without realizing that they are already established.

Social Graphs are reflection of our Social Relationships in real world. And they are:

  • Close Relationships: Facebook
    Family, Friends – People you know personally!
  • Professional Relationships: LinkedIn
    Colleagues, Partners, Business Relationships
  • Loose Relationships – Twitter
    Celebrities, Domain Experts. People you know, but they may not know you.

There is no room for creation of another graph. And for Google+, I strongly believe that it will fail again as it is still miles away from being a great social product.

On other hand – Spotify, Netflix, Hulu and many other products and startups are riding the Facebook Open Graph / Social Graph to increase social engagement and usage. While Google is missing the opportunity by not leveraging Facebook’s reach for its own products like YouTube, Google News and similar.

Social is not in Google’s DNA.

 

4. Continued Fascination with Google+

The rule to build successful products is – “Build quickly, learn, build, deploy. Doesn’t work, discard. Start again.” Google taught us this rule; and is now breaking it again and again.

Google should rather focus on building Google+, showing users the value proposition in this platform. Instead it is doing its biggest mistake – forcefully including Google+ in its other products. And in this process killing the user experience and usability of its successful products.

  • Search:  Introduced Google+ profiles of users who shared respective URL in search results.
  • Adwords:  Introduced the +1 button to Adwords display advts.
  • YouTube: Introduced videos shared by Google+ users on YouTube homepage.
  • Gmail: Introduced notifications on Google+ updates on Gmail header toolbar.
  • Google Reader: Introduced sharing options, adding users to Circles from Google Reader.

In any of the above products, Google+ additions are not enabling any core-feature of the main product. These would have been great things to do if Google+ had proved its own value to users. Google is simply leveraging successful products to promote Google+.

Didn’t Yahoo try his before – everything Yahoo. I didn’t work earlier, it will not work now.

 

5. Fixing whats not broken

Google wants to act fast and speed up its innovation. While doing this, it is actually fixing whats not broken.

Gmail –

  • The new design update Google is planning to push to all its users – is uncalled for. The functional updates are great thing to do, but the changes to its look are at the expense of product usability and could have been avoided.
  • Google announced launch of a very buggy version of its Gmail client for iOS; and recalled the same from app stores within hours.
  • Stops support for native Blackberry App. While Blackberry itself is on a decline, it still has a significant 19.7% share in US smartphone market and continues to grow in countries like India.

Search –

  • Started with its Caffeine roll-out in June 2010 to include fresh content.
  • In Nov 2011 – it pushed another big roll-out that impacts 35% of search queries.
  • Labnol discovered that Google is now indexing Facebook comments.

In search of freshness, Google is playing too much with its core search product. As mentioned earlier in this post, Real-Time search needs to be a different product.

Google Maps –

  • Announced pricing for Maps API High-volume usage.
  • Location is a key to future product innovation on top of Maps. This move is likely to affect a lot of startups innovating on top of Google Maps.

YouTube –

  • Homepage displays videos from People you follow on Google+

Google is also implementing design standardizations across all products – Search, Gmail, Reader, News, Books and more others. Google is killing uniqueness of its products by standardizing its look and feel and continuing with its fascination of Google+.

 

6. Siri

It may not be easy for anyone to dismiss Siri as a feature on iPhone 4S. Siri is not just voice recognition; it is another input methodology. Siri’s natural language interaction is far more superior than the syntax driven VA (Voice Actions for Android). VA is anywhere between 1-2 years behind Siri. That is a (HUGE) advantage Apple holds.

As the technology improves, one can start talking to Siri as –

  • “Siri, search for ‘MP3 Player’, take me to the best result!”
  • “Siri, show me the map of Mumbai.”
  • “Siri, who is offering the lowest flight ticket from Mumbai to London.”

There are infinite possibilities what Siri can develop into quickly. Most importantly – the potential it holds can make many Google products and services around it irrelevant, like –

  • Search – Ability to discover new websites and relevant services without using Google Search.
  • Adwords – Google relies on clicks for monetization. Siri means no clicks, just talking.
  • Maps – No longer view maps while driving, Siri will look up to them and speak out the directions.
  • SEO – What happens to the SEO ecosystem around Search? Will the new optimization be SVO (Siri Voice Optimization)? How will it work?

Google mastered the standard text-input methodology on Internet (Computers + Mobile). But the threat from Siri is Real. Of all challenges Google faces, Siri is the biggest. The last known big transition for input methodology was finger-based touch inputs (introduced with iPhone). In last couple of years, it replaced traditional keypads on all smartphones.

Siri should be a big bouncer to folks at Google; caught them off-guard and completely unprepared.

 

7. Android v/s iOS

Google scores a big thumbs up with Android capturing 43% of US smartphone market. Apple lost opportunity in developing countries due to its high-priced iPhones while Android phones & tablets flooded the markets with price points from $75 to $1000.

In my own view – I find Google strategy to enter smartphone market extremely fascinating. Samsung, Motorola, HTC, LG and many others were excellent hardware manufacturers with poor software / applications / user experience capabilities compared with Apple or even Nokia. Google gave what these partners lacked – an mobile operating system and ecosystem of applications.

Distribution of Android phones provided Google the opportunity to monetize the mobile search queries. Current trends in mobile are slightly more inclined towards building Apps & HTML5 websites, most developers and product companies want to ensure a seamless experience on phone and also presence with a native client. Google also aligning itself by directing mobile publishers to Adsense and enabling AdMob for Mobile applications.

Google acquired Motorola Mobility to debut itself as an Software+Hardware play (like Apple?). But it may have limited or no advantage with its own hardware play (through Motorola) as it will face tough questions from global Android partners like Samsung, HTC, Sony, LG and others who are responsible for large distribution of Android OS and its popularity. For now, the Apple dream may look difficult.

There are also few more challenges facing the Android ecosystem –

  • Apple still largest and extremely focused contender with its one-phone market strategy for iPhone
  • Android being open; Consumers have a huge choice for Android phones from $75 to $750.
  • Only differentiation between Android phones are hardware capabilities; hardware edge is tough to maintain.
  • Brands like Samsung, HTC, others will require to have devices at all price-points to ensure growing market share. Only significantly high volumes will bring profits.
  • Tough competition on price from Chinese and low-cost android phone manufacturers.

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8. Monetization

2004: Google’s largest contributor to its Revenue: Adwords
2011: Google’s largest contributor to its Revenue: Adwords

In 2004, Advertising was only large scalable online monetization model. In the quarter Google debuted on Nasdaq; Amazon reported profit of just $54 Mn.

