Hacking the Good Days... » Geek

Quick notes on fostering Innovation / Social Marketing

cathyma — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:24:08 +0000

Was lucky enough to escape the office and be inspired today at the MI Expo 2012, here are the topline updates (unfortunately had to leave early afternoon for meetings):

How Google does A/B testing with their YouTube Chrome campaign (see stats)

The 8 Innovation principles of Google:

How the Work Club (marketing agency) incoporated realtime race-car stats on the McLaren’s F1 website during a live race race results in massive uplift in user engagement at games. Please check out this video if you have a moment, highly recommend.

McLaren Telemetry from Work Club on Vimeo.

And here are the results of the campaign:

How @foursquare defines hypercontextual experience speaking ex-Googler 1st @foursquare uk employee @thecoolgeek http://t.co/Q3umYMrw
TV isn’t dead. 4hrs daily avg (Compared to Facebook’s 25 mins) except 75% of users combine TV experience w/ other technologies http://t.co/efDnKJtE

After thoughts from Facebook’s F8

cathyma — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:58:32 +0000

Just a quick summary (by no means conclusive) on the key findings from yesterday’s facebook product announcements in the simplest humanly readable format:

Facebook’s Timeline will become the key focus of the Facebook profile experience. They are trying to make all of your historical data on facebook lots more accessible (eventually you will see a year-to-year list on the right hand side so you can go back and look up what you’ve done last year this time, or add additional content/photos to your page).
Open Graph Apps Publishers and developers are now given the options to build apps that enrich the timeline. Imagine recipes I’ve cooked, music I’ve listened to, videos I’ve watched. A good social app would make it much easier for people to record what they have done, to find our what their friends are up to, and to share such action. More on (Btw if you put together a quick mock apps and choose an Open Graph action (e.g. ‘read’ a ‘book’, you will be given an option to preview the new Profile)

Open Graphs Actions and Objects Like and Recommend used to be the only two verbs enabled by Facebook’s Open Graph; they will now slowly roll out other actions including ‘listen, watch, read’. Eventually this will expand to other verbs that we can customise ourselves.

What does it mean to publishers?

ReadWriteWeb has a gloomy view of ‘once a user opts in, they will not realise they are sharing everything to everyone
Guardian seems to find a way to work around by essentially building their website inside facebook

They can monetise on with their own ads serve (See the MPUs and Skys – it’s theirs and Facebook has nothing to do with that)
Users interact with these content in a Facebook environment, which makes it more likely for them to realise their action might be shared across their networks
Users are clearly sign-posted that once they have read an article it would be added to their timeline, but also given the options to remove the article immediately (see screen grab below)

Exciting time; looks like this will definitely drive engagement up (as the sentimental drive is quite compelling to most of us) for Facebook. As for publishers, it’s about building clear objectives on what’s beneficial to business as it can be expensive building a Facebook App that nails the user experience, but the reward can be significant as well.

What really matters

cathyma — Sat, 28 May 2011 23:15:28 +0000

Many times I am asked, what is social media?

It’s funny how just 3 years ago my tech friends would literally shudder when they heard the term; as too often marketing terms get spinned around and completely lose their real meaning. Think of terms like ‘Web 2.0‘, ‘taxonomy‘, ‘the cloud‘.

But there’s something more about it. This time. This term. Social Media. It’s been staying and sticking around for the past 3 years. As of recent, some of us would just dropped the word ‘media’ and focus on ‘social’ instead. What is it?

The truth is, business and marketing aside, if we look at the intrinic needs of most of us, it’s about to attach and connect, to be soothed and feel belonged.

This is why when you broadcast about your product on Facebook people would block you; talking about yourself all the time you get unfollowed. But if you provide meaning, value, purposes to others, or even just being plain fun, cool, or randomly interesting, you get more traction and respect. The internet (and it’s more user-friendly layer popularised by platforms like Facebook and Twitter – which is how I define ‘social media’) is technically new, but not sociologically. Satisfy someone’s wants and needs, and they would like to keep connected to you albeit the medium. Be there for others, and they will follow. It’s too much of a cliche, but really, give to take.

