A couple of weeks later, I did receive my tshirt and two cute little luggage tags:

This is a great way to create brand loyalty. Not only, am I going to continue to use hipmunk to show my support, I am actually help spread it around. When a few of my colleagues saw the goodies I received, they immediately started asking questions about the company and of course they will be checking it out too. This is a great story of how companies can get your users to bring new customers for them by driving word of mouth advertising. The genesis of all of this is the product.  If users love it enough they will want their friends and family to use it as well and go out of their way to recommend it…

In addition to providing deals on goods to its users, Trendyol has a social element. Trendyol’s Facebook page has over 500K followers and it provides fashion advice to its community. This allows Trendyol to not only bring great deals to consumers but also keep them up to date with the latest fashion trends and create an entirely new shopping experience. As a result, Trendyol creates a stickier relationship with the consumers increasing the customer lifetime value.

I think that countries like Turkey have great potential in the future for new generation commerce companies to emerge. With the acceleration of adoption of new technologies in the relatively underpenetrated emerging world, we are going to see more investments being made to startups focused on addressing these markets.

Once again, I really enjoyed reading through Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends presentation this year (see below).

 
One interesting highlight that caught my eye was how quickly the mobile adoption rate was growing despite the recession. Also, Meeker highlighted some countries that had the highest Y/Y adoption rate which is truly incredible and shows how much opportunity there is overseas.

Another interesting highlight was in mobile search. I have been focusing on mobile search for almost a year now and there was little focus on it back then and very few companies were even talking about mobile marketing strategies. However, as mobile adoption rate rapidly increases, the tremendous potential in this area has been more and more emphasized. What makes mobile so special is that it makes the Internet ubiquitous and our connection to it seamless. We can be connected to the rest of the world 24/7.

With the continued adoption of smartphones, there’s so much opportunity for disruptive mobile companies to emerge and make consumers’ lives easier. As mobile industry continues to evolve, we’re going to see a continued focus on geolocation. Mobile behavior is more real-time and task driven as opposed to desktop user behavior, hence there’s a lot of opportunity for utility focused products/technologies to emerge that will enhance people’s lives.

I recently came across this awesome presentation from UC Berkeley professor Sara Beckman on product development*, which reinforces why Product Managers should “forget about personal problems and worry about customers lives.” Like she says, the important thing is NOT why you personally want to use this product or why you think it’s cool.  Instead, you should be thinking about why your customer would rather use your product, rather than any other product.

Many companies fall into the trap of making profit and forgetting about their consumers. When times are good, they can get away with this.  When times are tough, however, things can get ugly really quickly when you stop innovating or focusing on consumers. This is why having PMs who live and breathe what their customers need and how to solve their problems will make any company more successful than their competitors.

*unfortunately this awesome presentation has been taken down from the website.

What makes Spotify unique than its peers is that 1. it’s legal, 2. it’s social.  I had various conversations with people about Spotify and their first question about the product was “is it legal?”. Consumers care if your product is legal, because it makes them feel better to know that they’re not stealing music. This is why a ton of people migrated from Grooveshark to Spotify although Spotify’s monthly subscription rate is more expensive.

The other features that makes Spotify is so special is the Facebook integration. I always enjoy discovering new music, and this allowed me to go through my friend’s music lists and explore new artists. I honestly haven’t used iTunes much ever since. This shows how much the social element matters for new generation products. Although one negative thing about Spotify is that the selection of music is limited. I would like to see the day when I can listen to my favorite Radiohead album In Rainbows or most importantly, the Beatles.

Watch Sean Parker interview at Web 2.0 2011 Summit:

I am a big fan of watching product launches. Watching f8 was really exciting in number of ways, first, this is one of the biggest product launches Facebook held in a long time, second, it’s nice to see that Mark Zuckerberg is getting better at public speaking (he must have learned a trick or two from Jobs?).

As soon as I found out about timeline, I had to get it. Within the next couple of hours, after some research, I was able to find a loophole to become a developer and enable timeline for my account (here are the instructions: http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/22/how-to-enable-facebook-timeline/).

