Briefing: Shopify Magic, Vision Pro Zoom, AX vs UX
Plus: Product monetization models, OpenAI’s GPTs evolve, how workers feel about remote work
Hi product people 👋,
Welcome to the 300+ new subscribers who joined us this past week!
One of the biggest assumptions product teams make when building - and testing - new products is that the users who interact with them are human. Now, a new series of products is challenging that assumption.
This week, we came across MultiOn, a startup that promises to ‘make everyday activities easier, faster, smoother’. It works by performing actions inside the browser on a user's behalf with a specific emphasis on tasks we’d rather not have to do ourselves (think booking a cab, buying the groceries etc). You can watch MultiOn in action here but the product works by feeding it a prompt that allows it to take over your browser to perform the actions. Arc Browser also released something similar this week with Arc Search - a mobile app that browses on a user’s behalf to get the information they requested from multiple sources.
But this poses some difficult questions for product teams who work on these types of utility-oriented products. If users are no longer interacting with transactional services, the product teams of the future could instead be optimising their UX for integrations with AI agents. And in that case, does UX become AX?
Meanwhile, the product teams at Shopify have been busy. This week the company unveiled over 100 new product updates as part of its Winter Edition series. The new set of features includes new GraphQL APIs for adding multiple product variants, an improved Semantic search that goes beyond keywords to better understand intent and new generative AI capabilities that Shopify calls ‘Shopify Magic’. One of the most powerful examples of this Magic is a new media editor that allows Shopify admins to generate product images instantly. You can see that in action here.
Other companies showing off their genAI prowess this week include Google which unveiled the ability to create an entire series of ads from scratch thanks to generative AI.
Finally, if you’re looking for a new role at the moment but you’re feeling fatigued by LinkedIn and would like to explore alternatives, this new product might help.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Essential reads for product teams
New from the Department of Product this week:
📈Chartpack - Product Monetization Models Part 3
How are companies making money in 2024? As this year continues to be the year companies focus relentlessly on profitability, sometimes it’s helpful to get inspired by how other companies make money.
This Chartpack explores how modern product led companies are making money including: how Netflix is quietly building a new revenue stream that most people aren’t paying attention to, how Docusign monetizes its API with lessons for your own product’s API monetization strategy and why a powerful patent few people know about helps Tinder drive revenues.
Knowledge Series: What is a cache?
Your ultimate guide to how a cache works and why caching is critical for boosting product performance using GitHub and Twilio as examples.
(Department of Product)
UX - Why personalisation isn’t always beneficial in product design
Personalization is now considered an essential business strategy that’s made it’s way into almost every app and service we use. We have even come to expect personalized interactions and get frustrated when this doesn’t happen. We’re willing to sacrifice for the convenience, but at what cost? (Humane by Design)
Strategy - Rippling’s CEO on how to build a differentiated product
Parker Conrad, Co-Founder and CEO of Rippling, discusses the ins and outs of his entrepreneurial journey and what he’s learned along the way. In this interview, he explains how his team thinks about product differentiation. (YouTube)
Product marketing - Why AI answer engines are eating SEO
For a quarter of a century, Google search has remained virtually unrivaled as the de-facto gateway to the internet and the global oracle for all questions and answers. Is this about to change thanks to AI? In this deep dive, CMO Chris Guest explores what the future might look like for companies dependent on SEO. (Substack)
Skills - 39 books on how to make decisions
Decision making is a fundamental part of building products. This collection of books on decision making is curated by a former ivy league professor to help you navigate the complexities of making decisions. (Farnham Street)
Tools you can use
Keep it shot - transform your screenshots into easy to manage files that are automatically named
Findr - search all of your apps at the same time
Equals AI assist - Clippy but for spreadsheets
New product features, launches and announcements this week
Zoom is launching a dedicated Vision Pro app that will coincide with the launch of the new device on February 2. It will support Apple’s personas and create a Spatial Zoom experience. Additional capabilities include 3D object sharing which puts objects into a shared physical space and real-world pinning where users will be able to pin up to five Zoom meetings in their physical space. Zoom’s commitment to the new visionOS is in stark contrast to YouTube and Netflix who both opted to take a wait and see approach. Given that Microsoft has leaned heavily into the Vision Pro, Zoom may have had no choice but to adopt it, too.
PayPal has unveiled a series of new features including ‘Smartlane’ which allows users to make quick purchases on merchant websites. Users will be able to save their details with Fastlane to check out in just one tap. Despite fierce competition, PayPal is still a major force in online payments with around 40% market share. This week the company confirmed it is to lay off 9% of its staff.
Google is rolling out its new way to search across Samsung and Pixel devices. ‘Circle to search’ allows users to draw a circle around any asset and search for it. This is a smart way to reinforce - and evolve - the existing search paradigm at a time when it’s under threat from conversational interfaces.
A new product called Shortwave, launched by former Google engineers, will automatically summarise your emails for you.
TikTok is experimenting with a new feature that has the ability to make all posts on the app shoppable. The feature identifies items in videos and directs viewers to find similar items on TikTok Shop. Some users aren’t happy and have dubbed the app an “ad-filled wasteland”, demonstrating how easy it is for product teams to get addicted to ad-fueled revenues at the expense of users' experience.
OpenAI has launched a new feature in ChatGPT which allows users to invoke GPTs directly in chats.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
A study also showed that leaders are least likely to say that remote working leads to a better culture. Fully remote employees are laid off 35% more often than their peers who work in-office or hybrid roles, but they’re also more likely to quit. Report from The Wall Street Journal.
41% of Fortune 500 companies are now using ElevenLabs’ voice cloning technology (according to the company’s own figures).
Netflix games were downloaded 81.2 million times globally last year, a nearly threefold increase from the 28.7 million downloads it had in 2022. The company’s leadership team outlined its vision to grow its 5% share of the entertainment and video game market in its recent earnings. Full Chartpack on Netflix’s new monetization strategies.
Meta researchers have developed a new robot that is able to successfully pick and drop tasks in unseen environments. Using vision-language models (VLM) that can match natural language queries to objects in a visual scene, researchers were able to achieve a success rate above 82%. You can watch it in action here.
Microsoft posted revenues of $62 billion, up 18% and is now valued as a $3 trillion company. It is also the first time the company has reported additional revenue from its Activision Blizzard acquisition.
Javascript was the most popular programming language of the year in 2023 for the first time. Ruby was second and Scala third.
Other product news in brief
Block is laying off around 1,000 people, representing around 10% of its workforce.
The former UK chancellor George Osborne has joined Coinbase as the company mulls relocating to the country.
Top scientists from DeepMind are reportedly planning to leave to set up their own rival.
Gene tech startup 23andMe’s CEO is plotting a turnaround after it was speculated that it may run out of cash before 2025.
The DOP Weekly Briefing is a product-led perspective of what’s happening in tech - and why it matters to product teams. Paid subscribers also get access to The Knowledge Series, in-depth DOP Deep dives and Chartpacks to feed their product brain and stay ahead.
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