Invisible asymptotes
eugenewei.com
Invisible asymptotes
1–10 of 47 posts
Re: Invisible asymptotes
#2This is a really interesting look into Amazon's business model around Prime, market segmentation in social media, and other things.
The author seems to have a deep understanding of how businesses work. Some of it's pretty gross -- I hate reading about "creating desire", and similar dystopic capitalist memes -- but it's important to understand what's going on in these companies.
Re: Invisible asymptotes
#3I know this is an Amazon PR piece but I need to point to their more recent aggressive behavior of growing revenue at the expense of user experience. My grips on their non refundable charges is a great example. Amazon will secretly renew your services without even emailing you and when you go to ask for a refund on a non agreed upon renewal, they will refuse to issue a refund.
I guess that's one way of overcoming these invisible asymptotes if all they plan to do is come up with creative ways to charge you.
Re: Invisible asymptotes
#4This is a really interesting look into Amazon's business model around Prime, market segmentation in social media, and other things. The author seems to have a deep understanding of how businesses work. Some of it's pretty gross -- I hate reading about "creating desire", and similar dystopic capitalist memes -- but it's important to understand what's going on in these companies.
Why the distaste? I treat it as a study of phenomena. It's like a social study on rather grand scale. It doesn't different species much from the crowd dynamics, useful in better design of evacuation routes.
The application is not life-saving, but the conclusions are the same. It's like dynamite and atom splitting. You can use it for the good and for the bad.
> it's important to understand what's going on in these companies.
This is simple. They study people's behavior to drive it for their benefit. The basics of it should be taught in high school, so people better understand themselves.
Re: Invisible asymptotes
#5Some good stuff in here that risks being glossed over because of the length. Could use a tl;dr or a 75% reduction in words.
Re: Invisible asymptotes
#6This was a great read. I think the other unsaid takeaway here - touched on briefly when mentioning Twitter's glacial rate of product development - is that invisible asymptotes become insurmountable if your company has lost the ability to adapt and execute quickly by time you encounter them.
Re: Invisible asymptotes
#7Some good stuff in here that risks being glossed over because of the length. Could use a tl;dr or a 75% reduction in words.
I thought the same. There's an invisble asymptote of the number of people who will read such a long text.
Re: Invisible asymptotes
#8>Shipping fees.
>People hate paying for shipping. They despise it. It may sound banal, even self-evident, but understanding that was, I'm convinced, so critical to much of how we unlocked growth at Amazon over the years.
>People don't just hate paying for shipping, they hate it to literally an irrational degree. We know this because our first attempt to address this was to show, in the shopping cart and checkout process,
"People hate shipping charges irrationally", because they perceive them as unfair additional tax that distorts price and makes it harder to compare prices. If price was including shipping/vat/taxes as single variable no one would be confused by it. Its not a magic asymptotic limit, its basic psychology: People want simple interfaces, simpler solutions, simpler interactions.
Re: Invisible asymptotes
#9Great article, very long, so I scanned it.
It's interesting when it comes to Twitter, the argument seems to be that everyone who is gonna use it has come across it, its features are well-known, and there's not much to be done other than accept that.
Which got me to thinking about cryptocurrencies. This has now been in the news across the whole planet, everyone has read about it, maybe not everyone really gets the technical details, but probably the value prop of decentralized currency has reached a huge number of people now.
Or is it? What do you think?
Re: Invisible asymptotes
#10> I'm almost invariably more interested in the folks who've registered negative feedback, though I sense many product teams find watching that material to be stomach-churning.
YES! I wish more people were comfortable dealing with negative feedback and not just receiving but also giving or soliciting it. IMO positive and negative feedback is complementary.
IMO, positive feedback is most useful for reinforcing patterns and trends - driving surplus by optimizing the current model. Negative feedback is most useful for generating alpha as it puts emphasis on where the real friction/desires are, what obstacles lie ahead and therefore what problem to solve instead of what is the best solution - allowing us to update our understanding, and break out of a cycle.