In 2011, there are various scalable monetization models:

  • Online Advertising / Search & Display (Google)
  • Online Advertising / Social (Facebook, LinkedIn & similar)
  • Mobile Advertising (Google, InMobi & others)
  • Local Advertising (Groupon, Foursquare & similar)
  • eCommerce (Amazon & others)
  • Enterprise, CRM (Salesforce, Box.net & others)
  • App Stores (Apple)
  • SaaS Products (Dropbox, Evernote, others)
  • Payments (PayPal, Square, others)
  • Smart Computing Devices / Tablets, Kindle, Smartphones (Apple, Amazon, others)

Multiple scalable monetization models evolved over last few years. Google unfortunately has not moved beyond Adwords.

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9. Lack of Innovation

Over years, Google is struggling with innovation. Many existing and high potential products are on decline.

  • Blogger: Introduced the world to blogging. Lost battle to WordPress, Tumblr, Posterous.
  • Google Books: eBooks store of the World? eBook for Android phones?
  • Google Docs: Never really went beyond Gmail attachments. Evernote? Box.net?
  • Google News: News recommendation service or aggregation. Pulse?
  • Google Apps: Endless opportunities in Enterprise services.

Google also abandoned or mis-managed on some the big ideas –

  • Chromebook:
    Post launch announcements, not much has been heard about Chromebook project. If Chromebooks were built to optimize over web, why did it not follow the Android platform? Ideally it should have built and optimized version of Android for laptops & tablets (Android 3.1 Honeycomb for tablets came much later).
  • Orkut:
    Google never realized the potential of Social until too late. Orkut which could have been the default Social Networking destination for world, never innovated beyond UI changes and probably never got the resources that it deserved.
  • GDrive:
    Google was to launch an online drive for storage back in 2007; much ahead of Dropbox’s launch. The project was abandoned and Google is reportedly working on its revival once again post Dropbox’s success.

Over years multiple products have evolved that Google has not paid attention to. Some of the hottest startups and businesses today are in product domains like – Multiple SaaS domains, Social Commerce, Social Products, Local Businesses and so on.

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10. Failure to execute Acquisitions

If you can’t build it, acquire it. Google has done some awesome job with many of its acquisitions, but unfortunately not the ones in Social. The big lost opportunities here are Aardvark, Dodgeball and Jaiku.

  • Jaiku:
    An micro-blogging service that launched well before Twitter and acquired by Google in Oct 2007 had the potential to be Twitter or a tough competition. Twitter today has over 380+ Mn users and valued at an estimated $8 Bn.
  • Aardvark:
    An social QnA service created before Quora was acquired by Google for $50Mn in Feb 2010 had enough time to learn and innovate. Google announced its closure in Sept 2011. Lost opportunity – Quora is now valued at over $1 Bn.
  • Dodgeball:
    One of the earliest location based social products for mobile was acquired by Google in 2005 and discontinued in 2009. Dodgeball’s founder Dennis Crowley launched Foursquare which is one of the hottest location based products today with over 10 Million users.

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Ending Notes

Design standardizations that kill identity of products. Inability to build competitive products and match speed of innovation. Failed attempts at Social Networking. Fascination to promote / push Google+ through its successful products. Failed acquisitions.

Google is currently showing all signs of being the next Yahoo. At this pace, engineers will sense more challenges and opportunities to innovate outside of Google. Its not too late, but yes – Google is in its mid-life crisis.

Concluding Notes for myself and other startups – “Don’t try to do something in everything. Rather focus on doing everything in something.”

Why Consumer Social Products should monetize at Scale

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This post is written in context of – why consumer social products should never monetize without scale.

1. Because Users sign-up in context of Product –
Every social product is more about users and their connections / contacts together with a context (its product use-case). Users expect to interact with their contacts with this context.

For Zynga, the context is playing games; for Quora, the context is asking questions. At this stage – nothing is more important that making the context important. Focus on building the product.

 

2. Because Engagement is more Important –
Only value a social product should provide to users is engagement (both frequency and quality is important). Hence, the only metric that matters for any social products is engagement. That should be prime focus for any social product in its initial 24-36 months.

Over a period of time this engagement should evolve in to habit. Habits are tough to break. Facebooking, Tweeting, Checking-In are habits.

A QnA site like Quora with about 1 Mn ‘engaged’ users is more valuable that 50Mn+ users on Google+ who don’t talk to each other..

 

3. Because you need to Learn from Others’ Mistakes –
Learn from successes and failures of other products. All (successful) social products monetized at scale, till then they were just building the product and even continue to do so today.

Majority (if not all) of social products who tried to monetize early have hit the dead pool or pivoted.

Don’t want to name any specific failures, but look around – there are many social products that attempted to monetize in its early days.

 

4. Because your Users won’t like it –
You like it or not – large social products & platforms eventually monetize with advertising products but with its own product context. Facebook did with advts targeting by demographics; Twitter with promoted accounts, tweets & trends; Foursquare by local advertising deals for check-ins; with a exception of Zynga that sells virtual goods.

At early stage, users would expect a better product experience; not advts. If you plan to monetize with transactional services like eCommerce – think about it. Will users want another service that spams them through sms / email or advertisements? You don’t want to put off your users.

It is a tough decision with a simple answer – Focus on what users want; not what you want or what your investors want.

 

5. Because your Merchants or Business Owners won’t be happy with you –  

This is strange but true. Let me explain this with example – Imagine a hypothetical social product for shopping with 100,000 registered users. You sign-up with the top-20 eCommerce sites in India for monetization through affiliate model – you pat your back and give yourself a thumbs-up.

– Assume decent engagement levels @ 50% user base (50% of users login minimum 2 times a month).
– That is 12,500 users per week logins
– Take standard 1% ratio of conversion at merchant end
– Gives you 125 transactions per week; 500 per month
– That is about 25 transactions per merchant ~ approximately less than 1 transaction per day for eCommerce partner.

Consumers will not do eCommerce transactions every month. Next month, this picture might be more difficult.

4 of these 20 eCommerce services says, “Sorry! its not worth our efforts on integration and time spent. Please delist us.” Community is small, people change jobs fast and the word spreads quickly amongst the partners – “This product does not work!”

Now, the same scenario at scale;

– On a 1Mn user base: 8-10 transactions per day to every partner
– On a 10Mn user base: 80-100 transactions per day to every partner
– On a 100Mn user base: 800-1000 transactions per day to every partner. OMG!

Exercise extreme caution when you decide to monetize your social product. The timing is as important as how your monetization plan.

 

Also because Sean Parker said so –
From the movie – The Social Network. When Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker and Eduardo Saverin discussed on TheFacebook’s monetization in its early days –

Eduardo Saverin: Hey, you know what? Settle and argument for us. I say it’s time to start making money from TheFacebook, but Mark doesn’t want to advertise. Who’s right?
Sean Parker: Um…neither of you yet. TheFacebook is cool that’s what it’s got going for it.
Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah.
Eduardo Saverin: You don’t want to ruin it with ads because ads aren’t cool.
Mark Zuckerberg: Exactly.

