Can Spotify build an audiobook social network?
Plus: Uber’s new revenue stream, the future of AI job interviews and Zoom rebrands
Hi product people 👋, Rich Holmes here with the weekly briefing. If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving, I hope you have a wonderful time.
Coming up this week, Spotify unveils a new set of audiobook features it hopes will boost its network effects, a new report shows us what enterprises are spending their AI budgets on and Zoom is rebranding itself - but is it too late?
You can watch the audiovisual version of the briefing here and if you want more than the briefing, paid subscribers get access to in-depth Deep Dive reports, the Knowledge Series and more.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Key reads and resources for product teams
New from the Department of Product Substack this week:
Deep - AI trends and technologies
In this Deep Dive report, we’ll share a collection of insights, trends and resources, designed to bring you up to speed with everything you need to know today. Including: new monetization strategies, the rise of agentic AI and what this could mean for product teams and how AI is fuelling international growth. (Department of Product)
UX - How to create efficient error messages
It’s possible to identify UX problems with your error messages consistently and effectively by using a scoring rubric based on established usability best practices for error messages. NNGroup’s Evan Sunwall explains how. (NN Group)
Careers - The rise of AI Voice Interviewers
Companies spend a ton of time and money on interviews - often with low ROI. And, candidates suffer through long and painful processes. In this piece, A16z’s Olivia Moore explains how AI voice powered interviews might transform the entire process. (Andreessen Horowitz)
Case study - How LinkedIn’s engineering team built its generative AI stack
LinkedIn’s GenAI application tech stack embraces AI-first development, lays a solid foundation for building GenAI apps efficiently and responsibly. In this post, the product and engineering teams who worked on it explain how they did it. (LinkedIn Engineering)
Podcast - Discord’s CEO on how the product grew to 200m users
Jason Citron is the Co-Founder and CEO of Discord, a voice, video and text platform for friends playing games. Jason has raised $1BN for the company and was able to scale it to 200M users. (20VC)
New product features and innovation this week
Spotify has built a series of new tools for authors who publish their books on the platform, including analytics tools and promo cards which offer assets designed for sharing across social media. An immersive “Follow-Along” experience will give users a visual experience which complements the audio. Spotify is also rolling out a new author profile feature early next year which will allow users to follow their favorite author - potentially boosting its network effects.
The product design teams at Spotify have clearly thought very deeply about how they might be able to differentiate their audiobook product here and these changes - along with recently added commenting and other social features could begin to transform it into an audio social network.
Anthropic has unveiled a new open-source protocol called Model Context Protocol (MCP). It’s a new standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data lives which includes content repositories, business tools and data environments. Pre-built integrations for Google Drive, Slack, GitHub and more are available on launch and payments company Block is an early partner for the new protocol.
Meanwhile…
Threads is testing a new feature which will allow users to set the “Following” feed as their default. As BlueSky continues to grow, Threads is keen to differentiate itself. Giving users control over their feed preferences is one way to do that.
OpenAI is reported to be considering developing a proprietary web browser but isn’t close to releasing it just yet. Perplexity’s CEO has also expressed an interest in the past. With Google potentially set to be forced to sell Chrome, is there a possibility that an AI rival might acquire it? Perhaps that’s a little fanciful, but the prospect of an AI-first browser is starting to gain momentum. And the first cohort of AI companies are now expanding their product offerings outside of their initial value propositions as models start to become commoditized.
YouTube is planning to roll out AI-powered dubbing that will automatically translate videos into Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese. The feature will be automatically enabled by default. More companies are waking up to the power of AI-powered translation as a powerful internationalization strategy.
In other news…
Zoom is rebranding itself - and is ditching the word “video” from its legal name. Zoom 2.0 will be an “AI-first work platform for human connection”. But is it a pivot too late? The company’s stock is still down a massive ~85% from pandemic highs.
Voice transcripts are coming for WhatsApp messages. Ideal for users who hate listening to long winded voice notes.
Uber data labelling as a service?
Uber is investing heavily in its AI data labelling division, Scaled Solutions. The labelling teams will work on data for Uber Rides and Eats including classifying objects for local mapping and digitizing food menus. Uber is also planning - for the first time - to sell this service to third parties. Early clients include the game developer Niantic Inc which is most famous for its Pokémon Go series. A fine example of productizing internal services as a new revenue stream.
Tools you can use
Circleback is a YC startup which lets you extract specific bits of information from meeting transcripts and use them across other platforms like CRMs and Notion databases.
Lightscreen is an AI interview assistant designed to help you hire engineers and catch anyone who cheats during the process.
Beams lets you track your time across SaaS apps to help you understand how you spend your time and what you can do to improve your work habits.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
Code generation is the dominant use case for enterprise companies who have adopted generative AI with 51% of companies saying that this is their primary use case. The long term impact of this on the composition of product / development teams isn’t yet clear but what is clear is that traditional software engineering is likely to be transformed forever.
Enterprise AI spending reached $13.8 billion this year, up 6x since 2023. OpenAI’s early mover advantage is also eroding as its market share of enterprise LLMs drops from 50% to 34% YoY. Full State of Generative AI in Enterprise Report.
57% of the world’s population are now connected to the mobile internet. But adoption rates have flatlined YoY. Over 2 billion people still do not own a mobile phone. State of Mobile Connectivity Report.
The average adult in the UK spends 4 hours, 20 minutes online each day - up from 3 hours, 41 minutes in 2023.
Amazon’s capital investment has exploded and it is now on track to spend $75 billion this year alone on physical infrastructure to support AI growth. In the 20 years from 2000 to 2020, the company spent ~$70 billion.
Ecommerce app Shein has adopted an innovative new product growth strategy in Mexico: door to door catalogue sales.
Other product news in brief
😬OpenAI has suspended early access to Sora after it leaked
🧑⚖️A UK regulator will soon be given the power to block US tech mergers
✅Meta has hired Salesforce’s head of AI, Clara Shih
🎵Spotify is blocking developers from accessing some of its APIs
The Weekly Briefing is a product-led perspective of what’s happening in tech - and why it matters to product teams.
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