Monday, March 27, 2006
Nifty idea #4279
A nifty idea came to me in the shower just a few moments ago, and I felt the need to blog it before going to work.
How would you sell the first telephone?
I mean, you could give a really kickass demo.. but when your first customer takes one home, how is she going to use it? Who is she going to call?
We face a similar problem with Ping. Actually, all software with social networking aspects to it faces this problem. People have come up with pretty crafty solutions.
What's special about social software that runs on the phone? It has direct access to a fully loaded PIM (personal information manager):
So, what I'm thinking, is that as soon as you create an account with Ping on your phone, we immediately cross-reference the phone numbers and email addresses already stored on your phone with those of other Ping users, then show you a list of people you already know that use Ping, and all you to quickly/easily add them to your list of friends (and you could subsequently revisit this functionality if so desired).
Jill probably won't let me actually build this until we've built everything else in the mockups (about halfway there, btw). But nonetheless, I was thinking it'd be cool to have a feature like this by launch time.
Thoughts?
How would you sell the first telephone?
I mean, you could give a really kickass demo.. but when your first customer takes one home, how is she going to use it? Who is she going to call?
We face a similar problem with Ping. Actually, all software with social networking aspects to it faces this problem. People have come up with pretty crafty solutions.
What's special about social software that runs on the phone? It has direct access to a fully loaded PIM (personal information manager):
So, what I'm thinking, is that as soon as you create an account with Ping on your phone, we immediately cross-reference the phone numbers and email addresses already stored on your phone with those of other Ping users, then show you a list of people you already know that use Ping, and all you to quickly/easily add them to your list of friends (and you could subsequently revisit this functionality if so desired).
Jill probably won't let me actually build this until we've built everything else in the mockups (about halfway there, btw). But nonetheless, I was thinking it'd be cool to have a feature like this by launch time.
Thoughts?
Comments:
<< Home
ahh yes... the Chicken and the Egg problem. Which comes first... the individual user or the user base? If there is no one using it, who's going to use it?
One very good solution in general is integrate with pre-existing technology or ways of doing things. For example, the progression from snail mail, to telegram, to telephone, to fax machine, to email. Each builds on the previous idea or technology.
One way to think of Ping is as an instant messenger for your phone. Maybe that's a good way to market it at first. A simple version of a buddy list on your phone is your list of contacts, so it makes perfect sense to build off that, both in the technology, and in the users minds.
You might also want to look into integrating with other popular services which store lists of friends or buddies. Services that come to mind are AIM, Myspace, Facebook, and gtalk/gmail. We've thought about this with liveUgli and facebook, but one reason we haven't contacted Facebook yet, is that we are pretty sure they will turn us down and, if given the idea, they could easily implement it on their site with their current user base.
Post a Comment
One very good solution in general is integrate with pre-existing technology or ways of doing things. For example, the progression from snail mail, to telegram, to telephone, to fax machine, to email. Each builds on the previous idea or technology.
One way to think of Ping is as an instant messenger for your phone. Maybe that's a good way to market it at first. A simple version of a buddy list on your phone is your list of contacts, so it makes perfect sense to build off that, both in the technology, and in the users minds.
You might also want to look into integrating with other popular services which store lists of friends or buddies. Services that come to mind are AIM, Myspace, Facebook, and gtalk/gmail. We've thought about this with liveUgli and facebook, but one reason we haven't contacted Facebook yet, is that we are pretty sure they will turn us down and, if given the idea, they could easily implement it on their site with their current user base.
<< Home