Image on yogicquote

A letter to the clever hacker

cathyma — Sat, 21 May 2011 22:43:59 +0000

Dear Mr Hacker,

In the past couple of months I’ve noticed that my blog has been unfortunately ‘hacked’. And quite cleverly so.

Some one injected search-engine-viewable keywords that are not visible to the human eyes. As a result when you search my name, my blog appears as a really rich repository of useful herbal medicine for some.

I have been a bit bemused by the whole situation, though later realised it wasn’t as fun when I tried (still trying) to undo the damage. I have three years of blog posts and comments that I still hope to import and restore, but that at the moment looking more difficult than I imagined.

In the past 12 months I’ve joined a new company, my team and I worked together to launch a new social platform on two of their core sites (goodtoknow.co.uk and trustedreviews.com). We have also established IPC Media as Facebook’s first UK media partner – as a result we get to sneak peek new features and experiment and play. There’s also so much to do with the analytics front as well. So much time to learn, so little time to muck around.

As a result, I don’t think I have the resources (or can be asked) to worry about ‘my’ blog in the ‘ego-system’ of ‘social media’ at the moment. I don’t really care about myself (I guess I’m not fit enough to be a ‘social media guru’). Would you please leave this little pitiful blog alone, Mr. hacker? I don’t think I actually drive that much traffic to your site, your effort is probably wasted on my blog.

With warm regards,

Cathy

Looking for Good Developers for IPC Meda

cathyma — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:55:46 +0000

My dear friends, we’re hiring developers! Here’s the job spec.

We care about our developers and want the best for them. We recognise you are as good as people you work with when you’re in a team. Our developers are also our consultants, we look up to them and count on them to ship kick-ass products.

We are currently looking into streamlining core infrastructure, our single-sign-on system (with Facebook Connect Integration), as well as introducing social media to our brands… We need someone who works well in a team, conscientious, and perpetually wants to improve things around them.

Our technical team lead/ architect/ ninja comes with a very rich repertoire of knowledge in search, information architecture, and web standards.
My area of expertise is community design, sociology, social policy and stakeholder management (to keep developers away from noise). We just recently establised IPC Media as the first UK publisher to be Facebook’s media partner. Enough about us – at IPC you get to meet different models/stars/Angling experts/Horse fanatics – it’s never boring! Plus we organise regular learning events (next month we’re inviting A/B testing expert from LoveFilm and Google to come speak to us).

If this rings a bell to anyone, please kindly invite them to contact me directly! My gmail starts with ‘cathyma’ and that’s it.

More about IPC media – We have a portfolio of sites (Wallpaper, NME, Nuts, Marie Claire, Decanter for wine) and we’re growing a mobile development team as well.
http://www.ipcmedia.com/brands/
We’re also just around Borough Market… Chorizo burgers, anyone?

Please pass along/retweet. Thank you!

It’s harder to be kind than clever

cathyma — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 22:32:16 +0000

‘It’s harder to be kind than clever. [...] Cleverness is a gift. Kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy, they are given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gift if you’re not careful.’

Founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos

(Talk starts at 6:26)

What makes a First-Class Tester

cathyma — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 23:56:13 +0000

Note: This blog post is more for the techkies. Please skip if you’re not interested in product management or agile…

Been reading Manage It!, a product management book highly recommended by Phobeo (thanks! love it!) and I was particularly inspired by the roles of a first-class tester. Page 266 and paraphasing here. A first-class tester is someone who can

Be sufficiently creative to assess the design and architecture of the system before the code is written
When the code is implemented, design and implement their test harnesses, both automatic and manual, creating test the stress the system in ways the developers do not expect
Measure what they’ve tested, assess the risk of what they have tested
Know whether they have tested enough of the system to help you understand the risks of product release
Keep up with developers, assuming the developers are using continuous integration and not checking in a week’s worth (or more) of code at one time
Have a peer relationship with developers. They work as partners, not adversaries
Alter the way the developers create the product

‘When testers help developers see their problems early, the developers are more likely to include the testers in other requirements and design discussions.’