—

Sean Parker: “You don’t even know what the thing is yet.”
Mark Zuckerberg: “I said that exactly.”
Sean Parker: “How big it can get, how far it can go. This is no time to take your chips down. A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool?”
Eduardo Saverin: “You?
“A billion dollars.”
 That shut everybody up.

This holds true for every social product. You don’t know really know how a product shapes up it its journey that starts from minimum viable product.

Note: Sean Parker has said that the movie The Social Network is work of fiction.

 

Google+ may be miles away from being a great Social Product!

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A Product Manager’s view – Why Google+ may be miles away from being a great Social Product!

There are various reports on super adoption of Google+, earlier about 10 Mn users and today it reaching 50 Mn users.  The key question is – How many users are engaged there? Also echoed by The Lean Startup author Eric Ries while Facebook has 750Mn active and engaged users.

I am trying to tell myself that first signs of product usage and assumptions change over time. It happened with me for Groupon where the business model was innovative, but not scalable; for Quora post initial adoption; for Twitter (where I was a early adopter) but found no one else there and stayed away for 2-3 years before becoming active again.

Same happened with Google+ my first reaction was Facebook killer, then next was Twitter killer – and over a period of time with my Product Manager’s hat – I feel that it may be miles away from being a great Social Attempt!

 

1. What is Google+? No one cared to answer!

A standard product management and product marketing practice is to tell consumers what the product is. The world knows about Facebook, despite its 750Mn+ active users – every time you visit Facebook homepage it tells you what it is.

  • Facebook – Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.
  • Twitter – Follow your interests. Instant updates from your friends, industry experts, favorite celebrities, and what’s happening around the world.
  • Flickr – Share your life in photos.
  • YouTube – Join the largest worldwide video-sharing community!
  • Foursquare – Check in. Find your Friends. Unlock your City.
  • Quora – A continually improving collection of questions and answers.

While for Google+ – No one cared to answer what product use-case it solves or what should users are expected to do on it.

 

2. How does a user access Google+ ?

Users access Facebook on www.facebook.com; Twitter on www.twitter.com; and so on – is it www.google+.com?

And to prove this point – look at Google+ suggestions on Search –

Accessibility is a big question mark for Google+. The correct way to access Google+ is plus.google.com – which a technology early adopter shall ‘probably’ remember – but even he or she will end up accessing (most of the time) Google+ from within GMail on the notification bar at the top.

This point is also related with next set of arguments – User Psychology & Naming & Identification Psychology. I feel these factors are extremely important to consider while building any consumer product.

 

3. User Psychology for Consumer Products

For any Internet or mobile product – consumers are quick to label it with its strongest product use-case – which is typically the recall product value of the user. Simply stated for a normal user –

  • “I visit GMail to check my emails!”
  • “I visit Google to search the web.”
  • “I visit Facebook to view what my friends are up to.”

Now it is extremely difficult for any product to have a “and use-case” for a product –

  • “I visit GMail to check my emails and Social Networking.” – No!
  • “I visit Google to search the web and Social Networking.” – No!
  • “I visit Facebook to view what my friends are up to and also searching the world wide web.” – No!

“And use-case” works for features that support any product’s core value. Features that would be to better manage emails (for Gmail), to better display search rankings (for Google Search), to show more types of friend’s activities (for Facebook) and so on.

Google is aiming to take on Facebook with a Social Networking product. But launched it like a feature on Google Homepage (Search) & Gmail (Notification Header). In current avatar, Google+ is a feature – and will gain traction as much as a feature can. It will not gain identity as a social-networking stand-alone product.

Also note the big failures of other “And use-cases” –

  • “I visit Facebook to view what my friends are up to and also Buy Local Deals.” – Deals was abandoned by Facebook
  • “I visit Facebook to view what my friends are up to and also to check-in in places” – Places as stand-alone attempt within Facebook failed, but as feature is gaining traction.
  • “I visit Gmail to check mails and Buzz up articles.” – Google Buzz… remember?

“And use-cases” work for B2B products, but have never worked for any consumer web product.

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4. Naming & Identification Psychology

Social Graphs & Social Networks are all about giving identity to users. Currently, Google+ itself needs an identity. Users think and will continue to think of Search when they think of Google, and it is virtually impossible for them to perceive Google as a Social Network.

How consumers relate with social activities – “Are you on FB?” “Can you tweet this?” “Let me share it on FB” and so on. The terminology “Google” or “Googled” is built over last 13 years – will be impossible to change from search to a social context.

For sake of Product identity or for its different product use-case, Google+ should have been outside of Google identity with its own identity (probably a www.plus.com if it was available). But the lure of exploring existing user-base is too difficult to give away – and if that logic was to succeed Yahoo! would have still been the largest internet company in this world. They tried to do everything under Yahoo! brand name (Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Hotjobs, Yahoo! This & Yahoo! That), but for consumers Yahoo! was and always remained a content play.

Even Google’s largely successful consumer products outside Search – Gmail & YouTube were successful because consumers saw it as an independent product identity outside the core of Google’s Search. While Google Video, Google Buzz, Google Answers – all failed. I am strong advocate of one-product = one-identity for consumer web businesses.

 

5. Social Graphs are occupied; No place for Google+ to fit in

I mentioned in my previous post Building Awesome Social Products – successful social products are reflection of people’s offline behavior in the real world. Similarly – successful social graphs are also reflection of people’s social relationships in real world. Social Products reflect activities, Social Graphs reflect relationships.

A typical user’s social relationships involve –

  • Close Relationships – Friends, Family, Friendly Colleagues (present and past) – more importantly people you know personally.
  • Professional Relationships – Colleagues, Business Relationships, Partners
  • Loose Relationships – People you know, but they probably don’t know you. Celebrities, known professionals, domain experts

Facebook covers Close Relationships, LinkedIn covers Professional Relationships, Twitter covers Loose Relationships. So if Google+ is trying to create a new Social Graph, it will be a struggle (big struggle) – simply cause there is no use-case for a new social graph. Social graphs are distinct; by nature, by user behavior and are established over a period of time.

Features don’t make a product success by itself and expect it to later evolve in to a Social Graph; Instead having a use-case for social graph is essential and the features should evolve.

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6. It is important to know whom to kill – Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, or what -?

Google+ though it presently looks like a Facebook killer – it is not. None of my friends are using it the way they use Facebook, instead I see more updates from technology adopters in Silicon Valley – and the posts look like extended tweets (beyond the 140 characters). I follow these technology adopters on Twitter, and hence my own assumption that probably it is a Twitter-killer.

Google+ still does not have a clear proposition – and is trying to overlap between all three Social Graphs (Close Relationships, Professional Relationships & Loose Relationships) without taking a clear positioning against one of them.

