If You Took a Photo, You're Sharing it, Right?

Back in the olden days, or at least to the 1980s, proud parents would take photos of their family, have the film developed at a photo lab, and then take the hard copies of these photos home. Some of the photos would be placed in keepsake books. Others would be framed. But you pretty much had to be in the same physical location as the person holding the photo. They brought the photos to you, and you looked at them, lovingly, or at least passively, for a moment, before handing them back or to the next relative down the line.

Entire histories of lives come and gone are frozen in these physical collections - to be viewed irregularly, as memories are shared with nostalgia. But in the last two decades, our ability to take an exponentially increasing amount of photos, more quickly, in higher quality, and share them instantly practically anywhere, has turned the notion of scarcity on its head. Now anybody, should you choose, can see any photo you've ever taken, on any number of social outlets of your choice - whether you're using a phone or a more professional camera, or even +Google Glass.

With these barriers out of your way, with everyone having this seemingly infinite capability to capture practically every moment, you're also seeing people's intent for distribution change not for nostalgia to the past, but for a time sharing window of minutes or days. Photos are no longer looked back on as bits of the past that one happened, but in many cases, a lens (so to speak) into a shared present. Here's what I'm doing right now. Here's an experience I just had that you need to know about and engage with... right now.

I took all of these photos, but only shared some.

So as a parent, as I take photos at home or out on our trips, and see others with their various cameras and smartphones taking images in, I'm not thinking of these hardbound photo books that get passed to future generations, or even in most cases, online photo book equivalents like +SmugMug or +Shutterfly, but instead to ephemeral destinations in the stream, be it Facebook, Instagram, Google+ or Twitter. And the target audience has changed as well. The photos you're taking of your kids and friends aren't always for them to have a shared memory of what you did together, but instead for you to update other friends, other colleagues, and often strangers, to the experience you're having.

If I didn't share it, did it happen?

The more professional photographer may take hundreds or even thousands of photos on an adventure. They'll painstakingly go through each shot and find the very best ones that were captured with the optimal setup and lighting. Then, after much editing, they'll share a select few - a best of the best, to an audience who has come to expect a high level of quality from them. But for the rest of us, usually the best we'll do is pick our favorite few and lob them to the nearest social networks where our friends and family will see it. Or worse, we'll just delete the ones that make us look bad, and post the entire glob of photos as a collection - a digital slide show that hopes our friends will care enough to find their favorite, and leave us a comment, Like or +1 in return to give a head nod of agreement.

Now that my kids are entering their sixth year of life, and are on the home stretch of kindergarten, I've captured my unfair share of thousands of photos - some good, some bad. I've backed them all up to +Google Drive so I can get to all my photos on all my +Android and ChromeOS devices - or any device with an Internet connection, really. With online storage space becoming cheaper and the ease of posting getting down to almost zero, there's nothing stopping me from taking more photos. And the more smartphones and wearables we get with cameras, the more we can be constant amateur shutterbugs.

And think forward a bit - away from today's streams. As technology advances forward, the way we share changes. We've moved from slide carousels of vacations and Walgreen's photo labs to online photo book replicas, and in-stream editing. We're not backing up our photos to CDs and DVDs, and I don't see a future where I'll hand my kids a microscopic Flash drive upon graduation. They'll just know. Any photo that's ever been taken that I want them to have will be available - and I shouldn't have to do anything. We've eliminated the physical barriers that dictated how we share. Even more, these virtual walls are coming down. In the mean time, I bet when you take that photo, you're thinking where you're going to share it.

All Product Experiences are Personal

There's a well-worn saying in the world of politics: "All politics is local", spawned by former House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who explained that a politician succeeds by understanding the needs of the people who voted them into office. What directly impacts the individual's happiness and well-being will almost always trump a more philosophical issue - even if it is one of national interest.

Product development isn't all that different. The success of creating an engaging community with social software, or a popular application for mobile, or the latest hot website, derives from how the individual user feels when interacting with your product. No matter how much one group may enjoy your service, if an individual finds it to be complicated or questions its value, you're going to have a challenging time getting them to visit a second time or do more than quickly uninstall your app - as opinions are formed practically instantly.

Get this formula wrong, and you might end up with a site that may have a lot of registrations or an app with a high download number, but actual usage that lags far behind what is expected. This problem can lead to an almost unnatural amount of user churn, as the population of initial signed up users needs to replaced, not just with new ones to keep growth high, but to backfill those who've stopped using a product. Product success takes more than a good idea, but an entire package - from a clear message of what users get from your product, a fast and smart interface, and near-immediate benefits.

Users don't want to spend a lot of time setting up your application, filling out forms, or hunting for good content. They want to immediately see value, and later tailor it to their specific needs. So don't hassle them by obscuring the app's intent, and hiding the most important, informative or exciting elements behind a nest of menus or a maze of choices. If users are often confused, there's a good chance it's because you made a mistake.

