Briefing: Google’s fake products, a magic Whiteboard, Meta’s intelligent Emu
Plus: Discord ditches its chatbot, Block stops performance reviews, a new no-code activation tool
Welcome to the 240 new readers who joined this past week! Over 40,000 readers now get the DOP Weekly Briefing each week.
Hi product people 👋,
This week, we came across a new product that looks like magic at first glance. Tldraw is a new whiteboard app that works in the same way as other collaborative whiteboard tools we’re already familiar with like Miro. Except that tldraw has one big difference: thanks to its integrations with GPT-4’s APIs, it can take drawings and turn them into fully functional web interfaces. The company was founded by Steve Ruiz in London and has raised $2.7 million in funding from investors including GitHub. For product teams, should this eventually be connected to real world code bases this could reduce the gap between design and engineering further. You can watch it in action yourself here.
Other new product features worth knowing about this week include a new release from Google, unveiled as part of its Search Generative Experience (SGE). The new feature uses generative Ai to show ecommerce shoppers a selection of products that don’t actually exist. Users search for what they’re looking for and Google’s generative search creates a prototype that is matched against real world products to find the closest match.
Meanwhile, Discord has ditched its AI chatbot, Clyde. The company announced Clyde back in March, describing it as an experimental feature but Discord confirmed this week that by December 1, users will no longer be able to invoke Clyde in conversations. Discord hasn’t publicly announced the reason for ditching the chatbot but it’s safe to assume that if engagement rates were high, they’d be doubling down on support for it. If your product is yet to introduce an AI chatbot, there may be a lesson to learn from Discord’s experience here.
Finally, if you want to conduct some user testing but don’t have the time to moderate this new tool should help.
Enjoy the rest of your week (and weekend for folks celebrating Thanksgiving)!
Essential reads for product teams
New from the Department of Product Substack this week:
🧠Knowledge Series #13: Microservices explained - what is a microservice, how do they work and are they worth the effort required if you need to migrate?
DOP Deep Dive: OpenAI and the risks of strategic dependencies - if the company that powers your product’s AI stack implodes, there’s a risk that it takes down your product with it. In this DOP Deep, we explore the concept of strategic dependencies, how they manifest themselves in product development and what steps you can take to mitigate them in your own product.
(Department of Product)
UX - How to design large data tables
Data powers our world but building tables to represent that data isn’t easy. Andrew Coyle shares some design techniques for product teams to build better data tables. (Medium)
Insights - The State of Product Onboarding
User onboarding is fundamental to crafting a winning product experience. First impressions count and in this report, Bandan Jot Singh is joined by ex-growth leaders from Miro to understand some of the common problems faced by companies along with insights into activation rates and other metrics companies are using to measure the success of their onboarding efforts. (Productify)
Skills - 10 ways to prove you’re a strategic thinker
To get ahead in the business world, it’s not enough to think strategically. You also have to effectively communicate those ideas. (Harvard Business Review)
Thought pieces - An ex-Google designer on the new Maps redesign
15 years ago Elizabeth Laraki helped design the first version of Google Maps. In this detailed breakdown Elizabeth shares her thoughts on the product’s new redesign and why some of the changes work - and some don’t. (X thread)
Tools you can use
EverAfter - a no-code tool to help you design a customised onboarding journey in B2B products
APItally - easily monitor and track your product’s APIs
ClickUp 3.0 - a new version of the productivity tool that brings all of your work into one space
New product features, launches and announcements this week
Tinder has introduced new features to power its profiles. Profile prompts will prompt users to answer specific questions to help others learn more about them. These can include tags about star signs or drinking habits and quizzes. Mark Van Ryswyk, Tinder’s CPO, said that the new features were a reflection of the desires of GenZ who care more about authentic connections rather than playing the dating game.
Apple has filed a patent application for the “visualization of biosignals” using a generative machine learning model. The patent would allow users to visualise their feelings.
Microsoft Teams has launched an AI-powered home decoration feature. The new feature can detect elements of your background and clean it up by removing clutter or adding plants. Perfect for days when you haven’t had time to tidy up your background before an important call.
Meta has unveiled its new text-to-video AI tool. Dubbed ‘Emu Video’, the tool allows users to type in what they want and turn it into a video. You can check it out here.
A new startup called Siena has raised $4.7 million to help product teams develop customer service agents that are highly empathetic.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
Chip maker Nvidia has reported Q3 revenues of $18.12 billion, up 206%. Here’s how its quarterly revenues compare with other products:
The percentage of adults who often get their news from social media has dropped from 23% in 2020 to 19% in 2023. This is up year on year though, from 17%. The number of people who use TikTok for news has jumped from 22% to 43%.
A new study from the University of Oxford showed that screen time for children had no impact on brain function or wellbeing.
PayPal accounts for a whopping 77% of SaaS payments in Germany with card payments at 16%. Chartpack on SaaS data.
Apple gets paid 36% of the search revenues that Google earns through the Safari browser.
A new trend is emerging in China following a ban on anonymous social media accounts. Qingfen, or “purge fans” refers to the process of lowering follower counts by blocking inactive followers, bots, and trolls after the removal of anonymity led to concerns about doxxing and abuse.
Other product news in brief
Block CEO Jack Dorsey has scrapped performance reviews in favour of ‘parting ways immediately’.
Binance’s CEO is leaving the company after pleading guilty to breaking anti-money laundering laws.
Stability AI exec Ed Newton-Rex is leaving the company, voicing concerns about training data and fair use policies.
Meta is launching a new transparency API product called the Meta Content Library - designed to allow researchers to understand what is happening on social media.
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