AWS's AI agents, Bluesky soars and Brain Rot
Plus: NotebookLM loses its product leaders, AI search forecasts, and how to evaluate equity offers
Hi product people 👋, Rich Holmes here with the weekly briefing, I hope you’re all well. A warm welcome to the 175+ new subscribers who joined us since last week!
Coming up this week, we take a look at some of the major announcements from AWS’ re:Invent conference along with a new product from ElevenLabs which aims to compete with NotebookLM, as well as a new productivity app which combines the best bits of Notion, Google Calendar and Google Docs.
Plus, we’ll explore some data and trends – from AI's growing impact on search behavior to Bluesky's impressive engagement metrics.
As always, if you like the Product Briefing, hit the like button below and if you’d like to watch / listen, you can watch the latest briefing on YouTube.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Follow me on Bluesky | Substack Notes
Key reads and resources for product teams
New from the Department of Product Substack this week:
Deep - How are companies building network effects?
In this Deep dive, we explore 20+ examples of how other product teams from top tier tech companies including Google Maps, Bluesky, GitHub, Square, Perplexity, Miro and others are building new features which boost the network effects of their product.
If you’re currently thinking about your own product / company’s strategy ahead of the new year and are exploring which features to build which might strengthen your differentiators and boost your growth or retention rates, this collection might help.
Knowledge Series - API gateways explained
In recent years, API gateways have become increasingly common in modern architecture - particularly for products with multiple APIs and complex microservices. This Knowledge Series tells you everything you need to know about them. (Department of Product)
Assume that users will not change defaults and plan for this in your designs. Ask yourself 3 questions to create good defaults:
If the majority of users were to accept this default, would we be helping them or helping us?
When will users be grateful for a recommendation?
What will users assume is already true?
NNGroup’s Tanner Kohler explains how to design product defaults. (NN Group)
Career planning - How to Assess a Job Offer with Equity
If you’re currently looking for a new role or have been offered a role which includes equity, this guide helps you to understand how to assess job offers with equity. Presented by Finbrain and Mark Cecchini, Financial Advisor at Quadrant Capital. (Finbrain YouTube)
Podcast - The future of AI software development
Guy Podjarny founded Tessl, Snyk and Blaze. Tessl is reimagining software development for the AI era and shaping AI Native Development. In this podcast, he outlines his predictions for what the future of AI-driven software development could look like. (20VC)
Strategy case study - How YouTube ate the podcasting industry
A lot has changed for podcasting in two decades, but one shift is both underrecognized and obvious: It’s not really an audio medium anymore. It’s not hard to see why: it has discovery, recommendation and revenue - all baked into one. This piece analyses how YouTube became the global platform for video podcasts. (New Yorker)
New product features and innovation this week
NotebookLM is one of the standout success stories of the year. And Spotify’s annual Wrapped feature even includes a personalized NotebookLM powered podcast. But, in true Google fashion, they have failed to retain the talent who created it. The NotebookLM product leaders this week announced they are leaving to build “something transformative” in the space.
ElevenLabs has launched its own take on Google NotebookLM which generates podcasts from PDFs, ebooks, docs or imported text. But since ElevenLabs specialises in voice generation, it has one extra capability vs. Google NotebookLM: it creates different voices tailored to your content.
It’s Amazon’s biggest event of the year this week as the re:Invent conference kicks off.
AWS CEO unveiled the new flagship agentic AI capabilities which allows companies to create agents that can execute tasks across a series of different systems. Users build their specialized agents on Bedrock, and then make a supervisor or orchestrator agent to help manage the other agents. AWS said the supervisor agent “handles the coordination, like breaking up and routing tasks to the right agents, giving specific agents access to the information they need to complete their work and determining what actions can be processed in parallel.”
In one example, CEO Matt Garman explained how the credit rating agency Moodys used a series of different agents to analyse the risk profile of companies.
Also announced at the conference is a series of new AI foundational models which include:
Canvas lets users generate and edit images using prompts (to remove backgrounds for example) and provides controls for the generated images’ color schemes and layouts
Reel creates videos up to six seconds in length from prompts or, optionally, reference images. Using Reel, users can adjust the camera motion to generate videos with pans, 360-degree rotations, and zoom.
Meanwhile…
Threads is rolling out one of its most sought after features: an updated version of search. The updated version adds a settings icon to the search bar that, when tapped, brings up “After date,” “Before date,” and “From profile” options. As Bluesky continues to grow, fast approaching over 25 million users, the product teams at Threads are battling to stay ahead with a bunch of highly requested features. One of these is the option to set the default feed to “Following” rather than “Discover”. A few years back, the idea that a feed of people who follow would somehow be a differentiator would be a little absurd, but that’s where we’re at.
Coinbase has added Apple Pay functionality which allows users to make crypto purchases using Apple Pay. This seems to be a clear signal that Apple is now happy to lend legitimacy to the crypto industry.
The Browser Company has unveiled its new browser: Dia. It’s an AI-first browser that imagines a future where the browser performs tasks on your behalf. It’s certainly a futuristic and intriguing concept but was it really worth ditching the brand equity they’ve spent so much time building over the past few years?
In other news…
Product research company Ballpark has released a new feature for product teams conducting user research. Card sorting allows users to categorize topics into groups that make sense for them - ideal for scenarios where you need to re-design your information architecture.
Google Chat is taking on Slack and Microsoft Teams with a new feature called huddles that allows users to set up an instant voice / video call. Huddles is exactly the same term Slack uses. If it ain't broke, I guess.
Tools you can use
Craft 3.0 is a productivity app which combines the best bits of Notion, Google Calendar and Google Docs, designed to “help you organize your life”.
Lica is a new startup founded by two ex-Microsoft employees that takes your unused screenshots and transforms them into product demo videos. This week, they raised $4m.
Magic Patterns lets you prototype your product ideas and transform them into designs instantly.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
15 million US adults now start their search with Al and this is forecast to grow to over 36 million by 2028. At the same time, Google's % share of search ad revenues is set to drop <50% for the first time by 2025.
The WSJ predicts Amazon will be the main competition for Google Ads business but this doesn't factor in upcoming search ad products from OpenAI and Perplexity. Once those are factored into the mix, 2025 could look very different.
Engagement rates on Bluesky are significantly higher than Threads or X. A piece of analysis by Sherwood shows that some links on Bluesky are getting an engagement per million user score of 58.78 vs 4.2 for Threads and 0.31 for X.
ChatGPT now has over 300 million weekly active users, CEO Sam Altman confirmed at the New York Times Dealbook Summit.
Gartner predicts that 60% of large organizations will deploy AI agents to automate workflows across departments like HR, customer support and finance.
Slack parent company Salesforce’s revenue grew 8% year on year to $9.44 billion. Their CEO says that their recent release of AI agentic product Agentforce means they’re “not just witnessing the future” but “leading it’.
Brain rot is the Oxford Dictionary word of the year, describing the deterioration of a person’s mental state due to excessive consumption of social media content. As product builders chasing OKRs and engagement rates, we share the blame for the brain rot epidemic.
Other product news in brief
👋Intel’s CEO is leaving after just 4 years in charge
🎯Uber’s subscription service is a potential target of an FTC probe
🎶Generative AI could cause music artists to lose 20% of their revenues by 2028
🧑🏻OpenAI has hired its first ever CMO, Kate Rouch, joining from Coinbase
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