Unsurprisingly, not every application is for everyone. Sites or applications tend to find audiences of similar groups - be it by age, geography, life stage, or any matter of personal preferences. It is a rare event when something crosses the chasm from audience to audience and becomes so mainstream that "everyone" is on it, or "everyone" is using it. That doesn't necessarily mean that by not reaching everyone, the product has failed, but that there is a ceiling on its potential. The company behind the tool then has to make a decision - whether to optimize the product to be an incredible experience for the limited audience, or to modify the product further, potentially at risk of alienating its original users, to attract a wider audience.

You can see this tug of war as initial users of a product (see: The Five Stages of Early Adopter Behavior) can be excited about the prospect of a service reaching the masses, only later to be annoyed at how a service has changed when the mainstream does arrive. It's all too common to see people migrate from community to community online or switch from app to app to keep one step ahead of the pack.

This makes every product decision critical, as well as the ability to listen to user feedback, take rapid action, and act on bugs that impact wide audiences. As I've experienced many times as an early user or as an employee at companies making user-facing software, it's very likely that bugs or quality gaps impacting one person also impact many other people who haven't spoken up yet. Tackling the most reported bugs, even if they are small ones, can be as critical as stopping a short-term outage, depending how forgiving your customers are.

And we as users need to understand that just because we love something doesn't mean everyone will. Other people have different needs, usage patterns and work environments. So while we can embrace the role of an evangelist, what fits us may not fit everyone. I often find, even at home, that my wife's preferences for software and hardware differs from mine. Cast the net wider, and you can see greater diversity in terms of preferred applications, news sources and more. Just because I love something doesn't mean you will, and just because as a developer, you expected me to use a product in a certain way doesn't mean that I will, nor will others. (See: Stop Telling Me How to Use Your Products)

The best product managers I've seen are exceptionally patient and compassionate. They don't bully users into following a strict instruction set, and don't mock you when you come to a different conclusion. They genuinely want to know where they can improve, and learn from you, to ease the onboarding process and make their product even more inviting to the rest of the world. Even if they may be focused on the big picture, every individual user counts, and that makes all difference between success and stagnation.

In Tech, In Order for X to Win, Y Doesn't Have to Lose

While it's somewhat hard to imagine now, with Apple seeing incredible success, it was less than two decades ago when the company, facing a small market share, and minuscule developer interest, had to pull a rabbit out of its hat to ensure longtime survival. That surprise came from an unexpected partner - longtime nemesis Microsoft, who in 1997, not only gave the then-beleaguered company a much-needed cash injection of $150 million, but also promised continued updates to the then-essential Microsoft Office suite, required to keep Macintosh's hopes alive as a viable platform.

Amid the shocked faithful, who responded with boos over making Internet Explorer the default browser for the Macintosh, instead of the arguably more Mac-like Netscape Navigator, CEO Steve Jobs said the unforgettable phrase easy to forget in an environment where it's commonplace to pit technologies against one another:

“If we want to move forward, and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.” (Source: YouTube)

Turns out, as with many things, he was right. Microsoft, despite the company's many challenges, still is worth more than $300 billion, and saw income of more than $16 billion in the most recent quarter. When it comes to operating system choices, usually one picks Macintosh or Windows (and not both), or mobile OS choices, one could pick iOS or Windows phone (and not both), but both companies have managed to have significant places in the tech world for the last two decades.

Rarely does the winner take all.

Fast forward from Steve's words in Boston in 1997 to today - a world where big companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and others command significant visibility and influence - but comparably younger companies like Twitter, Dropbox, Tesla, Nest (pre-acquisiton), Uber and others manage to also carve out interesting opportunities and become big companies themselves.

It's often assumed that if one "wins", another has to "lose". If Facebook wins, does Twitter lose? If Android wins, does iOS lose? If Amazon wins, does Google lose?

As a user of these technologies, and someone who watches the market closely or writes about these technologies, I see lines forming - not just of people who prefer one technology or one company relative to another, but of people who also display an equal and opposite reaction, to strongly dislike the company or technologies less preferred.

Those decisions have odd echoes. It's assumed that if you like the iPhone, then you must prefer Apple Mail over Gmail. If you like Windows Phone, you must also prefer Bing search to Google search. And if you have a blog that covers the minutiae of Apple's comings and goings, that documenting any negative opinion about their perceived competition should be highlighted with equal or higher volume.

Simply stated: I disagree, and think we can do better. You can like one company's vision or products even if you purchase from another one. It can be possible that all the major players find a space where they are successful. And the best products are built when it's the users' values that are at the forefront, rather than a false battle started to strengthen the position against another player.

Larry Page, Google's CEO, addressed this point at Google I/O last summer, when he said:

"Every story I read about Google is 'us vs some other company' or some stupid thing, and I just don’t find that very interesting. We should be building great things that don’t exist. Being negative isn’t how we make progress. Most important things are not zero sum, there is a lot of opportunity out there."

