From SXSW: Google Buzz and User Empathy

I was having lunch with Dare Obasanjo and Louis Gray yesterday. We were talking about FriendFeed and Google Buzz, and I was saying how I really didn't get either product. And something occurred to me that I think about sometimes, but rarely articulate.

I have been writing code and/or developing products for 30 years. But I am still a little bit dense. I don't like doing hard or annoying things. I am a bit lazy. I need things to be easy. And so that gives me, I think, user empathy, because I think I relate to how regular users think, and yet I still understand the code at a fairly deep level.

Having not gotten either's permission to quote what they said (not that it was controversial) I will not. But suffice it to say, it got me thinking about how easy it is for smart people to develop things that really don't have any relevance to regular people. Because if you are an uber geek, you probably have different problems than regular people.

The challenge of regular user empathy is particularly difficult because uber geeks are still the gateway to regular users. So your solution needs to address them, but to "cross the chasm" you need to be able to address problems that are bigger than just the geeks.

Google Buzz would be a total fail if it were from anyone but Google. Because its Google they have a chance to iterate and fix. But I suspect that, because the numbers look good they have no idea that they are failing. They have no idea that they are not solving any problem that actually needs solving. In fact I am not sure Buzz solves any problem other than how to get Google into the social media game. Of course, for Google, for now, that may be enough, but Google Buzz reflects a product that has absolutely no user empathy.

Who Returns Your email

One of my missions at SXSW is to connect with people that I have met online that I would like to meet in person, and to meet and interact with people that I have not met but want to. I have been pretty anti-social (aside from blogging) for the last few years, but now that it is getting near time for Kloudshare to launch I want to begin to talk to people about what we are up to and get feedback.

I probably have a slight advantage in reaching out to people than some others from having blogged for a while, but not much. In any case, the range of experiences one has in getting people to respond to you is interesting. There are some people who have been relatively easy to interact with and others who have been really tough. With some, you have empathy for what must be a really overwhelming influx of random communication, and for others (without naming names) you really get the sense that they are self absorbed a** holes.

As with everything in life, its all on a spectrum. I remember when I was running ClickRadio, I could get anyone on the phone -- the pinacle of which was having business conversations with Prince (at the time known as "The Artist"), and having dinner with Bill Clinton (in that order).

Ten years later, my reach is considerably smaller. At that time it was certainly harder to get me on the phone than it is today (though not that hard). Of course today there are many more random inbound channels than there were in 2000 making the management of the inbound much harder. In any case there's not really much of a point to this other than that it is really interesting to note where you are in the social order of the universe. Having been at both ends of the spectrum, and at various points in between over the years, I can appreciate all of the related challenges.

From SXSW: Oh That Sounds Like Yojimbo

So this morning I was walking the halls of SXSW and I bumped into Guy Kawasaki. We don't know each other, but back in the day when I was doing DayMaker, he had a PIM suite called TouchBase/Datebook. So I decided to say hello.

Anyway, we chatted for a second and he asked what I was doing now. I gave him a 20 second description. Since I am not here making any announcements, I wont repeat what I said. But once I was done he said, "you mean like Evernote."

I said, well there is a little bit of overlap, but not much. I then said, well its for storing everything that you have, and he said "there is a product from Bare Bones Software called Yojimbo that does that."

Of course I was pretty sure that was not true, but after we said goodbye, I sat down, pulled out my laptop and went to Bare Bones site. And of course, there is almost no comparison in terms of design, purpose, concept or execution between Kloudshare, and Yojimo.

The purpose of this is not to criticize Guy, or Bare Bones. But it does highlight what I have found to be an interesting challenge. All of us as human beings need to be able to understand things in the context of things we are already familiar with. We want to understand our movies by categorizing them. For example "Its Animal House meets Phantom of the Opera."

Of course that makes no sense. It is in a sense, a "shorthand" we tell people to help them understand what we are doing without really telling them, because that shorthand is what they need to help them understand. Now sometimes that shorthand is accurate. And sometimes its not at all. But it really doesn't matter. The idea is to help people to be interested, even if what you are telling them implies something that is entirely untrue. People need to be engaged enough to let you tell them more of your story. And of course the more jaded the recipient, the more short your shorthand needs to be.

Guy is an example of someone who needs a 10 second shorthand that is compelling. Because he is hearing these things all day, and I would imagine one's attention span gets short.

And so the challenge when you are doing something really big is to create the 5, 10, 30, and 60 second shorthand of what you your thing is. The 5 - 15 second versions, if they are good, are probably pretty inaccurate if they are effective. We still havent totally nailed ours but the story line is getting better. I would imagine Twitter had a similar problem since I have to admit it was *months* after they launched before I understood it at all. In any case, every one of these conversations is an excellent exercise in refining our presentation, and lots fun.