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Invisible asymptotes

eugenewei.com

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Re: Invisible asymptotes

#11

Post by Cthulhu_ »

lordnacho wrote: post #9

Great 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 tec…

The ideas are there, but the interface to get on board with cryptocurrencies are 10x as difficult than e.g. twitter - you have hundreds of currencies (or half a dozen mainstream ones), hundreds of exchanges for which you need to provide photo ID, various clients, loads of articles about security, etc.

Whereas Twitter is basically sign up and type a text message.

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#14

Post by pjc50 »

> Sometimes, the product-market fit with early adopters is only that. The product won't go mainstream because other people don't want or need that product.

This is something that SV has a problem with. Every product or company is assumed to be targeted at the whole world. There's no room for niche products. Either you take over the world or you end up shut down.

(Twitter is also notoriously bad at handling negative feedback)

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#15

Post by _ZeD_ »

FrozenVoid wrote: post #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 proc…

It's the same as all the prices should be with tax

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#16

Post by andromeduck »

FrozenVoid wrote: post #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 proc…

What about tipping culture then? I wonder if that will go away as ecommerce becomes the norm.

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#17

Post by mooreds »

andromeduck wrote: post #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…

I feel the same way about feedback about my personal performance. It's always nice to hear "you are doing great", but at performance reviews or status meetings I really want to hear how I am screwing up and (more importantly) what I need to improve.

Having been on both sides of that conversation, it's really hard to deliver it, and takes humility to receive. But it's far more valuable.

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#18

Post by kemiller2002 »

mooreds wrote: post #17
andromeduck wrote: post #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…

I feel the same way about feedback about my personal performance. It's always nice to hear "you are doing great", but at performance reviews or status meetings I really want to hear how I am screwing up and (more importantly) what I need to improve. Having been on both sides of that conversation, it's really hard to deliver it, and takes humility to receive. But it's far more valuable.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but there is a difference between constructive feedback and merely negative feedback. Most of what I've seen is feedback with little understanding of the situation or empathy, and I think that is why people have become negative about receiving any sort of criticism. I had a boss that was great at that, and I always got constructive feedback, but those managers are far and few between. Most of the time I get things like, "The project is late." without any understanding as to how or why this happened.

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#19

Post by phyzome »

luk32 wrote: post #4
phyzome wrote: post #2

This 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 com…

The distaste is from people wanting to "drive demand", doing it, or recommending it. Driving demand is, quite literally, making possibly-happy people unhappy and then offering a paid solution. Reducing people's happiness for profit is basically evil.

And yeah, I'm reading about it because it's important to understand, anthropologically.

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#20

Post by ClassyJacket »

pjc50 wrote: post #14

> Sometimes, the product-market fit with early adopters is only that. The product won't go mainstream because other people don't want or need that product. This is something that SV has a problem with. Every product or company is assumed to be targeted at the whole world. There's no room for niche products. Either you take over the world or you end up shut down. (Twitter is also notoriously bad at handling negative f…

Too true. If Vine wasn't popular enough to be kept alive, how the hell many users did it need?
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