Recently, The Verge wrote a great in-depth piece about being a fanboy, asking "Have you ever loved something so much it hurt?" showcasing a number of examples of people so consumed about making sure people knew which side of these battles they were on that they were unforgiving in their tone with anyone else who disagreed. I believe you can have a strong preference, and can evangelize a product or platform, like I do often with those I enjoy, without having to cut down alternatives or those who've selected a different way.

The world is a very large place. There are many millions of people who haven't yet purchased smartphones, tablets or PCs, let alone decided on their favorite OS or apps. There is room for many small companies and big companies alike to innovate and do incredible things. There's room for us all to intellectually choose to be fair and review each new product on its merits and stand for those things we believe and like without needing to tear down alternatives. It might be fun, but we can do better.

Disclosures for transparency's sake: I work at Google, which makes some of my personal favorite products, like Android, Gmail and ChromeOS. It can be assumed Google occasionally competes with other market participants like Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.

(Images via Dreamstime, which is an excellent resource)

Either you are in Engineering, or you are in Sales.

At BlueArc, our longtime CEO and executive chairman Gianluca Rattazzi had a saying which he often weaved into his presentations at our company all-hands meetings. "Either you are in engineering, or you are in sales."

The idea was to have employees from all corners of the company take ownership of our shared revenue goals, or think about what each of us could do, whether we were in Marketing, HR, Finance or Support, to encourage us to meet our number. Even if we weren't dialing for dollars or meeting with customers, if we weren't the people actually building the product ourselves, we had to think like salespeople. It also was aimed to reduce conflict between teams, as we wouldn't shake our heads at the antics of account managers, or point fingers when one territory or account proved harder than expected.

Meanwhile, engineers have to keep being focused on what they do best, which is design and deliver incredible products. Most engineers, as Dilbert often points out, make terrible sales people. They would likely rush to tell you the product's latest flaw or highlight the bug list of the week instead of working to find a way to make the current offering fit your needs - which would delay or block the sales cycle.

As I see it, product managers are the buffer between engineers and marketing. Marketing is the buffer between product management and the real world (aka the customers and press). Between those two hops, code turns into features, and features turn into benefits. If lucky, those benefits can turn into revenue, and as most companies tell you, revenue solves all problems.

Which brings us back to the split - either you are in engineering, or you are in sales. Even if you don't carry a quota-bearing number, as an employee of a company, you take some amount of pride from the work delivered there. When the company is having a hard time, you have a hard time. When the company is preparing a new product, you are probably eager to try that product, and tell the world about it.

At Google, as I mentioned last November, that process includes early access and beta testing, which we call dogfooding. Many of us are lucky enough to get early access to things like +Google Glass or the Chromebook Pixel. We are more likely to be using a Nexus 5, Nexus 7 or Moto X than the average +Android user, and have a more-encompassing understanding of the company's vision and products than those outside the company.

As an early adopter and technology enthusiast, promoting products I like is second nature. I've been touting ChromeOS for years. I switched to Android well before picking up a Google badge. I always tell people when products I like are fantastic. And that extends to visionary new ideas like Google Glass. I've recently seen some memes on various tech blogs about a perceived dropoff in use by Google employees of this early version of the product - saying the product should be so fantastic that people clamor to use it, and trying to read the tea leaves into saying the product won't succeed - a curious proposition considering it hasn't even launched yet beyond a small circle of Glass Explorers.

My Kids, Racing #throughglass

Without diving too deep into those weeds, I can say I do use it, and I find having a first-person view for recording video and taking photos incredibly valuable. I get instant notifications of email and texts and can respond by voice, hands-free. And wherever I go while wearing Glass, the questions are from excited people who are delighted to see how simple it is to use, not to mention how it non-intrusively lets me continue a conversation, while making eye contact, with the small viewer being out of the way. I take Glass with me on walks to the park with my kids. I took Glass with me to the +San Francisco Zoo on Monday. It becomes another lightweight way to capture the experience.

A View of My Wife and Twins #throughglass

If you're inclined to be skeptical, and that sounds like sales, that brings us back to the original thought - as an employee of a company that makes things, you represent the product. You can help others see how a product can be used, and if you're spotted using the competitor's phone or OS, or you prefer a competitive service or platform, people see that. That's part of why Steve Ballmer's kids weren't even allowed to have iPods and Bill Gates' kids used MSN search instead of Google. Those kids didn't work for Microsoft, but by extension, it would be a fairly bad case study to see them using competitive products.

The good news is I don't believe I'm at a place where I'm asked to use low-quality products like the Zune and MSN Search. It's easy to get excited about products that are making it easier to get information and share updates more quickly, or to get to my data no matter where I am, from any device. I can't go back twenty years and become an engineer, taking all the required computer science courses needed to be the true alpha geek, but I know I can do my part to improve the product from the inside, and tell the world about it on the outside. Think about yourself in your role. If you're not in engineering, aren't you in sales?

Disclosures: I work for Google, obviously. I often get to dogfood our products, like Glass, the Chromebook Pixel and others, free of charge. I paid retail price for my Nexus 5 and Nexus 7, and prefer Android to alternatives. If I forgot a disclosure, I should disclose that too.