Microsoft Spreadsheet LLM and Disney’s plans to get you addicted
Plus: Uber and Spotify go global, how Notion scaled its data infrastructure, Amazon Rufus
Hi product people 👋,
While much of the attention this week has been on Microsoft's launch of its Canva competitor, there's another product you may have missed that was also unveiled by researchers this week. SpreadsheetLLM is, as the name suggests, a new model designed for understanding and working with spreadsheets. Due to the large number of tokens typically involved in a spreadsheet, traditional LLMs have struggled to work with such vast datasets but the researchers claim that their proprietary model reduces token usage by up to 96% and improves the effectiveness of models like GPT-4 when coupled with SpreadsheetLLM.
It’s not not yet clear if or when this will be baked into Microsoft products but if Microsoft does release it alongside its other AI offerings, some commentators will be hoping it doesn’t use the sparkles emoji which is at the centre of a major backlash from UI designers at the moment.
In other news, as regulators in the EU and elsewhere ponder new laws on digital addiction, the product teams at DisneyPlus are reportedly looking to introduce new features designed to boost engagement and become as addictive as Netflix. The metric product teams are reportedly now more focused on is “hours per subscriber” which is being used as a northstar for product decisions. New features reportedly in the works to drive this include personalized content, artwork and - for the first time - transactional emails which prompt users to finish a show that they started.
Meanwhile Tinder is rolling out its controversial new AI photo selection feature which scans a user’s photo library and automatically picks the ones it thinks are best suited to a profile. Tinder says that 68% of its users in a recent survey said they’d be happy for AI to do this.
Finally, if you’re looking for a quick way to do some competitor product analysis, this tool might help.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Key reads, tools and resources for product teams
New from the Department of Product Substack this week:
Knowledge Series - A simple guide to the cloud
Given the strategic importance of cloud computing not just to Amazon but to the future of product development in general, this Knowledge Series is designed to equip you with everything you need to know about cloud computing.
DoP Deep - AI principles explored
Company deep dives on the AI principles of top tier tech companies including: Microsoft, YouTube Music, Zendesk, Zoom, Spotify, Slack and more. Plus how to develop your own AI principles.
(Department of Product)
Case study - How Notion scaled its data infrastructure to cope with 10x growth
In the past three years Notion’s data expanded 10x due to user and content growth, with a doubling rate of 6-12 months. Managing this rapid growth while meeting the ever-increasing data demands of critical product and analytics use cases meant building and scaling Notion’s data lake. Here’s how they did it. (Notion engineering)
Tools you can use
QR code GPT - ask chatGPT to create QR codes you can use in your product
Sprig Heatmaps - capture a visual representation of your users’ in-product interactions
Clappy - a Slack plugin that helps you celebrate success at your company
Strategy - How retailers became the new ad platforms
A rapidly growing number of major retailers are today creating and operating their own advertising platforms and McKinsey estimates that by 2026, retail media will add $1.3 trillion to enterprise values in the U.S. alone. In this piece by Harvard Business Review, they explore how this shift occurred with some lessons for your own product, too. (Harvard Business Review)
UX - Design guidelines for using checkboxes
Checkboxes allow users to select one, some, or none of items from a list. They can be used standalone, in checkbox lists, or nested checkbox lists. This guide from NNGroup explains how to use checkboxes effectively in product design. (NN Group)
Podcast - The challenges of bringing AI products to millions
New product features, launches and announcements this week
Zoom has launched a new Workflow Automation feature which allows users to create complex workflows across Zoom Workplace and third-party applications including Jira and Google Drive with the help of generative AI. The workflows look a lot like other workflow apps like Zapier and are designed to help boost productivity. Examples shared by Zoom include things like welcoming a new employee, generating quick answers to common questions and keeping track of approvals for specific processes.
Uber has announced a new feature which allows tourists to book trips in advance of their vacation. It supports over 10,000 cities throughout the world.
Anthropic’s Claude has released a new feature designed to help engineers (and users in general) write better prompts. It works by asking users to describe a task e.g. Triage inbound customer support requests and allowing Claude to generate a high quality prompt on their behalf.
Amazon has released its AI shopping assistant “Rufus” for all US users. It was first unveiled back in February in beta only but it’s now ready for showtime after testing which included tens of millions of questions. It will lie in the bottom right hand corner of the Amazon app and can help with tasks like finding product, comparing different products and generating recommendations on what to buy.
WhatsApp has introduced a ‘Favorites’ feature which gives users quick access to the contacts and groups that matter the most.
Apple Notes has found itself at the centre of a new trend: fashion and outfit planning. A new report by Vogue explains that Gen-Z are using the app to log, organise and style outfits from their wardrobes. Tech companies like Pinterest are said to have been inspired by the new trend and a TikTok video explaining how to use Notes for fashion has amassed over 4.5 million views. It seems essential for B2C product teams to stay plugged into TikTok trends right now.
YouTube Music is testing a genAI feature that will let users enter a prompt to create a custom radio station.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
OpenAI generates around 15% of its annual revenues from its API according to a new report by data analytics company FutureSearch.
Generative AI makes less creative people more creative but decreases collective creativity according to a new study.
Almost 50% of all online scams in Singapore now happen on WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram. Facebook Marketplace was ranked bottom by the Singapore government for ecommerce safety.
AI startups took a record 28% share of all funding for new startups in Q2 2024. Report by CB Insights.
Spotify says use of its DJ feature has grown 200% year on year and this week it rolled out the first international version.
Only 20% of VR device owners use it every day compared with 96% of smartphone users who use their phones every day.
Other product news in brief
GitLab is reportedly pursuing a sale as it battles to compete with Microsoft owned GitHub.
Elon Musk is set to move X and SpaceX’s headquarters outside of California.
Apple has reportedly been using a data set of over 170,000 YouTube videos to train its AI without permission.
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