This is so inspiring that I feel that I am suffering from first-class-tester-envy. Testing should not be seen as a tedious job on pointing out flaws in system. A great tester is not a doctor that tells patience what’s wrong with them. A great tester is a nutritionist and a fitness instructor or yoga teacher (whatever school you prefer) that keeps the system and the process ‘fit’. Ideally by the time you run automatic and system test, all readings should be healthy. A first class tester reduces the risks of finding big problems towards the end of the product development cycle and be the source of truth in the team. A great tester is an inspiration and part of the core fabric in a team.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear” — Ambrose Redmoon

Lessons from the wisemen, 2010

cathyma — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 22:49:28 +0000

Some of you who followed my blog may notice that I tend to write a reflective piece (like this and this) towards the end/beginning of the year. Every year I was surprised by much learning/people/inspiration that came into my life; for that, I thank you. Here is my list for 2010,

1. A filled up or empty bottle won’t make noises. Bottles that are half-filled are the noisiest.

That’s actually a Chinese proverb. I learnt that there words are messy and actions speak louder. Sometimes in order to be heard it’s not about being loud, but to be quiet. When you speak little but only speak when there is something meaningful to say, people listen. If you shout, you almost prove that point that you are not worth listening to. Most powerful way to be listened to, however, is to speak with actions. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a friend who is grieving is just to say nothing and sit next to them.

2. Inaction can be the most powerful action

When life gets bit tough and confusing, it can feel like you’re lying under water when a pebble hitting the river bed. At times like this, it’s best to be still. With stillness you can look inwards and listen to yourself; what is it, why are you not happy? You may get a new perspective and realise that you are not even standing in the river you want to be in. Time to move on.

3. You can’t control everything in life, but you can be good to yourself

This classic research shows that lack of control is more likely to induce ulcer in animals despite the same level of shock administrated. It is unfortunate that we have no control on many things in life. From a taoist point of view, pursuing the infinite (the many things we won’t be able to change) with the finite (our limited being) is a dangerous path. Next time when you are angry with the ‘thing’ at work, at other people, at the tube strike, just let go and accept the fact that you have no control over. And notice the shortness of breath that happens when you are angry. Why don’t give your feet a tennis ball massage, get a nice haircut, or treat yourself your favourite magazine/book?

4. It feels good to assume the goodness in human nature

This mini saga story that I posted before is worth repeating here on this topic,

The waitress repeated, “Medium $3, Large $3.50.” The kid had emptied his pocket. He had $4 in total. The waitress was getting impatient. Five minutes. Finally, the kid asked for a medium scoop. Later, the waitress came to clean and swallowed hard. There was $1 bill left as a tip.

Read more: http://www.rajeshsetty.com/2010/10/04/mini-saga-61-thoughtfulness/#ixzz1A6YwG2Po
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike

My little coping mechanism in modern society (don’t I sound like a caveman?) is to think of a story that would sufficiently justify someone’s ill action (though it’s all done in my tiny brain so that it wouldn’t risk being ‘patronising’). For example, if someone pushes you to get onto the tube, I’d think, ‘ah maybe she’s standing all day at work and really need the seat’. Of course, sometimes people do push your buttons too much – in that case I’ll just go back to point number 3 and pull out my box of chocolate. That, for sure, would make everything better.

5. Judgment, attachment and resistance are the barriers to the present

During this year’s (yoga) practice we studied more about the concept of duality. Heaven and Earth, Joy and Sorrow, the Past and the Future. But what intrigues me is how hard it is to stay in the present. How many hours do we waste worrying? Or busy planning our next steps? I love the saying (ironically as a product manager) ‘life is what happens when you’re busy planning’. As well as ‘things you worry are usually not the problems. Real problems are things that would not even have come across your mind.’

And how we love judging. ‘The coffee isn’t good enough.’ Attachment. ‘This is not how I used to feel when I was with xx’. Resistance – the feeling that you’d rather be somewhere else or doing something else. All these vices. It’s nice if we can all take a moment to feel the earth we stand on, air we inhale, people we love, and just being with our own selves without any judgment.

