Briefing: Snapchat planets, Jira Views, Figma prototypes
Plus: Netflix, YouTube and Spotify’s pricing in the spotlight, ETL explained, 10 years of Meta’s Reality Labs
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 690+ new readers who joined us since last week!
Gamification is now a firmly established part of the product development toolkit for increasing engagement but Snapchat’s recently released gamification feature came under fire this week. It works by creating an artificial planetary orbit system that shows users who their closest - and most distant - friends are based on their interactions. But for the friends who end up as the planetary equivalent of Pluto, this can lead to spikes in anxiety. Snap has now ditched the feature as a result.
Meanwhile, Jira has released some social features of its own this week - albeit in a very different context. Shared Views is a new feature which allows product team members to share views of roadmaps and development boards with internal and external stakeholders. Atlassian says it should reduce the amount of unnecessary documentation teams currently have to create to share information that in some cases already exists in development boards.
Despite its critics, Jira is still the most widely used product development tool by product teams - but a new company has joined the battle to challenge its dominance. Eververse is a new startup that promises to help teams build their roadmaps at lightning speed. At first glance it looks like an impressive effort so far, with AI-infused features such as automatic research summarization, backlogs that write themselves and a ‘presence’ feature which works a lot like a Miro board where you can see who is in a roadmap at any given time.
And speaking of real time collaboration, Replit’s latest launch this week is designed to work like a Miro board or Google Docs for coding. In Replit Teams, all code collaborators can see each other’s cursors and ask an AI assistant for help at the same time. It’s currently in beta but you can watch it in action here.
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 #30 - ETL and data warehouses explained
If you’ve worked on data analysis and reporting, you’ve probably come across the terms ‘ETL’ and data warehouse, but unless you’re a data scientist or engineer yourself, you might not know much about what they mean.
In this Knowledge Series, we explore everything you need to know about ETL, what it is, why teams use it and how it fits into the wider data analysis world so that the next time someone in your team mentions it, you’ll be fully up to speed with how it works.
DoP Deep - New UX patterns and interactions
Inspiration and examples from YouTube, Miro, Spotify, Threads, Apple, Arc, Goodnotes, Atlassian and more. In this DoP Deep dive, we explore how top tech companies are taking bolder risks in their UX.
(Department of Product)
Engineering case studies - How Pinterest built its text-to-SQL feature
Writing queries to solve analytical problems is the core task for Pinterest’s data users. However, finding the right data and translating an analytical problem into correct and efficient SQL code can be challenging tasks in a fast-paced environment with significant amounts of data spread across different domains. In this post, Pinterest’s engineering teams explain how they did it. (Pinterest Engineering)
UX resource - 23 prototyping resources to bookmark right now
Figma’s Ana Boyer has hand curated a comprehensive list of resources to get you going on your Figma prototyping journey, from informative livestreams and hands-on community files, to quick videos and social posts. (Figma Design)
Guide - How to use Notion to manage company OKRs
In this guide, Notion’s product team explains how you can use the tool for creating - and managing - company OKRs, with a free template to download, too. Useful if you’re currently planning your product’s OKRs. (Notion YouTube)
Tools you can use
Cleft - turn voice memos into shared notes
SheetGo - transform your Google Sheets into forms
ReleaseAI - auto-generate API release notes
📈Product data, trends and metrics to stay informed
According to a new study, Google’s Search Generative Experience will have a significant impact on organic traffic across different industries. Healthcare is the most severely impacted and B2B tech is third.
At the same time, traffic referrals from Google challenger Perplexity are also growing at nearly 40% a month. For product marketers who rely on SEO traffic, the rise of tools like Perplexity are challenging Google’s dominance for the first time - and could have massive implications for organic product discovery. Full report from BrightEdge.
Up to 70% of Amazon’s Just Walk Out checkout purchases were verified by humans based in India. This week Amazon announced the closure of several Just Walk Out stores.
This week marks the 10 year anniversary of Meta’s Reality Labs. Revenues recently passed $1bn for the quarter for the first time but operating costs have ballooned to almost $6 billion.
.ai domain names have contributed to more than 10% of Anguilla GDP, thanks to tech companies registering web addresses that end in .ai.
In China, 25% of all online sales now take place through livestreams.
New product features, launches and announcements this week
Apple has released new spatial personas which are designed to make using an Apple Vision Pro a less isolating experience. Up to five people can watch movies and TV shows, play AR games and collaborate on work together. The company is also rumoured to be working on a robot.
OpenAI has launched a new synthetic voice cloning tool, Voice Engine, that can generate an AI generated voice using just 15 seconds of reference audio. The company confirmed that it is taking a ‘cautious approach’ to the new technology given the potential for abuse and is currently available in private beta only. It is confident though, that eventually it will be used for various applications including: providing reading assistance for children, translating podcast content, supporting people who are non-verbal and helping sick patients recover their voice. You can listen to a clip of it in action here:
Browsers are doubling down on new AI features. Brave has confirmed that it will roll out its in-browser assistant, Leo, to all users including iOS with Mistral set as the default LLM. Rival browser Opera also launched a new set of features which make it the first browser to offer built-in local LLMs that preserve data locally and don’t send data to a server.
Altstore, a new alternative to the iPhone app store has launched in Europe thanks to the DMA. At first glance it’s a commendable effort but browsing apps outside of the official App Store does feel like a strange, knock-off version of the official store.
Facebook is taking on TikTok with the launch of a new fullscreen video player on Facebook. The new player standardises the format of all videos on the platform including Reels, Live Videos and longer videos. LinkedIn is also testing vertical video.
Product monetization models and pricing strategies
🟢Spotify is raising its prices across several markets.
🇮🇳Netflix’s pricing in India is too high - and despite an investment in local content, it is struggling to compete with local competitors as a result.
🧙Discord is planning to start showing ads on the free version of its product.
📺YouTube is testing a new monetization feature which allows creators to charge for access to exclusive shorts.
✨Google is reportedly considering charging for its AI search features, according to the FT.
Other product news in brief
Slack’s chief product officer is stepping down.
Yahoo is buying Artifact, the news app developer by Instagram’s co-founders.
Snap’s former AI chief is launching a new generative AI model to take on Sora.
The DoP Weekly Briefing is a product-led perspective of what’s happening in tech - and why it matters to product teams. If you want more than the weekly briefing, paid subscribers also get access to The Knowledge Series, in-depth DOP Deep dives to learn from the experiences of top tech companies and Chartpacks to feed your product brain and stay ahead.
The Department of Product Weekly Briefing is written by Rich Holmes. If you enjoyed this briefing, hit the like ♥️ button below!