I know there’s going to be a big revolt when Facebook Timeline gets launched to the rest of the user base, however I really think it’s one of the best products Facebook launched so far. First of all, I’m in awe with the new design, and it appears that Mark Zuckerberg and his team really get the social networking challenges. Frictionless sharing is a genius idea and will eliminate the whole unnecessary sharing that appears on your newsfeed. I’d much rather be reading important news than someone like a random page on fb.

While I think that the majority of Facebook users will hate Timeline, younger generations will embrace this. It’s a perfect way to create your digital identity and build your history online. There’s no way I can remember where I was or what I was doing 10 years ago with specific details, but Facebook will enable younger generations to look back and remember everything so vividly, and this makes the product so special.

I hope that more people will appreciate Timeline in the near future.

While it is important to make sure that business goals are met, and employees are meeting deadlines on their assigned projects, it is also important to focus on individual goals and creating a nurturing environment where employees feel like they are working on what they’re passionate about. This reminded me of a video that I watched a year ago which really inspired me.  It gives an incredible insight on what motivates people. I really think this is why companies who focus on product and their people do so well.

Enjoy:

I have been following foursquare for quite some time now. The idea itself is really out of the box, and initially it was relatively misunderstood. Users kept asking, why would I want to disclose my location? However, as the importance of creating a digital identity and the continued adoption of smartphones and the transition from desktop internet consumption to mobile, people were less worried about giving out personal details of their life. I went through the entire check-in craze, to collect badges, get mayorships, but there came point where I asked myself, what’s the point anymore?

Yes, checkins and badges are cool but you grow out of it. foursquare has since released some amazing product features such as “explore”. However, they haven’t really released any substantive initiatives to re-incentivize usage beyond badges. Yes, I still use foursquare, but badges don’t really excite me anymore. And I’m sure a lot of other users will agree with me. This is one of the main reasons why foursquare has experienced serious retention problems. People sign up for it, because they think it’s cool, but they eventually grow out of it and the Company has not evolved with its users.

A company like foursquare at this stage has a ton of challenges. How do you scale it, how do you keep growing users, and how do you make sure your current users are continuously engaged with the product? Those are great/tough challenges to have. How does one deal with these challenges? My personal opinion: Get your users excited! Challenge them! Take the badges to the next level.

Connoisseurship

Foursquare should adopt an incentivization program allowing users to become a connoisseur of a specific area. This ranking would be socially ascribed and based partially on the activity of the user and partially on the quality of his contribution as determined by the wider foursquare community. Giving the opportunity to users to focus on an area of expertise is a great way to let them identify themselves as unique individuals create sticky relationships with the stronger contributors, reinforcing the network effect. Yelp did this for its dedicated users through its Power Yelper program to great success. Reward them, give them a reason to stick with your product as opposed to growing out of it so quickly.

What does the connoisseurship specifically entail? You can be a connoisseur in anything! Mac & cheese connoisseur for instance (I know that I would be the first one to get that :)) Or a graffiti connoisseur, let users find the best graffiti’s in town, let them post pictures, write comments. Make it challenging to get these connoisseurships, have them work at it (by posting pictures, writing tips etc). Most importantly, you can create a more social environment by creating meetups for people with similar interests. And you will solve your problem of users who can’t find any friends there. Not only, this will help your retention problem, it will also allow you to become more a utility. As your loyal users are trying so hard to create content, it will help other users who are seeking for information easier to find. Importantly, these initiatives will drive content generation which in turn will drive SEO improvements and organic growth.

Following

Lastly, expanding on the subject of distribution, why can’t you have the option to follow people on foursquare? We have seen twitterification of facebook and yet foursquare still only allows you friend people. You can’t even put up a headline, to identify yourself, a way to make yourself unique… The product itself is limiting its users where we are at a time, digital identity is one of the most important things out there, and the ability of expressing yourself is crucial.

These are my two cents. Best of luck to foursquare!