tech

    WhatsApp is Different

    WhatsApp is Different

    During a dim sum lunch with staff, someone asked Koum why he wasn’t crowing to the press about it. “Marketing and press kicks up dust,” Koum replied. “It gets in your eye, and then you’re not focusing on the product.”
    How Whatsapp was born, a very interesting read.

    Five Hard Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before Starting Up

    Five Hard Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before Starting Up

    Twitter is fantastic in broadcast mode, but terrible in consumption mode.

    Spot on analysis by Frédéric Filloux for the Monday Note. Twitter is great because broadcasters (heavy users) say so. But it’s still unfathomable for non-heavy users and those with very little following, like myself.

    Twitter announced good numbers last week but it is failing in user growth. With a new interface, which could spawn a new approach to the product, Twitter can get its growth mojo back.

    So Twitter product designers, solve this problem.

    Specialization might give you a temporary boost in productivity, but it comes at the expense of overall functional cohesion and shared ownership. If only Jeff can fiddle with the billing system, any change to the billing system is bottlenecked on Jeff, and who’s going to review his work on a big change?
    David from 37signals shares some interesting thoughts on specialization in a startup. Everyone needs to do (at least a little bit of) everything.

    Product Hunt

    Product Hunt

    News: Mobile Trends to Keep In Mind

    News: Mobile Trends to Keep In Mind

    I think about what constantly-flowing information means for blogging. In some ways this is Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. But what if someone started a stand-alone blog that wasn’t a series of posts, but rather a continuous stream of blurbs, almost like chat. For example: “I just heard…” or “Microsoft launching this is stupid, here’s why…” — things like that. More like an always-on live blog, I guess.

    It’s sort of strange to me that blogs are still based around the idea of fully-formed articles of old. This works well for some content, but I don’t see why it has to be that way for all content. The real-time communication aspect of the web should be utilized more, especially in a mobile world.

    Great ideas from MG Siegler

    An always-on blog, strapped to the news and connected to social services which would allows for a continuous stream of blurbs. Or reactions, if you see that always-on blog as some sort of news identity.