I am personally not happy with the killer-suffix (no products killers have ever killed anyone – they are still trying to kill iPhone & iPad). But its also important to know who your competition or what your benchmark really is. Or you might just try running behind all, but never able to catch up with any one of them.

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7. Developer APIs will not enable Social Graphs; Instead Gmail invite contacts are more powerful.

There has been lot of noise about speculated Google+ APIs for developers to build applications and its release dates or so on. Developer APIs will provide access to features – posting an Google+ update, ability to do +1 through applications, and so on – but this sounds (unfortunately once again) like Twitter APIs or FB app APIs that allow you to post status updates and share pictures and so on. Most importantly, Google+ will not be able to build a Facebook Connect equivalent.

Today Social Graphs when referred are mostly Facebook explored through Facebook Connect (unless you write some algorithms on top of them to bring context to your product). F-Connect allows applications & developers to enable Social Graphs (of friends); which clearly explains why 1000s of applications prefer to have Sign-up with Facebook buttons.

Google+ has multiple circles (friends, acquaintances, doctors, techies – and you can delete and rename any other circle); relationships in these circle are mutually not dependent on each other – and hence cannot be explored even if Google+ comes out with a API to access them. Let me explain this below –

a. A user Larry might add another user Zuck in friends circle; Zuck may add Larry in My Gang circle. Hence social relationship between them is not mutual (as friends).
b. Further Larry might name his friends circle as Buddies; Zuck names his friends circles as Pals; Hence the social graph definition itself is flawed.


This is a huge flaw – Through APIs the developer’s applications cannot reach mutually accepted graph of both connections (mutual friends) or an validated status of their relationships (close friends, professional or loose). Hence at this stage it would be more preferred to use the Gmail Invite Contacts module – for simple reason that it is more powerful and treats all contacts at a same level (a social graph of email contacts / connections).

 

8. Not the best attempt at Social Networking

Google already knows so much about its users – whom do you chat (on GTalk), whom do you mail (on Gmail) or who are my most contacted people in real world (on Android). Google could have actually used a lot of this data, recommended people with circles (I still hate sorting people in circle all the time, but pre-cooked circles by associations would still have been so much better).

With Google holding so much data and wanting to go ahead with a strong social product; it is expecting users to do it again from scratch. Makes one feel that Google+ is a half-baked attempt.

Facebook users usually have about 150 to even 5000 friends. Usually added over years, and all added at a same level – ‘Friends’. However cool the task of adding people to circle is in execution – to add those many people again to circles is a pain. While most people that users see on Google+ are those who are discovered through the people you follow. Every time to add someone to a circle is little more effort than just adding as a friend (on Facebook) or just following the user (on Twitter).

Circle looks like Twitter lists – People get added on them once, later everyone forgets which user is put in what circle. And while the News feed (or stream) stays common for all – the Circles might as well be forgotten just like Twitter Lists.

The next point makes it more clear – why it is not the best attempt at Social Networking.

 

9. Real Capabilities of Social Graphs (or Networks) are absent –

Get this right – Friends (or Connections!) are the minimum one expects out of a Social Network. What stands out are the capabilities to engage those connections. Remember Orkut? – it had all connections; but Facebook just made the engagement so much better.

  • Ability to discover Friends or Connections in context –
    Google+ has done a simple job or fetching contact list from GMail and enabled it with the painful process (yes!) of adding to circles. But by enabling discovery of friends or connections who are active on Google+ – the suggestion engine for friends could have been so much better.
    .
    Example –
    1. I end of following lot of product enthusiasts & early adopters. There are mutual connections that could be added to my circles – which currently not recommended.
    2. My Gmail contacts list have endless email addresses of people I really don’t want to follow in circles or on any social network. So a smart recommendation based on whom I chat with, mutual friends, top contacts on Android and others need to be made discoverable.
    .
  • Stream or Newsfeed –
    The most important discovery tool on any Social Platform is Newsfeed. In its current stage – the Stream on Google+ is very Twitterish – a timeline of all people you follow.
    . 
    Facebook raised the standard with algorithms that help you discover feeds that is most relevant to every user, ranking every story contextually around a user. Newsfeed makes or breaks any Social Product and single most important activity & engagement enabler for any Social Product or Social Graph.
    .
  • Communication or Chat –
    The most cut-copy-paste feature of Google+ is chat – where user can chat with contacts he otherwise can also on Gmail or Gtalk. Quite honestly, this is the most ridiculous feature, with no context to people any user has put in his circles.
    .
    In context of chat (or video chat) – expecting users to do Hangouts with webcam is a big No. Hangouts are not conversation starters, but should be featured alongside as planned video conversations.
    .
  • Ability to drive Traffic –
    Remember Google Buzz? There was nothing wrong in the idea – attempting a Digg or Facebook Share or Tweet Share. Once a user Buzz’ed an article – it was critical to reach his Social Graph and drive viral traffic to that article. This story failed cause of poor dissemination of activity in user Social Graph. Google should learn lessons from Google Buzz chapter.
    .
    Social Networks like Facebook & Twitter are popular with publishers or businesses due to their ability to drive traffic to their own websites. While few publishers have added the +1 button to their webpages – still drives only an insignificant proportion of traffic to them; and lot of unclarity on how the dynamics of +1 button works for publishers and its benefits to them eventually.+1, Like, Share, Tweet this – are big distribution mechanisms for a Social Network. Should be given its required TLC.

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As mentioned earlier – the product use-case should be driven by features; and not the other way round. Google can always come back and say – we are working on this. But hey, if a product is coming from a product & technology resource-heavy company like Google – even user expectations also very high.

Even these are early days for Google+, web is dynamic and consumer interests change quickly and Google can still do lots of changes quickly and innovate, possibly even work on the above arguments if they agree with it.

This post is written over last several days with some last minute additions on stats before hitting the publish button. Meanwhile Facebook has launched a series of new features, which looks like they are (over)reacting to Google+. Facebook, you are miles ahead, don’t make mistakes, please.

 

Building Awesome Social Products

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Number of Social Products are launched these days; everyday we come across a new one. While I am also busy building my own Social Product – sharing few of our learnings with other Entrepreneurs & Product Managers working on Social Products.

Social Graphs are all around us today – some like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter have extremely high adoption rate and have provisioned development frameworks for existing and new products to leverage social graphs behind them. Each of these social graphs are distinctive by type of connections and mindset its users have developed towards them.

Google+ has been left outside of this discussion – cause in my personal opinion it is yet to find itself a distinct social graph. In current position – Google+ overlaps with lot of existing and established Social Graphs. More notes on Google+ can be reserved for a different blog post.

 

Building Awesome Social Products

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Existing Social Graphs (everyone knows this):

  • Facebook – Social Networking for friends, (close) colleagues and family. These are users with whom you have interacted in real life.
  • Twitter – Loose social connections, people you know or are acquaintances with. Typically people who are celebrities, known professionals, subject or domain expertise are followed by others.
  • LinkedIn – Professional and Business contacts.
  • Email Contacts – Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc – all people or contacts whom you have/had private conversations over emails.