6. Focus on the minimum, incremental chuck of improvement

I cannot even begin to articulate how much I learnt from Agile (for my non techkie friends – is a software development philosophy/methodology) and how that can be apply to my personal life. The main gist of Agile that inspires me is the notion of focusing on the little incremental, deliverable improvements that yield the most results. The example I love is if there’s one thing that you can do to tidy up your room – make your bed. So that you come home and you always have something nice and tidy to tug in. Don’t worry about buying a house, but start thinking about how much you can comfortably put away each month. Don’t worry about buying that amazing experience for your mum, but to send her a text message to let her know that you love her your way. The magical switch is not how much you plan to do, but how little and how you do it well.

7. Change is the Constant in Life

Finally – I guess if I were to put a theme to the year 2010, lots of it is about upheavals and changes, some of them for the worse first, then ease into blessing later. Some are just straight-up happy shocks (hello to my pregnant friends and babies of 2010!). Life happens when you least expects it. I hope year 2011 would awaits you with a few lovely, delightful surprises around the corner. Hope you enjoy reading my highlight of 2010… and here’s your treat!

Wish you a very happy 2011.

Recap of the Internet Giant discussion

cathyma — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:49:28 +0000

Yesterday I went to a panel discussion at the Google office with some heavy-weight industry leaders on the future of the internet, with the first half focusing on the venture capital environment of the UK and Europe and the second half focusing on the future of the internet:

Reid Hoffman, Chairman & Founder, LinkedIn (Social)
David Hornik, Partner, August Capital (Investor)
Julie Hanna, Chairman, Kiva (Micro-Finance)
Nick Beim, Partner, Matrix (Investor)
Jose Ferreira, CEO, Knewton (Education)
John Lilly, CEO, Mozilla (Internet)
Mike Schroepfer, VP of Engineering, Facebook (Social)
Allen Morgan, Partner, Mayfield (Investor)
Joi Ito, CEO, Creative Commons (Publishing)
Sheila Marcelo, CEO & Founder, Care.com (Health)
Piraye Yurttas, Co-Founder, Cellmatix (Biotech)
Nancy Lublin, CEO, Do Something (Social)
Ted Shelton, CEO, Open-First (Internet)
Adam Nash, VP of Product, LinkedIn (Social)

I’m hightlight my favourite (paraphased) bits here:

From Reid (Chairman & Founder, LinkedIn), ‘The most interesting disruption of technologies rarely comes from those who are close to the problem. It’s those who don’t know much that poses the questions that completely change the way we think.‘ Coming from his rich experience of working with PayPal and LinkedIn, ‘what’s cashback? *chuckles* yeah we found out later, oops’. That’s quite true. That’s why never stop a child wondering why. Perhaps they are right in asking those questions, perhaps you have been too busy with your life to stop asking those questions.

David (Partner, August Capital), ‘I don’t worry about the big companies. Remember the day when we all thought that AOL got it. They have the best design/product. There’s always someone out there doing something that can disrupt the system, even as big as Facebook – look at MySpace, it used to be the crown jewel and darling of social networking. Look at where it is now.‘ What is more interesting is the mood of the panel. Despite being hosted at Google, there wasn’t a speaker from Google. John added that he loves Google, ‘but seeing that Google has to raise salary to retain talent, it is recognising that it is a big corporation. Reasons to work for Google is no longer just about innovation.’

Julie (Chairman, Kiva), ‘Look at Microsoft. 10 years ago people were afraid to launch something because Microsoft might crush it. Now you don’t hear them being mentioned anymore. 10 years and there is lots of changes and we are working in one of the most fast-moving industry and you must stay current to keep up. I am sure there are a few companies out their working hard that may take on big companies like Google and Facebook.’

When David said, ‘Thanks to Facebook my wife is losing 2 hours of her day everyday,’ Mike said, ‘you’re welcome.’ That was pretty funny considering he’s the VP of Engineering for Facebook.

I particularly like Sheila’s (CEO & Founder, Care.com) crisp approach to start up (she’s founded two and now working on the third one), ‘I founded care.com because I’ve done enough start-ups to start doing what I care the most. I have a daugher and I know how hard it is to find trust-worthy carers. Many people live with loved ones whom need to be cared for and it’s a challenge to find trustworthy care for them. I do what I feel most passionate about and I make money out of it, which I have no problem with.‘ She’s really inspirational as a female entrepreneur. Like what Paul Graham says, the best startups solves the problems that founders what to solve for themselves.

