Briefing: Spotify Backstage, GitHub Workspace and DataGPT
Plus: Twitch’s new discovery feed, expressive avatars, how to run component sprints, data migrations explained
Hi product people 👋,
Welcome to the 170+ new readers who joined us this past week!
GitHub has announced Copilot Workspace - a new development environment for engineering teams that takes its AI-powered development offerings to the next level. But at the same time, Spotify has also released its own developer-centric product with the launch of Backstage which it says leads to engineering teams deploying software 2x as often.
In other news, AI startup Synthesia has unveiled a series of new AI humans called “Expressive Avatars” which can take a text prompt input and read it aloud. The avatars are designed to be used for things like presentations, internal training videos, sales and marketing and product demos. Synthesia reached unicorn status last year, valued at over $1 billion, and says that 55,000 businesses are currently using its technology. If you’re working on product demo or marketing materials, they might be worth checking out. You can watch a demo in action here.
Speaking of writing materials, other tools on our radar this week include a new writing assistant from DeepL. If you’ve not heard of DeepL before, it’s like an AI-powered version of Grammarly. DeepL Write Pro is a new version of the tool designed specifically for business writing and uses the company’s proprietary large language models. The company says it has over 100,000 business users but how long before Microsoft’s Copilot does the same thing?
Finally, if you’re struggling to get to grips with the latest version of Google Analytics, you might want to try a different approach to getting the data you need. DataGPT’s latest release allows product teams to talk to their data from various sources instead - and this week they are sponsoring our briefing to bring DataGPT Express to DoP readers.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
-Rich
Key reads, tools and resources for product teams
New from the Department of Product Substack this week
Knowledge Series #33 - How do data migrations work?
When a migration goes wrong, it can have pretty serious consequences. And that’s why in this Knowledge Series, we’ll explain what migrations are and how data migrations work, with a full end to end mock example you can use the next time you work on them.
DoP Deep - Payment journey UX explored
A deep dive into the payment journeys of top tier products including: LinkedIn, Spotify, Zoom, Notion, Perplexity, Docusign and others. Lessons and takeaways for product teams looking to optimise their own payment journeys.
(Department of Product)
UX - The F shape pattern and how users read content
Scrolling, scanning, skipping: How do users consume content online? Smashing Magazine’s Vitaly Friedman tells you what you need to know about reading behavior and design strategies to prevent harmful scanning patterns. (Smashing Designs)
Case study - How the Washington Post runs component sprints
The Washington Post embarked on an ambitious journey to craft The Washington Post Design System (WPDS). In this piece published by Figma, the product design teams explain how they did it using component sprints and the challenges they faced along the way. (Figma Design Blog)
New tool you can use - DataGPT Xpress
DataGPT Xpress is a new tool that allows you to talk to your data to uncover hidden answers and deeper insights by connecting with your favorite tools like Google Analytics, Shopify, and HubSpot using Generative AI and robust analytics. Google Analytics is the first connector available in Xpress, which helps product teams to conduct comprehensive analysis behind product and website data - starting at just $99/month*.
(Data GPT)
More tools
Sprig feedback - constantly collect user feedback about your product
Braudit - your own personal career guide
ListenUp - a new meeting recorder designed for product teams
Podcast - Inside Dropbox, Salesforce and Heroku’s Product Led Growth Engine
*Sponsored content
New product features, launches and announcements this week
Stripe announced that crypto payments would return to the platform after a 6 year hiatus last week. The company is now accepting USDC stablecoins, with support currently limited to Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon networks. For product teams currently working on payment integrations, this may be the time to start potentially offering stablecoin support. Watch how it works here.
OpenAI has confirmed the rollout of ChatGPT’s Memory feature that will allow users to store queries, prompts, and other customizations. It is available to all paying subscribers outside Europe and Korea.
Loom has released new features which could come in handy for product teams. The new features will automatically edit your videos and allow users to quickly transform videos into documents.
Twitch is the latest company to roll out a new ‘discovery’ feed to drive engagement. The new feed will launch across Twitch’s iOS and Android apps and allows viewers to scroll through bite-sized bits of content to discover new streamers. The feed will also contain ads - but these will be skippable, too. Twitch is also running an experiment which will place the discovery feed in the home tab. But, regulators will no doubt be keeping a close eye on proceedings to ensure these dopamine-inducing new design patterns don’t lead to increased digital addiction. TikTok was forced to remove its gamification features last week following an EU probe into its design patterns.
Amazon Music has followed in the footsteps of Spotify with the release of an AI-generated playlist tool called Maestro.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
Google’s ad business generated $61.7 billion in the first quarter of 2024, up from $54 billion last year, which means ads still represent 88% of its overall revenues. Non-advertising revenues including subscriptions, platforms and devices also grew to $8.7 billion with YouTube Premium subscribers reaching 100 million earlier this year.
Here’s how those subscriber numbers compare:
The predicted slowdown in AI didn’t happen after all. Funding to AI startups increased in Q1 2024 vs Q4 2023 with $12.2 billion invested.
51% of Americans want more regulation of tech companies. Full Pew Research Report.
Meta’s open-sourced LLM Llama 3 had 1.2 million downloads in its first week.
The trend of easy to guess default login details is coming to an end. The UK is banning bad login credentials on internet-connected devices. Weak or easily guessable defaults such as “admin” or “12345” are explicitly banned.
Snap’s usage outside of the US and Europe is exploding with 226 million users.
Other product news in brief
Scott Farquhar is stepping down as co-CEO of Atlassian after 23 years.
Meta’s VP of augmented reality research is stepping down.
OpenAI has announced a strategic partnership with the FT.
Google is laying off its Python engineering team responsible for Flutter and Dart.
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 for improving your tech skills, in-depth DOP Deep dives to gain insights from top tech companies and Chartpacks to feed your product brain and stay ahead.
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