There are other Social Graphs like – YouTube, WordPress, Flickr.., those who are limited by its mindset or domain; also limited ways to leverage those social graphs.

 

Every Social Platform has Social Mindsets & Product Norms:

Social Platforms – no matter how big in user base, its users over a period of time have developed strong mindsets, product usage norms and social norms. They are usually not said or stated, but followed subconsciously by its users.

  • Facebook –
    Product Norm: Users can share status, comments, updates, photos, videos with “known friends”
    Social Mindset: Informal, between friends, perceived closed group communication.
    Social Norm: Example – Do not keep on updating status at same pace at which they tweet.
    .
  • Twitter –
    Product Norm: Follow like minded people, domain experts, known professionals, celebs, etc
    Social Mindset: Open conversations & thoughts expected by followers.
    Social Norm: Example – Retweet what you agree on, etc
    .
  • LinkedIn –
    Product Norm: Strictly Professional & Business oriented. Make connection with people you have worked with or intend to.
    Social Mindset: Share professional or company updates; Industry news & views
    Social Norm: Example – Do not post jokes or Facebook-like status updates.

 

Social Mindsets and Product Norms are difficult to break:

Users follow social mindsets and product norms subconsciously, they learn to follow it over months or years of product usage. Over a period of time, they become so strong that such platforms itself are not able to foster adoption for new products & features they introduce. Some examples are –

  • Facebook attempted to take on Foursquare with Facebook Places – but did not make much headway. Interestingly – there might be an 100% overlap of Foursquare users with Facebook.
  • Twitter struggled with getting usability for Lists feature. Users have added people to lists – but not following them for tweets. Twitter acquiring TweetDeck might be another sign of product usage norm.
  • LinkedIn struggled with its product LinkedIn Answers – while Quora scaled.
  • Google launched Google+ through GMail, but now struggles to keep continued engagement and adoption of Google+.

Because the Social Mindsets and Product Norms are difficult to break, products that leverage Social Graphs outside them become successful. (Facebook abandoned deals, but maybe it should acquire Foursquare as it is more valuable than Groupon, & LinkedIn should acquire Quora)

 

Some Perfect Examples of Social Products:

  1. Zynga – Leveraged social graph of Facebook and introduced Social Games like CityVille, FarmVille and others as a Social Application.
  2. Foursquare – Leveraged social graphs of Facebook & Twitter to introduce a location based check-in product on Mobile.
  3. Quora – Leverage social graphs of Facebook & Twitter to introduce a Questions product as a destination website.

 

The 6 Basic Principles of Building Social Products:

  1. Social Graphs are already Established.
    Do not reinvent the wheel and try to build social graphs again from scratch on your product.
    .  
  2. Social Graphs get built over a period of time.
    a. Over years – Users have made friends on Facebook, added professional contacts on LinkedIn or followed people on Twitter
    b. It will take loads of time, effort and patience if you try to build them again.
    Google+ is attempting this – we can wait and watch if it succeeds.
    .  
  3. Don’t build Social Products for sharing content & driving additional traffic.
    a. Most social products are built with this intention – sharing content and hence driving more traffic
    b. Existing social graphs are powerful and already allow sharing of content to drive viral traffic.
    . 
  4. Build Social Products that add value to users.
    There are many tasks and products that can be built outside existing Social Platforms which can add value to end users. While existing social graphs are established, users have a Usage Mindset about them, this is biggest incentive to build innovative social products.
    . 
  5. Don’t arbitrage value through your product.
    There is immense value in integrating directly with social platforms like Facebook & Twitter, do not try to arbitrage this value through your product. Users (if it is a B2C product) or Merchants / Publishers (if it is a B2B product) will at some point of time realize this and abandon your product to integrate/use directly.
    .
  6. Don’t build – but leverage Social Graphs!
    Rome was not built in one day! And so are Social Graphs. Choose the one that fits most with your product use case and leverage it.

 

Building your Perfect Social Product:

Foursquare, Quora, Zynga did it, so can your product. Introducing established social graphs to new products. Key is understanding what you manage and what you don’t – Social Graphs are not owned by you, your product is – seamless integration with your product makes it scale up virally.

It helps you in –

  • Viral User Acquisition
  • Introducing your product to user’s existing social graphs
  • User activity on your product generates updates for Social Graphs, which acts like contextual marketing.

Identify what are the validation use-cases for your product, allow consumers to share the same with his Social Graphs. Few examples are – Foursquare checkins, Questioning & Answers on Quora, reaching a level completion milestone on Zynga while playing its games and others.
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Solving the Chicken and Egg problem:

Social Products have more than one first users. Every initial user who registers to your product has his own social graph, he is the first user of his social graph.

The Chicken & Egg problem here is – what do you show to such first users who do not have any friends or activities to look at. Ask hard questions and look around for examples of successful social products.

First User Questions (FUQs) –

  • Facebook’s first user question – “Whom do I add as a Friend? Who will see my wall-post?”
  • Twitter’s first user question – “Who will read my tweet? Whom should I follow?”
  • Quora’s first user question – “Who will answer my question? How can I quickly get a answer for my question?”
  • Foursquare’s first user question – “Where should I check-in? Why should I check-in?
  • Zynga’s first user question – “Whom should I play CityVille with? How will my City grow?”

Try to figure out how these platform solved the first user question. There are multiple ways to do it, but idea is doing this right. The biggest challenge for any social product is solving the First User Questions – the approach and execution here makes or breaks your Social Product.

 

Validation Cycle of Social Products:

Defining Validation Cycle for your Social Product and reducing the time to validate it is the key goal for Product Managers. Validation cycles are reduced when you are at scale – thats a easy task cause at scale most of the things you do is just optimize based on data/feedbacks.

Take example of Quora – product validation cycle means getting answers from people with best knowledge about it. Since Quora has scale & adoption today – you will see few questions getting answered within minutes or hours of submission, while few take days to see first answer. But in its initial days – the validation cycle was not so short.

More crucial moments are in the first 10,000 users scenario. Have patience, learn from initial user feedback and pain-points; validation will be slow and takes time in initial days of adoption. Also to due slow adoption cycle in early days – the early adopters of any social product, don’t necessary get the best experience.

Example – My twitter profile (twitter.com/beingpractical) was created in Sept 2007; I had the First User Question syndrome. Same was the case with my profile on Facebook, LinkedIn or Orkut (Orkut showed me – “Bad, bad server. No donuts for you” 1000s of time).

