prestons

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Going forward I'll use my prestonsmalley.com to share thoughts that I can't fit into 140 characters (@prestons twitter feed). See you there!

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Visual overview of many of the core tenets to consider when designing for viral growth. Keep in mind that increasing the "speed" of the loop is the most often overlooked component and quite important--just asks a rabbit. 

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5 things you didn't know Comcast offered

As I go to holiday parties this year and talk about what I do at work, I keep hearing from people that just aren't aware of how much Comcast and its services have changed over the last year or two. So I put together a list of the top 5 things people often don't know we offer...

1. A DVR that doesn't suck

Comcast is rolling out an entirely new, cloud-based TV experience, called the X1 Platform. It's built from the ground up to be a more intuitive, visual experience that's connected to the web the way you'd expect your TV to be in 2012 (now available in the SF Bay Area). 

It makes channel-surfing easier keeping track of your last 9 shows visually. Offers episode guides for your shows listing what's on your DVR, OnDemand, and upcoming on air. Finally it offers a slew of apps (many built by my team) that enable you to do everything from seeing your Facebook photos on the big screen, to checking your commute's traffic, to listening to Pandora.

2. Remote control using your phone

Whether you're on your couch or at work, many don't realize you can use your smartphone or tablet to tune your TV's channel or record a show. One of these apps, built by my team, aims to solve the problem of thousands of channels but you still can't find something good to watch.

The What's On app, in a visual way, shows you what's trending on TV right now that you might want to watch. Over time we'll learn what types of shows and channels you like and then tailor the results to you. This week we also added to ability to share with your friends what you're watching which eventually will improve your results as well. Finally if you want to control your DVR or browse a grid-based guide, check out the XFINITY TV app for iOS or Android.

3. A Sports Experience built for Fans

Finding what games are on now is a whole lot easier with the Sports App offered for X1 or your iPhone/iPad. It shows you each match-up by league/conference, the current score, airing time, channel etc. From the app you can tune directly or set a recording on DVR.

While the game's playing keep track of the other games you're interested in, so you'll always know when its time to switch channels.

4. Downloadable movies to take with you

Comcast's already got thousands of TV shows and movies OnDemand (most free) but that doesn't help you when you're on the airplane without the Internet... until now.

With the new XFINITY TV Player app you now can download TV shows and movies directly to your iPad/iPhone or Android tablet to watch where ever you want--meaning you'll no longer have to pay for that in-flight movie again. And if you're on WiFi for Verizon LTE you can stream an even larger selection of titles.

5. Access to a large list of direct streaming apps

With you TV subscription comes access to a growing number of mobile streaming apps offered directly by content providers--if you get the channel, you can use the app. My kids love the Disney Jr app to catch up on their Mickey Mouse Clubhouse but here's just a sample of what's out there...

        Finally, gone are the days of waiting around all day for the cable guy to show up. Comcast's uses a narrower 2 hour window now if the service technician doesn't make it out the Comcast Guarantee will credit you $20 or a free premium channel for 3 months as a way of showing we messed up. But please let me know if this ever doesn't work out as I'd hate to see one of my friends not taken care of. :)

To wrap up this is really just the start as there's lots more in the works to make your TV experience even better. Since my team plays a role in the above please let me know what you think.

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1000 channels but what should you watch?

This week my team here at Comcast Silicon Valley put out a new iOS app aimed at solving the age-old problem of finding something on TV but in a fresh new way. 

What's On by Comcast Labs shows XFINITY TV customers, in a visual way, what's on right now sorted by a proprietary algorithm that puts what we think will be most popular programs for a given time slot and then tune/record directly from the app. 

The app enables you to personalize the experience with your favorite shows, channels, and even what shows you and your friend's like on Facebook. For your favorite shows we'll push an alert the day a new episode will air so you won't miss it. 

By default the app will bias toward HD versions of shows but you can also filter to see just what movies are on (or starting soon), kids shows, sports, or just what "new" episodes are airing. 

Since we're big fans of the Lean Startup methodology, here's some of the hypotheses we're looking to validate that customers want to:

Browse Live TV listings in a visual way sorted by popularity

Receive push alerts for new episodes of their favorite shows.

Connect their social graph to see what shows their friends “Like”

We've got lots more ideas of things we want to try but also will be listening to you and watching the metrics closely to see where we should focus. In positioning it as "by Comcast Labs" we hope to learn a lot from this app and there's a strong possibility any successful features could make there way into other XFINITY offerings.

