Briefing: Spotify courses, Airtable AI, Zoom Workplace
Your weekly briefing - Thursday, 28th March, 2024
The Department of Product Weekly Briefing is a product-led perspective of what’s happening in tech - and why it matters to the people who build products.
Hi product people 👋,
Welcome to the 270+ new readers who joined us this past week!
Spotify says around half of its premium subscribers have listened to education or self-help themed podcasts. And it’s this metric that’s led to the rollout of its latest monetization idea this week - courses. While on one hand this is a fine example of product teams using data to craft new value propositions from scratch, the experience of listening to a podcast is very different to completing a course which requires more practical, hands-on activities. Perhaps Spotify realises YouTube is starting to eat into its music streaming business and is attempting to become more like YouTube as a result.
In other product news, Airtable has officially joined the AI party with the release of Airtable AI out of beta. Use cases relevant for product teams include synthesizing customer feedback, enhancing product roadmap decisions and auto PRD generation. The company is also allowing enterprise customers to take a model agnostic approach to LLM integrations which means they can decide which LLM to use as part of these features - something we’ll probably see a lot more of as companies become wary about strategically depending on one partner. You can watch it in action here.
Meanwhile, Google has started testing its Search Generative Experience (SGE) for users who have not opted into it for the first time. It’s been almost a year since this was announced and the company is understandably taking its time before rolling it out. Last week’s appointment of Liz Reid as Head of Search shows that the company is putting SGE at the heart of its future vision of Search. With Perplexity raising more money and filling the gap currently left by Google, the roll out of SGE probably can’t come soon enough for Alphabet execs.
Finally, if you're looking for inspiration for your product’s design, this collection of filterable design components might be of interest.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Key reads, tools and resources for product teams
New posts from the Department of Product Substack:
Chartpack - Not AI - other new tech trends to inform your product’s strategy
AI fatigue is real right now. And while it’s still essential to stay on top of some of the more significant developments in AI and how they might impact your product strategy, in this Chartpack we’re specifically looking at new technology trends that are not powered by AI. Including:
R&D spend: what non-AI activities are top tech companies like Amazon, Google and others spending their R&D budgets on?
New technologies that are not AI - and what they mean for your product strategy including: Connected devices, Edge computing, Blockchain and more.
The startup funding landscape: which industries are getting funded?
Knowledge Series - How does the release process work?
There’s an unwritten rule we all follow in product development. And that rule is to never release on a Friday. But on the days where releases are allowed, how do they work?
(Department of Product)
UX - Instagram’s motion identity system
Instagram refreshed and expanded its brand identity. With motion playing a key role in the way their product is both marketed and experienced, Instagram invited Studio Dumbar/DEPT® to collaborate on the next phase of expansion: the creation of a vibrant, all-encompassing motion system. (Instagram / Studio Dumbar)
Strategy - How to price your generative AI features
Effectively monetizing any new technology is a race to capture market share while still giving yourself room to grow your business. But the stakes are much higher with generative AI: though it promises to deliver unprecedented value to businesses, it can also be very expensive to serve to each incremental customer. In this piece by VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, they explain some factors to consider when you’re putting together your pricing strategy for genAI. (A16Z)
Tools you can use
LibLab - generate better SKDs and documentation for your APIs
Creatie - a new product design tool for prototypes and design systems
Supercal - maximise your deep work hours with calendar optimization
Product data and trends to stay informed
Reddit made a successful start to its IPO last week at a ~$9 billion valuation. But it is yet to figure out a proper path to profitability with an average revenue per user of $3.42 in 2023. Here’s how its average revenue per user compares:
43% of U.S. companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue expect to invest at least $100 million in generative AI, according to a survey of 220 companies published last week by KPMG.
Florida is banning social media use for under 14s. The law, which doesn’t name specific companies, targets social-media platforms that rely on features such as notification alerts and autoplay videos that encourage compulsive viewing. Among U.S. teens aged 13 to 17, 93% said they used YouTube, 63% used TikTok, 60% used Snapchat and 59% used Instagram, the survey showed. In Europe, the minimum age for social media access is 13 in the UK and 14 for Spain.
By 2030, tasks that represent up to 30% of all hours currently worked in the U.S. could be automated by AI, according to an estimate by McKinsey.
43% of young adults have used ChatGPT, up 10 percentage points since last summer. Just 6% of Americans 65 and up have used ChatGPT.
Almost half (47%) of Gen Zs and a third of millennials surveyed say their favorite form of video content is social media videos and live streams. Fascinating annual Digital Media Trends Report 2024.
Strategic perspectives
🏰 How deep is Nvidia’s software moat?
🧵Threads has entered the fediverse but why does this strategic product decision matter?
🕶️ ex-Head of Oculus on why the Vision Pro could be Meta’s Android moment
🤖Why AI can’t kill Google’s search engines
New and noteworthy product features this week
GenAI startup Galileo recently raised $4.4 million. It works using prompts for user interfaces and it’s remarkably good at creating components for commonly used assets that don’t necessarily require much creativity. In this example, the UI was created with the following prompt: design a component where team members can get instant feedback from colleagues - they can view their feedback, request feedback from peers and have suggestions of who to share feedback with. You can easily imagine a future where product teams use prompts for generic screens like auth, password reset, login etc. This would free up time to focus on more complex UX problems.
Twitch’s CEO Dan Clancy has outlined his vision for 2024 in a letter to users - including the rollout of new mobile app features.
Browser startup SigmaOS has launched a series of new paid AI-powered features. These include an Arc-inspired ‘pinch to summarize’ feature and a feature that will perform tasks on your behalf (including browsing the web or booking and Airbnb).
The FT has launched a chatbot called Ask FT that allows users to ask questions about finance and current affairs. Chief product officer Lindsey Jayne says the outlet is “approaching this as ‘model agnostic’ and seeing which one meets our needs best.”
Zoom has unveiled a major new release called Workplace as it continues to expand outside of its core communications platform (side note: you can’t help but think a name that wasn’t quite so similar to Google Workspace might have been a better alternative to differentiate it!). The new release includes the launch of a free AI companion that will summarize meetings and draft agenda items. Zoom’s CTO says internal benchmarks shows it can reduce relative errors of meeting recaps and meeting next steps by over 20% and 60% vs GPT4.
Ex-Googler and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has launched a new photo sharing app called Shine - to mixed reviews.
Other product news in brief
Microsoft has named Pavan Davuluri as its new Windows and Surface chief.
The CEO of Stability AI the company behind Stable Diffusion, is departing the company.
Amazon has invested a further $2.7 billion in growing AI power, Anthropic.
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The Department of Product Weekly Briefing is written by Rich Holmes. If you enjoyed this briefing, hit the like ♥️ button below.
And if you have any comments about anything featured in the briefing, leave a comment to share your perspective.
Interesting perspective on Spotify's e-learning bet. I was wondering the same- the user journey of a course is quite different than listening to a podcast. This makes me think that their courses wouldn't be too demanding or long. I can see them as the Masterclass fare, closer to educational entertainment than rigorous academia.
The other thing I really like about Galileo is how easy it is to export to Figma and then fine-tune & tailor it to your specific needs. One of the more impressive AI-centric products I've tried out.