 

Should it be an Application on Facebook or Destination site:

“Why is this not a application on Facebook?” is also a question you will hear from Investors. While there are different answers for this question when it comes from Investors, but for a product decision make your judgment based on –

  1. Your product idea or concept or product use case should deliver real value. The value should not equate to addition of features on Facebook.
  2. There are Social Graphs outside of Facebook that you want to explore.
  3. Facebook would want people to interact with people; not with applications.
  4. Product or Business use case qualifies to be a destination site outside of Facebook – like a Quora or Foursquare.

Remember again – Social Mindsets & Product Norms on Facebook are difficult to break. If your product requires to explore Social Graph and is outside the Social Norms of Facebook – it can be a destination!

 

The Key Questions to answer before getting started:

Have good answers to all of these questions before starting with build your Social Product –

  • The task your product is planning to solve – do people do it in real world socially?
    Social Products are reflections of user behavior in real world – People play games together, People want to hear answers from persons with best knowledge about it, and so on. If people don’t do such tasks in real world – they will not do it on a Social Product as well.
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  • Is it a feature on Facebook or Twitter or any Social Platform?
    Feature products don’t last. Identify if your product can be a feature on Facebook or Twitter.
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  • If B2C product – Is there a value to do this task outside of Facebook?
    Check and check again – Is your product idea meant to be a application or destination.
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  • If B2B product – Is sharing and driving traffic to merchants / publishers the key aim?
    There is no harm if it is one of the propositions, but this should not be the key aim of your B2B product. Many social commerce products on top of Facebook project sharing & driving traffic as their core benefit. Marketers are smart, at some point of time they will self-integrate this on their Facebook pages.
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Always keep these things in Mind –

  1. People drive Social Platforms & Products. Not features!
    Features are how you want users to drive your product. But it is always people who drive it – make your features people-centric; not people feature-centric.
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  2. Engagement should be People to People
    People don’t login to Facebook everyday cause it is Facebook, it is cause there friends are there. Same will hold true for your Social Product.
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  3. Don’t arbitrage on User Value
    Consumers & Businesses will eventually figure this out. So don’t do this in first place.
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  4. Don’t be Evil
    People love their Friends & Social Circle / Connections more than they love your product.
    Don’t mess with them. Don’t spam. Don’t be evil.

Happy Building your Social Product. Don’t forget to send me invites on pj(at)beingpractical.com.

 

The Biggest Innovations never solved any problem!

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Being an entrepreneur is exciting. And one question you hear often is – “What is the consumer problem that you are trying to solve?”

We try to reserve our weekend lunches for some awesome conversations over products, companies and where the world is heading in connected world. Last Saturday, Anupam Mittal (Founder & CEO of People Group, Entrepreneur behind Shaadi.com), my co-founder and myself discussed this over lunch – “Did Google or Facebook  solved any consumer problem?”

Our interaction inspired me to write this post –

Solving a problem and creating a market are two different ways to look at any company or any product idea. Products or Companies that solve a problem are the Million dollar companies, while products or individuals who look at the industry from a radically different approach – are the most disruptive, innovative and create Billion dollar opportunities as they grow.

My conclusions were –
– The biggest innovations never solved any consumer problem
– The founders or entrepreneurs had a different approach to the industry
– In almost all cases, the entrepreneurs did not belong to the industry, had little or no experience in that industry.

Further thoughts are embedded in this SlideShare presentation –

Biggest Innovations Never Solved Any Problem

View more presentations from P J

Have a different approach. Think different!

Lets Blame It on Rio (and not the Ecosystem!)

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Having read so much on blogs, forums, one on one interactions with entrepreneurs, VCs – I conclude that “Blame It on Ecosystem” is the favorite game for people in Indian startup space (both included – entrepreneurs & the investors). And the blame game continues – Entrepreneur complaining that this VC just “does not get it” when their pitch does not make it; Investors complaining that they are “yet to find a Bn dollar company” from India.

There is a lot of rant already over this topic without much reasoning. Unlike my other posts on this blog – I will not try to express any personal opinion about a business domain here; but just highlight why the Indian Startup scene is about 10 years behind Silicon Valley.

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Indian VCs don’t take risks –
Entrepreneurs have higher appetite for risk than investors. Every investment in any investor portfolio is a risk. There is a calculated risk that every VC takes, be it Indian or US investor. Indian VCs don’t take risk is a incorrect statement, the right way to put this is – risk appetite of Indian VCs is more inclined towards proven business models of west. After all a entrepreneur takes a risk with belief in his idea, VC with his money in entrepreneur’s belief to execute.

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Only Validated Business Ideas get VC invested –
OTAs, Daily Coupon Sites, eCommerce, Finance Lead Generation & similar., these are proven business models with metrics that are well defined.
– X visits result on Y transactions at average value of Z
– X spends result in Y leads and Z conversions from it

This is a low risk appetite investment, where it is not a rocket science to determine how to scale up the business and predict profitability & revenue projections. Knowing these metrics and a good team – the VC is more comfortable & confident with such investments in India.

Compare the same for an Facebook, Foursquare, Quora, Twitter, Dropbox or Evernote. If such businesses are pitched at early stage to VCs here, most of them would have no clue on what metrics to use for basis of their investment. All such platforms raised a angel round or small VC round before the metrics were clear.

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Lack of 2nd/3rd Generation Entrepreneurs –
Now why did I mention initially in this post that India is ten years behind Silicon Valley? – because Silicon Valley today has entrepreneurs & investors who have done 2X/3X exits. Living up a 2X or 3X full company life cycle till exit gives an incomparable experience, the next company they build is ‘better product & platform’ than the earlier and so on.

In India, with notables of Naukri, MakeMyTrip and few others we have started seeing first generation exits now, both Sanjeev Bikhchandani & Deep Kalra are doing the right things with spotting new investments for the next mile. To have more entrepreneurs going 1X, 2X or 3X exits, is anywhere between a 5-10 year game plan.

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Pre-Revenue Investments –
There is a big misconception that in Silicon Valley companies get funded in pre-revenue stage. Yes, they do – but not all; not the ones without strong user engagement, not the ones without a solid team behind the product or platform. And for B2B products, not the ones who have initial set of customers who swear by the product!

This might not be false for India as well. If Sanjeev or Deep Kalra want to start their next entrepreneurial journey – who will not invest?

Pre-Revenue Startups like Facebook, Foursquare and many others did not raise large investments or achieve high valuations in their first round. These companies themselves raised either an angel investment or a very low value Series A investment to start, validate their product, get users/customers and then went for a big round of investment/valuation.

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There are no Early Adopters –
Unless an entrepreneur agrees that his product is bad or not a market-fit or has not tried enough, in my opinion this is the biggest excuse. How can one justify the same in a country of 1 Billion people. In a country which easily figures among the top 10 countries by users for any successful web product in valley – from Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, Quora and many others!

For B2C products – you have not tried enough!
For B2B or Enterprise SaaS products – did you guys not hear of Wingify or Fusion Charts or InMobi. This is digitally connected world – no one has bounded a company by geographical limits. These are proven models of product driven startups from India.

