Kadir's Blog on Everything

The point of this essay isn’t to provide an excuse for mediocre metrics, but rather, to point out the harsh reality of the situation. There’s just a stark contrast between how much we as consumer entrepreneurs care about our products, versus our target audience who really doesn’t give a shit about how much effort we put in. As a result, people aren’t signing up, and if they do, they don’t use the product nor have a good experience. It’s very hard.

Ericsson World Mobility Report

Pretty interesting way to look at the market opportunity. 

 The second problem is actually the hard one. 

OEMs can use these phones for warranty replacement units or sell it on discount in segments that cannot afford brand new phones. I wonder when this will become a product line itself - my iPhone 5 was in good working conduction. I just wanted to get the new phone.

I don't see Apple rushing in to this space because of the same issue - it is awkward and society will not change to adapt this. It needs to be subtler than this. 

Numbers are important. Number of users is important. So are lots of other things. Different services create value in different ways. Trust your gut as much (or more) than the numbers. Figure out what matters and build something good.

Circa’s secret to getting 90% 5-stars

It’s hard to express just how much of a change this is. For the first time ever, the tech industry is selling not to big corporations or middle-class families but to four fifths of all the adults on earth - it is selling to people who don’t have mains electricity or running water and substitute spending on cigarettes for mobile. This means we have accelerating complexity in three ways: we go from middle class families to everyone, we go from the PC to mobile, and we go from the simplicity of the web browser, mouse and keyboard model that lasted twenty years (thanks Marc!) to these complex, multi-layered devices where everything is still changing. And this is why it's so much fun. 

Why The Internet Is Anti-design, and How You Can Fight Back

It’s hard to live with something that isn’t quite right yet – especially when it’s your job to get it right. It’s important to know when to say “it’s fine for now, but it won’t be fine for later.” Because moving forward is critical to getting somewhere. And, eventually, you’ll figure it all out. It’ll all work out in the end.

The tool also enables campaigns to build “look-alike audiences” that consist of Facebook users who are not included in the original voter file but who generally match the characteristics of those who are, thus extending the potential reach of advertising. This is similar to the voter modeling that campaigns use to find out which candidates voters they have not contacted are likely to support. Although Facebook advertisers have been able to build “look-alike” groups based on Facebook’s own data since last year, now they can create them from their custom files.

He said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. He doesn’t think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy — encouraged, even — to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today.

Solutions to an already solved problems like this for sake of differentiation irks me. Oh it sells in a pack of 10 for $10.

Top 20 Windows Phone Countries

27 out of 45 customers asked their waiter to take a group photo. 14 of those requested the waiter retake the photo as they were not pleased with the first photo. On average this entire process between the chit chatting and reviewing the photo taken added another 5 minutes and obviously caused the waiter not to be able to take care of other tables he/she was serving.

Facebook Messenger - Instead of making it feel like work, FB could have used the data they already have to get users to create actual groups in one tap. I have many such conversations on FB and they could have just used it.