Nancy (who found a site that enables young people to literally do something), ‘The most competitive jobs in the US for fresh uni grads aren’t what you’d expect. There are the elite students competing to teach in the most under nourished parts in the states, the acceptence rate of these jobs is as low as 7%. Teens that I talk to today want *meaning*.’ Really heart-warming to hear. Wonder if it’s a global trend? That really resonates with the book I’m reading currently, Hackers & Painters, of why ‘geeks are unpopular’ in school. The urge to search for meaning, and the urge to be smarter (hence no time to work on being popular and maybe actually don’t want to be popular because that’s more work), and having outgrown your surrounding and the yearn for meaning. Did I say meaning twice?

Incidentally yesterday I came across the threat (or it is a matter of fact already?) net neutrality was dead,

U.K. Communications Minister Ed Vaizey will say today that Internet service providers should be free to favor traffic from one content provider over another, provided customers are informed, the Financial Times reported.

For those who are not familiar with this ‘net neutrality’ thing – in my own words it means that for companies that can afford to do so, they can pay Internet Service Providers, like BT or Virgin in the UK, to speed up your site access to these sites. It bothers me because it disrupts the market and it’s not fair to smaller companies (innovative ones) that are not yet ready to compete with the giants. It promotes an uneven landscape for development. It poses futher challenges for little sites to reach critical mass (as if there’s not enough). It aggrevates existing unfair advantages of big companies. Posted it to the discussion, and John Lilly (former CEO of Mozilla) jumped on it, adding that, ‘what we want isn’t just the big bang innovation, we want to the little innovations.‘ In fact, the panel did seem as concerned as how the tiered approach can hinder the openness of the internet and innovation.

If only there’s a hashtag to yesterday’s discussion? I wonder what the others think.

Dear Google, why do you want me to be scared of you?

cathyma — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 12:52:18 +0000

A great slideshow on all the privacy-related quote from the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, and I thought I was the one that can get caught for saying the ‘wrong thing’. Coming from a Hong Kong Chinese background means that I am particularly sensitive to governmental access to personal data for the use of ‘security’ or censorship, or even just plain monitoring. Hence page 7 of Schmidt’s quote,

“In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you,” Schmidt said at the 2010 Techonomy conference, arguing that there were dangers to having complete anonymity online and that governments may eventually put an end to anonymity. “We need a [verified] name service for people,” he said. “Governments will demand it.”

really made me jumped. What would happen if user data is to be centralised and processed and used for ‘the greater good’? Who would have access to these data? How, as an individual, do we protect ourselves? I wonder if any users ever imagine whether it is possible that a super admin who works for a big information corporation (be it Google, Facebook or mobile operators or even the company you work for) would have access to open your profile and go through what you’ve been through. Perhaps the best way to handle this is for someone to never become famous, or ‘important’ enough that your personal information becomes valuable enough.

I had a discussion with my fellow researcher friends whose focus is on censorship in China and it’s Great ‘Fire Wall’ (a pun to the great wall). I have heard numerous feedback that having a firewall that blocks access to certain ‘sensitive website’ is a disgrace. I do not contest with that. But I would challenge anyone that psuedo-openness is even more of a disgrace, to Boyd’s point,

The battle that is underway is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It’s a battle over choice and informed consent. It’s unfolding because people are being duped, tricked, coerced, and confused into doing things where they don’t understand the consequences. Facebook keeps saying that it gives users choices, but that is completely unfair. It gives users the illusion of choice and hides the details away from them “for their own good.”

We are keeping our eyes open while injecting lots of valuable user data into sites like Facebook. What I like is the paradox that Facebook’s official line is about openness which is almost the polar opposite to the discourse of the Chinese Internet. However I argue that at least in China, people are *aware* of censorship, and there workarounds. As Andrew puts it,

“China’s users are too busy enjoying the Internet they have, rather than lamenting the one they don’t.”

Welcome to moral dilemmas of the twenty first century.