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Disconnect with Valley –
The kind of companies that are funded in India today are the ones that were funded in US about ten years back. I have no disrespect for the Indian companies – infact they are building the base for the next wave of Internet boom – exactly the same that happened with US.

With a whole lot of first generation entrepreneurs in India – we expect at least the VCs to bring an perspective on whats happening in US & other parts of the world, not the obvious answers that everyone knows. The learning from valley does not come or has not reached to many investors in India.

My point of disconnect with valley here is that many in investment community today are still unaware of Quora, Spotify, Dropbox, Evernote, Airbnb, Rovio, and so many others. In one of my meetings I had to tell a investment analyst about 500startups, Angellist and in another one that Ashton Kutcher is also a technology investor! And in one more, someone explained if a American company like Lenovo can be big in China, others too can (? – OK)! And that people in investor circles are still unaware of Yuri Milner & DST.

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No Product Focus –
There is a buzz within investor circles that the next Google, Facebook, Amazon of the world will come from India. With comfortable investment decisions in validated business models like eCommerce – post my above experiences I sincerely doubt if Indian investors will be able to spot such opportunities when it knocks your doors?

The current series of investments about eCommerce in India are a hunt to find the next Amazon. But, Amazon itself has ceased being an eCommerce company long time back, it is a product/ a platform and much more beyond all that – view Amazon’s Hidden Empire .

In US, investors invest in products & platforms; in India – they invest in companies. Huge Difference! When did you last hear of an eCommerce (leaving aside daily deals and private shopping, though a format of eCommerce itself) or Online Travel company getting funded in Silicon Valley?. If you are building a B2B or B2C product/platform company in India, all investors will be to help you with money & connections, but only handful of investors in India will be help you with product or platform – choose wisely!

Disclosure: Experience – I reached out to two venture capitalists at some point of time for role as investment analyst with experience in diverse products & platforms – was rejected outright for lack of ‘relevant experience’. No sour grapes, but I could have saved some millions for them 🙂

I am of a strong opinion that there is a huge need of in-house product & platform management advisory in many Indian venture capitalists. All ecosystem changes are driven by improvement & innovations in products & platforms, not by revenues. Lastly, it is only the consumer products that will scale up and be a billion dollar company!

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Everyone wants to invest Early Stage / Series A
Everyone wants to invest at early stage, but no one wants to take risk. So investments will happen early – but validated business models only. Some good examples for early stage investments in India are redBus, InMobi – while some good early stage misses are Infibeam (which has grown significantly larger without any outside investment).

Angels and Seed stage funds are well positioned to spot early opportunities than institutional investors.

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Premature Incubation Model
Going for a incubation model – make sure you choose the right one among the ones you are joining. Reason to say this – incubation models in US have mentors who have great experience in building products & platforms at scale. Y Combinator – has Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail & Google Adsense), 500startups has Dave McClure (PayPal, FBfund, Simply Hired and more) and mentors from hottest companies and startups in valley; and so many others.

I have simple belief – Internet & Mobile startups are as good or as bad as the products you build. If you are choosing a incubation model – make sure it compliments your actual requirements. Last reason an entrepreneur should choose a incubation mode is money!

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The Know-It-All Attitude
This goes to Entrepreneurs – if you have, please shed away this attitude and get in a mode to learn, to take advice and asking right questions. Relationship status between an Entrepreneur and Investor is complicated – you can’t live with them or you can’t live without them, so you might as well accept them the way they are.

While closing your meetings / pitch with prospective investors – take feedback on the product, business model and the pitch. They will advice you based on their best strengths and experience, but only if you ask! In my personal experience – I managed to get some key improvements & suggestions on the product I am building.

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Please learn to say No
Entrepreneurs learn to say no to investors who do not see and agree with the vision you hold for the product.
Investors learn to say no, and fast. Entrepreneur’s time is equally important as yours! If the product does not match your investment interest – communicate it as fast as possible. Saying no immediately may not so bad; but keep a hope alive may be frustrating for the entrepreneur.

PS: Please respond faster to emails! I exchanged few notes with some of ‘the investors’ in Silicon Valley – always found a reply within 12 hours in all cases, some of them in less than 30 minutes.

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Quality of Press Releases & Coverage
The state of ecosystem is also reflected by the type of news coverage & press releases one reads on Indian Blogs. People movements – in most cases of those names who we have never heard of before, New sales office in Middle East, Forward looking statements on revenues & projections, Surveys that say the obvious in press releases, Claims & unacceptable figures, and so much more! Damn – we would like to know more about your products & platforms, everything else is just crap!

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Concluding Remarks –

Startup ecosystem is built with entrepreneurs, their companies, their early customers and then the investors. You control 75% of the ecosystem already, investors will follow. In the same context I remember one of Sameer Guglani’s tweet – “Founders r creators / accelerators, angels, VCs r service providers. our business runs because founders start companies & not other way arnd.”

The point I am trying to convey here is that if you think or perceive that ecosystem is not evolved in Indian start up scenario, stop complaining and don’t be an entrepreneur. There is no point in waiting for a right time to build your startup, the time to start is now. Get started!

Ecosystem or no Ecosystem – it did not stop a redBus, Naukri, MakeMyTrip, Flipkart, InMobi or SlideShare* to be what they are from India. Why should it stop you!

The term ecosystem means lot of other components as well. Feel free to add more to the comments based on your experiences.

 

What problems are the Mobile Payment Services trying to solve?

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When I heard of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s announcement of mobile payment startup – Square, I loved the simplicity of the service. Few months Jack Dorsey tweeted that Square is processing transactions worth $1Mn per day – that is a cool revenue run rate of $10Mn per year for a two year startup (Square charges 2.75% charge per transaction when paid through credit card)

With very little knowledge of how offline transactions work in US, but it is definitely a card driven economy. Coming to Indian scenario – unsure if any Mobile Payment Services company in India will declare the value of transactions it processes per day. For a country like India, although the opportunity for mobile commerce looks huge – unable to relate if existing mobile payment services are trying to solve any consumer problem.

Back in 2006, when penetration of mobile phones in India was growing at an exponential pace – with falling talk times, it was predicted that India will be one of the largest telecom markets in the world. Well, that has surely come true. In internet world – there was another wave of prediction. Analysts & Enthusiasts found another buzz world – mCommerce which was supposed to be a multi-billion dollar industry by 2010.

With time, the definition of Mobile Commerce is itself a cliche’d.

  • Is it mobile commerce when a consumer books a airline ticket online, gets a confirmation and PNR number on to his mobile number . Displays the PNR ar airport counter and gets ticket?
  • Is it mobile banking when consumer receives confirmation of debit/credit transaction on his mobile
  • Or is it when the discovery, intent & transaction for a product/service starts and ends on mobile phone?

