

What making something people want looks like - mgdo
http://blog.monitorbook.com/post/114152200984/what-making-something-people-want-looks-like

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SyneRyder
I don't think it's a case of "something people want", but FOMO and spammy
Twitter tactics.

It sucks in your Twitter friends graph, and whenever you start streaming it
posts to Twitter with the |LIVE NOW| announcements. Those two methods at least
make sense - but it's the Meerkat chat that's annoying and inexcusable. It's
cross posted to Twitter and everything you type is @-replied to yourself
(instead of to the people you're replying to), so your Twitter followers are
forced to see your Meerkat conversations... and only your half of the
conversation. There's no reason those conversations couldn't just stay on
Meerkat, and you can't see the rest of the conversation unless you're on
Meerkat yourself.

I have never muted anything on Twitter as fast as I've muted everything to do
with Meerkat. Even then, I still can't mute those one-sided Meerkat
conversations, because there's no hashtag - I'll probably just have to
unfollow those users. But at least it's given me a great understanding of how
people feel whenever I tweet about Eurovision or soccer.

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qzw
There are at least 3 types of "something people want". The first is the
obvious, you-see-it, you-want-it, you-know everyone-and-his-cousin-will-want-
it-too something, like the original iPod. There's the it-doesn't-seem-that-
great-until-you-try-it-for-a-while something, like Minecraft. And then there's
the I-still-don't-know-why-anyone-wanted-it-even-after-it's-insanely-popular
something, like Flappy Bird. What these three types of somethings have in
common is what people really want.

~~~
npalli
> The first is the obvious, you-see-it, you-want-it, you-know everyone-and-
> his-cousin-will-want-it-too something, like the original iPod

The original iPod sales looked like this [1]. Tell me if you think if it falls
into your first category. For the first 3-4 years, very little movement. It is
interesting to me that a large number of people feel iPod was a smash hit
right out of the gate.

[1] [https://geekwhisperin.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/total-
ipod...](https://geekwhisperin.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/total-ipods-sold-
till-june-2008.jpg)

~~~
qzw
Uh, that's a chart of the _total cumulative_ sales, so just by the nature of
the chart, it's going to make the early years look terrible. The raw
numbers[1] were: 376K in 2002, 937K in 2003, 4.4M in 2004, and 22.5M in 2005.
That's growths of roughly 300%, 400%, and 500% after the first year. That says
to me while everyone may not have known about it right away (Apple was still
the plucky underdog, instead of the $700B overgod), people were pretty quick
on the uptake once they really got to see it. Anyway, even if you didn't rush
out and buy an iPod for whatever reason, it was pretty obviously a very cool
piece of gear that people would want. "Want" doesn't necessarily mean "buy". I
want a McLaren P1, and I know a lot of other people do as well, but they will
only sell 375 of them, ever. That's why I would put it in my first category
along with the iPod.

[1]
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_quarte...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_quarter.svg)

~~~
mgdo
Good point!

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optimusclimb
I had never heard of Meerkat before, but live in SF, and use plenty of apps,
and am a developer. The more I see things like these, the more I grow
suspicious they're yet another form of "submarine" articles, in pg terms.

~~~
jonah
First off, didn't it "hit" at SXSW, when all those kids get back to SF, you'll
hear about it.

Secondly, you're right - "_everyone's_ using it" \- is pretty subjective.

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sparkzilla
The problem with the statement "make something people want" is that people
most often don't know what they want.

Most people didn't want the first iPhone, or even the first car -- they were
happy with their non-smart phone, and their buggies. If people did know what
they want, there wouldn't be a huge marketing and PR industry to tell them
what they want.

The statement can lead to the kind of thinking that only products like Meerkat
that have viral growth are worth investing in. Some companies may require a
large marketing push to get off the ground. Even Paul Graham's first company
was spending $16,000 a month on PR.

~~~
derefr
I'm not sure you can say that most people didn't want the first iPhone.

Sure, they weren't already picturing "an iPhone" and thinking "I want
that"—but there had been Star-Trek-PADD-like-devices in the popular
consciousness for ages. People were cognisant of a _hole_ in their lives, that
any number of hypothetical things within a previously-empty product category
could fill.

Apple's job in marketing the iPhone (and iPad) basically consisted of
convincing people that "the future had arrived"—that they had created the
first product to meet that known nothing-exists-that-can-meet-it need.

I would say the same of the first internal-combustion-engine automobile. There
were carriages, there were trains, and so people could _see_ that in the
intersection there was some efficiency to be gained in everyday life if the
technology could be created to capture it—though it wasn't really clear what
form it would take.

I think this is where wearable/augmented-reality tech is today. People know
there's something there, can see the potential of the _product category_ from
all the sci-fi movie UXes we've ever been subjected to—but nothing has really
been an example of a _real_ product that would sit in the _as-yet-
hypothetical_ space. We're still reaching toward the space, rather than
landing in it.

~~~
sparkzilla
I agree. A poster below said it might be better to express this as, "Solve a
problem that people have". To which I would add, "...and cultivate the market
for your solution". This would eliminate the implication that something should
be automatically "wanted" by people for it to be successful.

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evanwarfel
I think it's time to replace 'Make something people want' with 'Solve a
problem that people have'. This works regardless of if people can cogently
articulate their problem.

~~~
Retra
Either way you slice it, a statement with fewer than 10 words probably isn't
going to be your recipe to success.

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guelo
If that's what people want then they already have it with Ustream, Livestream,
Bambuser, Qik, etc, etc.

I think Meerkat is riding some kind of SXSW hype machine but I don't see it
lasting. Look up Justin.tv.

~~~
21echoes
Meerkat has two things going for it:

1) It spammed twitter whenever you used it.

Start-up journalists use Twitter constantly. People who hype themselves use
Twitter constantly. This is the live streaming target market. Additionally,
Twitter is real-time, like live streaming, and Twitter doesn't actively manage
your stream, so the spam wouldn't get hidden (Facebook had this happen to them
years ago, and they've since gotten way better at keeping app spam out of your
face). Twitter was the perfect existing social network to use here.

2) Twitter noticed this and shut them down quickly.

While this sounds like a bad thing, it ended up being perfect for Meerkat.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)
in action. On top of the natural Streisand effects, there quickly arose a
conspiracy around it -- Twitter had recently acquired Periscope, a company
competing with Meerkat! And on top of even that, this all happened _right_ as
start-up journalists converged on Austin for SXSW, so they could chat about
it, use it to live stream bands, etc.

On top of these two main factors, Meerkat does have a slightly better
onboarding process, and a cute brand.

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fsk
Insulting to cite 2048 as "making something people want", considering it's an
inferior copy of threes.

~~~
teach
I bought Threes, but I prefer 2048. I am terrible at sliding puzzles and
strategy games, so Threes is too hard for me.

Edit: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American
public."

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rotten
I'm really not sure what they mean by "track something on the web".

Do they mean "monitor price changes for something you might want to buy
sometime with push alerts when the price changes"?

Their screen shot is a picture of an Amazon page.

I can't think of anything I'd want to track that I simply wouldn't follow
their twitter feed or like them on facebook.

And if I was really that price sensitive, I am not sure I'd track an item on
Amazon waiting for a discounted price to show up.

I'm confused.

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ionwake
How "easy" is it to create a service like meerkat?

What are the minimum requirements regarding hardware setup, cost overhead, web
app setup?

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chippy
It appears the images in the blog have been hugged to death. Getting Access
Denied messages is what it looks like.

~~~
mgdo
It is working fine for me

