Briefing: Google Vids, Threads API, Intercom Copilot
Plus: Instagram revenue revealed, how to host engaging UX workshops, Poe’s new pricing
The Department of Product Weekly Briefing is a product-led perspective of what’s happening in tech - and why it matters to people who build products.
Hi product people 👋,
Welcome to the 150+ readers who joined since last week!
Google has announced a major new addition to its Workspace line up. Google Vids is an AI-powered video creation tool that will sit alongside other Workspace apps like Docs, Sheets and Slides. It works by allowing users to create an interactive video with storyboards, AI-generated voices and assets to bring their presentations to life. Unlike other video editing tools which are more consumer-oriented, Google is pitching this squarely at professional users with a promo video showing how Vids could work for tasks like creating a sales video or a product demo.
Vids was unveiled during Google’s Cloud Next conference in Vegas on Tuesday and other features worth knowing about include updates to Docs that add hero-style images and the ability to create tabs in a single document which could come in handy for product teams.
In other news this week, as it continues to sit proudly on top of the US mobile app download charts, Meta’s Threads has officially launched its first API. The first version will enable users to publish and fetch content posted on the platform but putting its capabilities aside, it will be interesting to see how Meta decides to price access for companies after X hiked its prices to $5000 a month for Pro plan last year (if you’re developing your own API strategy, you might be interested in our Knowledge Series on the topic).
Meanwhile, Intercom set tech socials alight yesterday with the unveiling of a new look to its homepage. The gen-AI inspired look coincides with the launch of its new product, Fin AI Copilot, which is designed to boost human customer support agents by giving them their own personal AI assistant to resolve support issues.
Finally, if you’re looking for tools to improve your decision making skills, this new AI product is designed to do just that.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Key reads, resources and tools for product teams
Knowledge Series - SDKs explained
In this Knowledge Series, we explain what SDKs are, why they’re helpful and how they impact each member of the product team including engineers, product managers and designers. You’ll also understand how SDKs are used in the real world with examples to help from Stripe, Shopify and more. (Department of Product)
UX - How to host more engaging UX workshops
Break the virtual barrier in remote UX workshops by incorporating tangible objects, using different virtual spaces, and varying participant contribution methods. NNGroup explains how. (NNGroup)
Process - 4 ways engineers are using GitHub Copilot to boost productivity
If your company is signed up to get access to Copilot but you’re not quite sure what to do with it, in this post, GitHub’s Holger Staudacher outlines some of the ways engineering teams can use it - with examples you might not have considered before. (GitHub blog)
Case study - How Linear redesigned its UI
Linear recently redefined the foundational layers of Linear’s application with a full redesign. This is the second post in a two-part series where the company’s CEO dives into why and how they redesigned the application. (Linear blog)
Report - The 2024 Machine Learning, AI and Data (MAD) Landscape
The tenth annual landscape and “state of the union” of the data, analytics, machine learning and AI ecosystem. This year’s report is split into 3 parts focused on the MAD landscape, 24 themes to consider and the state of machine learning, AI and data startups. (First Mark VC)
Tools you can use
Milestone - add gamified product tours to your product
Obsidian - understand your product’s unit economics
ReadAI - get summaries from all the productivity tools you use every day
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
Instagram was responsible for ~30% of Meta’s ad revenue in 2021 according to documents released to the public for the first time. Total ad revenues of $32.4 billion surpassed YouTube’s $32.4 billion, but it should be noted that YouTube shares a much higher proportion of its revenues with users.
33% of teens in the US now own a VR device. Weekly usage of VR devices improved to ~13% from ~10% in fall ’23. Full fascinating report on teens and technology here.
Mobile app consumer spending will surpass $288 billion by 2028 and entertainment including short video content will make up 18% of annual consumer spend in 2023.
AI safety accounts for only 2% of overall AI research, according to a new study conducted by Georgetown University’s Emerging Technology Observatory. Of the 172,621 AI research papers published by American authors between 2017 and 2021, only 5% were on safety. For China, the difference was even starker, with only 1% of research published focusing on AI safety.
India is leading the way in a new food delivery trend. Zomato is trialling the concept of a “walker” who picks up food from the delivery driver and walks to its final destination.
OpenAI says 600,000 people are now paying for the business version of ChatGPT.
New product features, launches and announcements this week
TikTok is preparing to launch a separate, new app to rival Instagram. TikTok Notes would focus on static photo sharing, much like the original incarnation of Instagram before it added a TikTok-inspired video feed. With LinkedIn announcing a video feed and X placing a greater emphasis on video, too, it feels as though social media apps are all merging into each other.
UserTesting has released expanded AI capabilities for conducting user research.
Spotify has launched a new AI-generated playlist feature which allows users to create a playlist from prompts. You can watch it action here.
Google has officially released a series of new models tailored to product engineering teams. CodeGemma is a variation of Gemma, Google’s family of lighter weight open models. It is designed to help engineers with tasks like code completion and development workflows. It’s trained on 500 billion tokens which include web documentation and code which Google says improves accuracy and reduces debugging time. And in other related Gemini news, the world’s largest advertising agency, WPP, cemented a deal with Google to use Gemini to power its creative ads. The knock on effect of that on the ad creative industry could be huge.
Quroa’s Poe has introduced a new pricing model for its model agnostic chatbot service. The new model will allow users to pay on a per message basis. Users are given “points” to spend across different bots but developers will be paid in dollars.
YouTube is launching new monetization tools for creators. “Shopping Collections” allows creators to curate their favorite products that users can buy.
Strategic perspectives
🪟Why Microsoft’s unbundling of Teams might not impact Slack
🤖 Meta’s chief explains why LLMs will never reach human potential
👁️ Amazon’s CEO outlines his vision for the future in his annual letter
📷 Marissa Mayer on the strategy behind her new photo sharing app
Alongside the weekly briefing, paid subscribers also get access to the full DoP newsletter stack to feed your product brain and keep you ahead, including The Knowledge Series, Chartpacks and DoP deep dives. You can learn more about what you get as a paid subscriber or upgrade your newsletter today.
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Thanks for sharing this news and info. Honestly, I can't wait to try Google Vids! P.S. I just subscribed!