The definition is now debatable – but with mobile communication included, online transactions and services have scored a big mile.

The proposition of Mobile Payment Systems is (or was) very simple:

  • Offline Merchants – Allow consumers to walk-in to any shop with his mobile phone, buy stuff and make payments
  • Online Merchants – Tie-Up with multiple online eCommerce/Travel portals – allow them to purchase products through their payment service
  • Own Marketplaces – Create own marketplace on mobile that combine eCommerce, travel, utility services etc and enable payments for such transactions through their own system

Honestly, this would have sounded amazing to everyone back then. Undoubtedly very huge potential – Offline retail transactions are worth billions of dollars everyday, Online Merchants wanting to reach out to very high percentage of consumers who have not come online due to lack of internet connectivity and mobile device seemed very logical, & of course with own marketplace strategy they too wanted to own a sizable chunk of users/revenue and be a destination for commerce.

The mobile boom did happen. It is very difficult to find someone these days without a mobile phone. But then why is it so rare that we don’t get to find people using mobile payment services as it was predicted earlier.

Trying to analyze why did this zillion dollar plan on paper did not translate to even millions of dollars in reality. Here are few thoughts, there may be many other reasons as well that contributed to this –

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Limited size of Market –
With 95% mobile subscription in country on prepaid, and average ARPU of less than 200 INR (& steadily declining with time) – mobile payments or transactions is definitely the last thing on such user’s mind. Addressable market for this service is considerably very small and will be a subset of eCommerce market.

Active Credit Cards in India are declining –
According to recent numbers published in this TOI report – number of active credit users in India has tumbled down from 20.7 Million (in March 2008) to 10.8 Million (in November 2010).

eCommerce Services discovered Cash on Delivery –
India is a cash driven economy and most eCommerce services have realized this by today. COD accounts for anywhere between 30% to 60% of transaction for players who have enabled it. IVR payment mechanism also has widespread acceptance for ordering directly through call center.

Banks play their own Game –
In fact they already have started playing their own game. Banks are launching their own mobile banking applications and promoting it aggressively. That leaves mobile payment services out of their own play-field.

The 3G Magic may not happen –
The 3G magic shall happen to other services, but in my opinion nothing dramatic will happen for mobile payment services companies. There is simply no connection between acceptance of 3G by consumers and why ‘new consumers’ will subscribe to credit cards or link up their bank accounts to a mobile payment service company. They will fight for existing consumers between competition and the banks.

Radical shift to app-economy –
Smart Mobiles & Tablets devices are making a huge difference to the way consumers are accessing services on handheld or portable computing devices. With advent of app-stores and in-app payment systems – the mobile ecosystem has grown more radically than any of these players would have thought about.

Money was always Mobile –
If the pain point that mobile payment systems were (or are) trying to solve was allowing consumers to do transactions wherever & whenever they want – then this consumer pain never existed. Money in whatever format – cash or card was always mobile.

 
I see and hear of Mobile Payment systems usage in India only in the context on prepaid recharges & utility bill payments. But that was not what they aimed for, correct?

To sum up the article –

  • Money was always mobile; the consumer pain point mobile service providers were trying to solve never existed!
  • These businesses were way ahead of time; and in most scenarios got investments before validation.
  • mCommerce model evolved differently and in a way that kept such players outside the ecosystem.
  • mCommerce will evolve along with eCommerce; will go hand in hand – but definitely not before.

In my opinion this vertical is classic case of ‘ahead of time’, ‘investment without validation’, and ‘dynamic changing ecosystem’. Lesson for entrepreneurs and investment managers – make sure your companies are a part of “validated ecosystem” and solves a “valid consumer pain.”

 

Why Foursquare is better for Local Businesses than Groupon

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While Groupon has redefined local business and is in news for its fastest billion dollar revenue + its $700 Mn IPO, from a long term perspective I think Foursquare is a far better bet than Groupon.

Some of the many criticisms of Groupon –

  • Socially unconnected users
  • Concerns on validity of Business Model, just 3 years and now a IPO
  • Merchant side issues – 75% discount on products
  • Not much metrics available for merchants, no user contact information
  • Are new consumers acquired or are they deal seekers only
  • No technology barrier, 100s of Groupon clones have hit across the Globe
  • Though not many players are as large as Groupon, LivingSocial; Merchants have a choice
  • Intensive feet on street business with huge sales force.
  • Groupon Now – merchants are able to create own deals through Groupon

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Take case of Foursquare – they could possibly over throw Groupon.

My contention is that any platform and service that can empower merchants to run business and acquire consumers (new/repeat) will be able to overthrow Groupon in long run. While Groupon clearly demonstrates that local deals work, Foursquare has the technology & product to take it to the next level and give a tough competition to Groupon where it hurts most – at supply side (Merchants or Local Business Owners).

The biggest ‘cry’ we hear against Groupon is merchants complaining – its only the existing customers who use Groupon coupons for deals, and new consumers are not acquired/retained.

On the other hand, Foursquare –

  • As a product, consumers checkin at all locations and businesses (small, local & large)
  • Foursquare need to move beyond check-ins for two reasons
    > In sometime real consumers (not technology savvy early adopters) will not find value in badges & points.
    > Foursquare will need to have a monetization model that works!

Foursquare has valuable insights about users for the merchants – people who have checked in. They just need to quickly enable self-serve platform for business owners with a global sales footprint.

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Foursquare can just topple off Groupon and with its solution for merchants that covers every pain they have with Daily Deals services like Groupon, Living Social and 1000 others only for one reason – Business owners know who are new/repeat customers

  • They can enable deals for individually and for specific type of customers
    > Consumers who check-in for first time
    > Repeat & Regular customers
    > Consumers who have not checked-in since last 30 days
  • Decide what deal goes live when based on user interest, inventory available, and so on

More than that, they can –

  • Decide how much discount they should offer. To whom.
  • Take private feedbacks from customers on service
  • Push deals to customers on special occasions like birthdays & more
  • Pass on details about business Facebook & Twitter presence to customers – so that they can stay connected.
  • Analytics – who checks in, cost of acquisition of new customers, competition overview in same location

And most importantly – Foursquare should give ability to businesses to generate coupons, pass on to consumers in vicinity or existing customers which users can redeem immediately.

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In short – daily deals websites exploits local merchants. Foursquare can empower them!

The pitfall – Foursquare does not have a global sales footprint to enable this. Though technology savvy merchants back in US might adopt it, the business would scale when 1000s of merchants across the world are able to enable it. But again, thanks to the 8 Mn+ users – Foursquare already knows which businesses are popular and when they should start.

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If I had a million dollars and choice to invest in Groupon or Foursquare – i would surely bet on Foursquare!

My Prediction – Groupon or some player who has intention to venture big in local deals space will eventually acquire Foursquare or a majority stake.