Briefing: Reddit's new B2B tools, WhatsApp for Math, an API to clone your team
Plus: Spotify rolls out video, the State of SaaS integrations 2024, what exactly is a web app?
Hi product people 👋,
Generative AI video startup Tavus has raised $18m to develop a series of new APIs. One of them, the “replica API” will allow you to create a replica of key members of their leadership team which can be embedded anywhere. Use cases relevant for product teams could include in-product onboarding, marketing campaigns or helping new developers and team members onboard with replica-generated videos presented by CTOs. You can watch an example of this use case in action here.
Amazon also unveiled new genAI features of its own this week. The latest feature enables users to create a product listing page simply by entering the URL of the product from their own website. In a post outlining the new feature, Amazon VP Mary Beth Westmoreland said that over 100,000 sellers have so far used their genAI tools.
Other products worth checking out include this new alternative to Otter for meeting transcripts. It works just like Otter but with a difference: it tailors your meeting notes for different types of audiences such as your technical and non-technical stakeholders - and drafts an email for you, too.
Meanwhile, Reddit is gearing up for its IPO by releasing a series of new features for businesses who use the platform. The new toolkit called Reddit Pro marks a shift away from its B2B efforts so far which have been mainly focused on advertising and instead towards tools which help businesses create and manage an organic presence on Reddit. The tools include insights analytics for understanding how users interact with competitors and publishing tools for creating community posts. For product teams and tech companies in general, creating an official subreddit dedicated to your product still feels like an untapped channel.
Finally, if you’re a fan of simple note taking apps and you’re looking for an alternative to Notion, Keep and others, this new app might be worth trying.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Essential reads for product teams
New from the Department of Product Substack this week
Knowledge Series - What exactly is a web app?
When software engineers talk about building an app, most non-technical people assume they mean a mobile app. But that’s not always the case. For product teams who are building products for the web, when an engineer says this, they’re often referring to a different kind of app: web apps.
In this Knowledge Series, we take a look at what web apps are, how they compare to static websites and mobile apps and everything you need to know about progressive web apps (PWAs).
DoP Deep - How are companies using chatbots?
How are top tech companies using AI to build the next generation of chatbots - and what other use cases outside of customer service exist? In this DoP deep dive we look at how top tier companies like Tinder, Kayak, LinkedIn, Intercom, Replika, Wix and others are using chatbots and AI assistants in their products. Plus, how to use AI chatbots effectively in your own product with use cases you might not have considered.
(Department of Product)
Report - State of SaaS Integrations 2024
Every B2B SaaS company needs a product integration strategy to sell into the market today. But, 75% report taking 3+ months to ship an integration so they often get backlogged. As a solution, 29% of companies have adopted embedded iPaaS solutions to ship integrations 7x faster. Discover how over 100 SaaS companies drive growth through their integration strategies in the 2024 State of SaaS Integrations report by Paragon*.
Industry analysis - How far are we from automating front end engineering?
In 64% of cases, GPT-4V generated web pages are considered better than the original reference web pages. In this newly published academic paper, researchers from Microsoft, Stanford and Google Deepmind consider how long it might take for front end engineering to be automated. (Hugging Face)
Design - 10 heuristics to simplify your design decision making
Making design decisions is difficult. With endless different factors to take into consideration, heuristics can help. In this piece, Pat Morgan explains how tools like Jakob’s Law, Gaiman’s Law and the MAYA rule can help. (Better by Design)
Tools you can use
Milestone - add gamified product tours to SaaS products
SumMailize - get a quick summary of your unread emails
Sync2Sheets - keep your Notion and Google Sheets databases in sync
*sponsored by this week’s partner, Paragon.
New product features, launches and announcements this week
Discord has announced that it is building a new feature that will allow developers to build new games and apps that can be used directly inside its core chat app. Developers will get access to a new embedded app SDK that will allow them to build these special embedded apps. Will this approach be copied by competitors like Slack and Microsoft Teams?
Google Slides has unveiled one of its first Gemini-powered features. The new update allows users to remove backgrounds from images. Super handy for product team members who are currently resorting to Figma or Canva for little things like this.
Stripe’s product manager Michael Kovacs says the company’s app ecosystem has doubled in size since launch with over 125 different apps in its marketplace including DocuSign, Mailchimp and Mercurry.
1Password is experimenting with a series of new features. One of the most intriguing is a new feature called ‘nearby items’ which allows users to assign a physical location to items stored in their vault so that when they arrive at the location, the item will be displayed. 1Password is also doubling down on the rollout of passkeys. If you’re interested in learning more about Passkeys, our Knowledge Series on the topic should help.
Spotify has started rolling out music videos in 11 countries. The new feature comes as TikTok was forced to remove music from its platform following a dispute with Universal.
Uber is introducing a new “emissions saving” feature which allows users to discover the level of carbon dioxide emissions avoided if they take a trip in one of the company’s electric vehicle options.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
AI job postings have increased by 2.3% over the past year and 15.7% in the past six months. Job posts for data analysts and software engineers have decreased by over 30%.
A new bot called Devin from Cognition Labs is the latest company unveiled this week which is attempting to replace engineers with AI. Devin successfully passed practical engineering job interviews and correctly resolved 13.86% of issues unassisted - far exceeding the previous model’s 1.96% resolution rate.
DeliveryHero joined Uber and Instacart by creating a massive new ad revenue stream. In 2023, the company generated €1 billion in ad revenues.
WhatsApp has a new use case in Ghana: teaching young students maths. Fewer than 15% of students in Africa currently achieve minimum proficiency in math by the end of middle school. Students who used the WhatsApp bot scored substantially higher scores.
Meta says 10% of its global ad revenue was from Chinese companies. Temu spent $2 billion on ads last year.
QR codes may finally be falling out of fashion for one use case in particular.
US consumers and businesses lost a record $12.5 billion to internet crime last year - a 22% jump from 2022. Product teams at companies including Coinbase recently released further measures to boost security.
Other product news in brief
Slack’s new CEO says it must be careful not to alienate its existing user base in its competition with Microsoft Teams.
Perplexity has announced a new partnership with Yelp to expand its foothold in search.
Twitter’s former head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth has joined Tinder owner Match Group.
The DoP Weekly Briefing is a product-led perspective of what’s happening in tech - and why it matters to product teams.
If you want more than the weekly briefing, paid subscribers also get access to The Knowledge Series, in-depth DOP Deep dives to learn from the experiences of top tech companies and Chartpacks to feed your product brain and stay ahead.
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