Let me or the team (whatson@sv.comcast.com) know what you think!

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Where did the @ Symbol come from?

We use it everyday but have you thought of where it came from? Turns out that it has several possible origins from a medieval Monk shorthand in Latin transcriptions to French penmanship to Florentine merchants setting pricing per unit measurement.  However it was  Ray Tomlinson in 1971 that made it into the frequently used symbol we think of today denoting which server your email address resides (not to mention the Twitter handles of today).

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History of the Remote Control

Fascinating evolution from just a few buttons 60 years ago to nearly a hundred as told by Slate. I sure hope we as an industry are quickly headed back down to a lot less plus maybe a Siri-like microphone. 

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Know any Great Product Managers?

I'm now leading a new team at the Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center to develop apps across Xfinity's mobile and TV platforms. This is a chance to reach over 30 million households with the next generation ways of interacting and consuming media content. 

If you or someone you know has a passion for building great consumer product experiences for mobile or the TV itself, let me know as I'm looking to hire. I

Open roles on my team:

Product Manager, Apps for the TV - Innovate the "10 foot experience" on interactive TV apps for the new cloud-based Xfinity X1 platform. 

Product Manager, TV Apps for Mobile - Build apps for iOS and Android around how people discover, engage, and share what's on TV.

Product Manager, Entertainment Apps for Mobile - Build apps for iOS and Android around targeted audiences (e.g. Music Videos, Kids).

Plus lots of developer roles for iOS, front-end web, and server technologies. 

Should be a lot of fun!

Update 8/17/12: Most of these positions are now filled but I am still looking for the "Apps for the TV" role if you know anyone that might be fit.

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Ave # of Facebook Friends

Pew reports the average number of Facebook friends to be 229 (May 2012) which lines up with analysis on the Facebook S1 which pegs it at 234. This huge rise from the numbers Facebook's shared previously: 130 (2010) and 100 (2008). 

However the greater story is in how the numbers vary by generation. With Millennials averaging 318 and in my experience showing significant outliers among college students above 1,000. 

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Mary Meeker - 2012 Internet Trends

Kara Swisher of the WSJ posted the video footage (17 min) today of Mary Meeker's (KPCB) D10 presentation on Internet Trends (5/30/12).

My top three takeaways:

1. 10% of time on Mobile but only 1% of advertising dollars (lots of upside)

BUT eCPMs are 5X lower on mobile vs. desktop.

HOWEVER Japan has shown mobile RPU can be monetized

Some app makers are making up the revenue up on volume

2. Two firehoses for growth: Facebook Open Graph and Apple App Store

Viddy got 17MM users in 7 days (similar w/Socialcam)

The combination of the two platforms magnify each other

3. Personally excited about the "white space" in the Car and TV

52 minutes/day by 144MM Americans in cars (I do 2X that)

3 hours/day in front of TVs with 50MM now Internet connected

She then went on to share her views on the US Economy which is mostly bearish with a few bright spots (like on-shoring the smartphone OS market).

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What was missing in the 1st iPhone? (5 years later)

This week Apple will share their latest innovations at WWDC. However, I think its time we reflect back on what Steve Job's announced 5 1/2 years ago at Macworld 2007: the 1st iPhone (worth another watch). 

Steve Jobs pitched it under the backdrop other historic Apple products:

Macintosh (1984) - which changed the computer industry

iPod (2001) - which changed the music industry

of which it definitely became the third industry changing product for the company. 

But remember what was missing?

It didn't have the App Store - Native third-party apps weren't available until 18 months after the announcement in mid-2008.

It wasn't affordable - It cost a steep $599 and was cut in price by $200 two months after launch. 

It wasn't mass adopted - Despite the lines, only 1.2M were sold in the first full qtr of availability (vs. the 35M last qtr ending Mar 2012)

It didn't have push email or MS Exchange support - the most important feature on other "smartphones"... missing. 

It didn't have GPS - It triangulated "good enough" location using wi-fi and cell towers, but no chip til the 3G. 

Yet, we already look upon the Apple iPhone as one of the most successful consumer products ever. It shows how in Lean Startup language, Apple's MVP did everything they needed to learn about the market and the space.

Apple focused on what it could do better and in a unique way. That's good advice we each should take when building our new products. 

