Briefing: Snapchat Houses, Proton Docs and NFC Multi-Taps
Plus: How to write microcopy, YouTube’s new experiments, Threads celebrates with 175m users
Hi product people 👋,
Welcome to the 270+ new readers who joined us since last week!
Is AI privacy the next major differentiator? Google Docs’ latest competitor hopes so. Proton has unveiled a new document editing product called Proton Docs. Built on the same end-to-end encryption technology as their Mail product, Proton Docs is attempting to differentiate itself from Microsoft and Google by putting privacy at the center of its strategy and warning users that any content created in a Doc could be used to train AI in the future. It’s interesting to see AI privacy used as a product differentiator here. Expect more companies to follow suit.
In other news, with much of the attention focused on Apple’s upcoming AI Intelligence features, there’s a peculiar new feature on its way to smartphones that you might not have heard about.
NFC Multi-Purpose Tap is a broad term used to describe the next generation of NFC tapping capabilities. Right now, most of us are used to tapping our phones to pay for things but Multi-Pupose Tap would also allow taps to perform other actions like collecting loyalty points, receiving receipts, managing expenses and applying discounts - all at once. The NFC forum which manages the rollout counts Apple, Google, Huawei and others as board members and for product teams, this could open up some interesting new use cases.
Meanwhile, the startup that wants to create AI developer coworkers - not copilots- is reported to be in talks to raise an additional $200m in funding. Magic will use the funds to expand its team, which will of course, mean hiring plenty of human engineers - for now.
Finally, if you’re looking for ways to easily discover which fonts, colors and favicons other products are using to inspire your own product, this handy tool should help.
Enjoy your weekend!
Key reads, tools and resources for product teams
From the Department of Product Substack this week:
Knowledge Series - How do development environments work?
Pre-production, dev-staging1, dev-staging2…if you’ve ever had the experience of working at a company that is burdened with too many environments you’ll know how difficult it can make actually getting features released into the hands of customers. How do development environments actually work? We tell you everything you need to know. (Department of Product)
UX - How to improve your product’s microcopy
Ideally, you should be able to role-play your interface copy: a product asks the user to do something — the user does it; a product asks for information — the user types it in or selects an item from the menu; a product informs or warns the user about something — the user takes action. In this article, UX writer Irina Silyanova explains it all. (Smashing Magazine)
Industry talks - The broken promises of design systems
Are design systems living up to their promises? Is our work higher quality, quicker, and more cohesive than ever before? Or are we accidentally drifting into a low-quality, restrictive design process that limits creativity? In this talk, CashApp’s Head of Design Cam Worboys explores design systems' core promises, identifying where they fall short and exploring ways to improve. (Figma Conference)
Innovation - Why your company should care about Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
When working with large language models (LLMs), many companies are using an approach called retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to help improve accuracy and reduce the risk of AI hallucinations. The approach is gaining traction. But what is RAG, and why should you care? (Twilio)
Tools you can use
Released - instantly generate release notes from Jira
Simple commenter - add comments to any website
TabOS - transform your new tabs into a personalized desktop
Podcast - Microsoft: a case study in strategy transformation
Harvard Business School professor Fritz Foley explains how Microsoft was able to turn around its fortunes after a decade of stagnation and failed product launches.
New product features, launches and announcements this week
Snapchat is rolling out a new feature to Snapchat Plus subscribers that will allow users to design their own virtual house. The house is visible on Snap’s Map and can be shared with family and friends. It’s available at no extra cost for Plus subscribers at the moment but could this evolve into something to rival Roblox with in-app purchases?
A new app called noplace has shot to the top of the app charts. It’s a mash up between MySpace and Twitter and reflects a trend towards 90s / 00s design aesthetic.
YouTube has released some experimental new features to Premium users including a button which skips you directly to the most popular part of a video, the ability to watch Shorts in in-picture mode and a brand new watch page design. YouTube’s product manager Dave Wu says the features are all still experimental and user feedback will be closely monitored.
Google has used AI to add 110 new languages to Google Translate.
Perplexity has revealed the next iteration of its Pro Search product. The new version includes features like multi-step reasoning, advanced math calculation and programming capabilities. Perplexity says the new features should help knowledge workers with tasks like market research. See example of it in action here.
ElevenLabs is rolling out AI voices of celebrities including Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds and Sir Laurence Olivier.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
Threads is celebrating its one year anniversary with more than 175 million monthly active users. Not bad for a product that didn’t exist just 12 months ago. Here’s how that compares to other consumer products:
Research by Gartner predicts that by 2030, enterprise browsers will be the core platform for workplace productivity. Since most web apps are now delivered in a browser, companies are taking steps to heighten security by adopting enterprise browsers which are specifically tailored to large organisations.
YouTube TV shed subscribers in Q1 2024, for the first time ever, after the NFL season ended. Net additions were down 150,000 vs 250,000 in the same quarter last year.
Demand for office space will decline on average 14% on average across a 63- month period, resulting in vacancy rates that peak in early 2026 at approximately 24% nationally in the US. Full report on office demand and WFH from Moodys.
At least 10% of all academic research transcripts will be written using ChatGPT in 2024.
Kindles are fast becoming the gadget of choice for TikTokers in the so-called BookTok subgenre. “Kindle girlies” post about their reading lists and show off their Kindles covered in stickers. People under the age of 45 are Kindle’s fastest growing segment and 60% of Kindle’s sales are from people who have never owned one before.
AI data centres could use 8% of US power by 2030 according to new research from Bloomberg.
Other product news in brief
Figma’s CEO has confirmed it is ditching its new AI tool after criticism that it copied Apple’s designs.
Hardware device Rabbit reportedly made critical security errors which left user data exposed.
OpenAI has cut off access to its APIs in China.
The DoP Weekly Briefing is a product-led perspective of what’s happening in tech - and why it matters to product teams.
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The Department of Product’s weekly briefing is written by Rich Holmes. Thanks for reading and if you enjoyed this week’s briefing hit the like button ❤️ below!