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My First Lean Startup - In Brief

At last night's Lean Startup meetup (video), Eric Ries inspired us to share stories of how we're applying various techniques, so here goes... 

In January, I had the the idea to build a new app which would enable us to make more meaningful birthday wishes to our friends in the form of something called a  BirthdayGram. However I was determined to avoid investing millions of dollars into an idea only to find out later, it wasn't needed or desired by customers. Having recently read The Lean Startup, I was inspired by the Intuit "intrepreneur" story and thought it fit well my situation operating with the larger Comcast. So I convinced my team and my boss that we should give Lean Startup a try and we were on our way.

Over the course of next few months we applied the Lean Startup principles and shaped our nacent product. We started running experiments almost immediately as we aimed to validate our most core hypotheses. We also were determined to only build what was necessary to gain learning and deferred issues of scaling / marketing to later as we didn't need very many users to measure success.

Part of our concept is combining videos from multiple friends into one montage to be shared on the recipient's Facebook Timeline on their birthday. However building a complex automated video editing solution would be quite resource intensive. Since we only expected a manageable number of users at the beginning we decided to have a small team in India manually edit the videos by hand (turned out to only cost about $0.20 / video). 

We also focused solely on iOS to start even though we knew we'd like to offer a webcam and Android experience eventually. While we'd track interest in those other two platforms we could easily understand what we were "missing out" in terms of virility without them. 

In launching our MVP in April the lessons learned went on overdrive. We were able to measure all our metrics in realtime using Mixpanel and see what aspects of our viral engine of growth were working (lots of people invited) and which were not (invite conversion sucked). We also saw how meaningful it was for recipients to receive a BirthdayGram which inspires us to persevere.  

Assuming there's interest I'm could expand with details on the following topics:

Defining Hypotheses and Running Experiments - How focus enabled us to find creative ways to gather customer feedback and only build what was necessary. 

Optimizing a Viral Engine of Growth - How we used AARRR funnel metrics to understand whether we were improving our core engine even with just hundreds of users. 

Using the Five Why's - Examples of how running a service for real and having problems taught us way more than if we had waited longer to launch. 

Time will tell if this all turns out to be a good idea. But either way, I'm learning how to be a better entrepreneur. :)

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Facebook as "King Maker" thru its Newsfeed and Open Graph

Above shows how pivotal Facebook's algorithms are in driving awareness and adoption of new apps can be which can be magnified by Apple's own model for promoting apps that are suddenly being downloaded at high rates. It bodes well for the power Facebook's new App Center could have. 

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How to miss a childhood

As a father of three, I was deeply moved by this mother's reflection on a note she got from this day care provider...

I can recall a time when you were out with your children you were really with them. You engaged in a back and forth dialog even if they were pre-verbal. You said, ‘Look at the bus, see the doggie, etc.’ Now I see you on the phone, pushing your kids on the swings while distracted by your devices. You think you are spending time with them but you are not present really. When I see you pick up your kids at day care while you’re on the phone, it breaks my heart. They hear your adult conversations. What do they overhear? What is the message they receive? I am not important; I am not important.

I can remember back when I first got a smartphone and my oldest was just a baby. I thought then about how I didn't want to be one of those parents that was so immersed in my phone that I was not present with my children. We banned phones while eating as a family and I always kept my phone in the other room at night.

However as the years have passed, I can identify with too many of the situations observed by this mother and think I need to take a renewed approach to being present. One exercise that helped was imagining my little kids as teenagers at a time when I very much want to talk and interact with them... yet they were too distracted by their own devices. I would hate to feel that we didn't set a good example of how to be human and how to be present.

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Kids Online Privacy

I attended an app privacy summit yesterday at Stanford and one of the most insightful things I heard was from Lorraine Akemann with "Moms with Apps". They are driving forward an initiative called playnicewithdata.org to create a kind of nutrition label for parents making decisions about which apps to let their children use. 

There is a key role for all of us to play... Parents, Developers, Policy Makers, and Innovators. I'd also add that App Platform Operators (Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon) also have a key enabling role to play.

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How to use a Bullet Graph to show your lean-startup metrics (AARRR) in a more accessible way than the typical funnel chart. 

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People like Facebook. People use Facebook. People love Instagram.

Om Malik

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My favorite visual of the Instagram $1B acquisition today.