Will it fly? How to evaluate a new product idea

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:35:00 GMT

If you're anything like me, the title "Will it fly?" immediately made you think of Will it blend?. Well clear your head of any marketroid type promotion because this is serious talk! Ev Williams, co-mastermind behind Blogger and Twitter, has written a brilliant blog post about how to evaluate if a new product idea idea is going to work. He's developed a seven point metric which you can use to pretty quickly decide whether you're barking down the right track:

Tractability: How difficult will it be to launch a worthwhile version 1.0?
Obviousness: Is it clear why people should use it?
Deepness: How much value can you ultimately deliver?
Wideness: How many people may ultimately use it?
Discoverability: How will people learn about your product?
Monetizability: How hard will it be to extract the money?
Personally Compelling: Do you really want it to exist in the world?

He's done a great job of explaining each of the seven points and uses a whole bunch of real world examples (e.g.: HotOrNot is deeper than you think, Dogster is wider, etc.). His own answer to number 6 surprised me in that Ev feels Twitter will be more monetizable than Blogger was. I'm a big fan of the service and use it regularly (find me here), and I can't wait to see what plans Ev and Biz have for it, but it's not very obvious how those plans involve making money.

If you're developing a new product — or even just thinking of doing so — do yourself a favour and read the post to get a sense of where you stand. It's obviously not gospel (and sometimes the best ideas come out of left field and can't even be charted on existing metrics), but it's a really good step further down the road and will help you prepare for some of the questions investors are likely to ask if you go in that direction.

Web2.0 Expo Bound

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:25:00 GMT

We're off to Web2.0 Expo tomorrow morning (I'll be accompanied by the Bourbon Express known as David Crow), where we'll be making a number of very public appearances:

How to Change the World

Sunday, April 15th, Moscone Center, Room 2002
David and I will be doing a 5-minute, 20 slide, Ignite extravaganza on the use of *Camps for positive change. Look for a profile of TransitCamp as a case study on the power of Open outside of the tech community. We're scheduled to talk in the first block, which kicks off at 7pm. Be there or be []!

The *Camp phenomena has been successfully applied to a variety of technology events. This is the story about moving beyond technology, into public policy. And the impact open, creative communities can have on changing the experience of being a citizen, the face of a city and it's transit system.

Update: our talk went really well, although something got a bit messed up with the slides and images placed in the deck got replaced with images from that machine. We got a lot of laughs from the crowd and many congratulations after, and placed 4th out of 8 speakers, with 9% of the vote. Thanks to everyone who voted for us!

Web2Open

Tuesday April 17th and Wednesday April 28th, Moscone Center
It's an absolute pleasure to join our good friends Chris and Tara to attend Web2Open!

The Web 2.Open was conceived with FooCamp/BarCamp in mind. This open event blends some pre-scheduled content with an open grid where the attendees fill in the sessions they either want to discuss or present themselves. It is the perfect space to provide the community at large with a place to connect with other attendees, learn more about elements of Web 2.0, and share one’s knowledge and experiences.

We're not sure yet if we'll lead a session, but we definitely plan to be there and to help out wherever we're needed.

How to Make 27 Million People Hate You: Lessons from Firefox 2

Wednesday, April 18th, 4:30pm, Moscone Center Room 2018
We'll be up on stage again, this time talking about our experiences designing the official theme for Firefox 2 and about the changing role of designers.

Radiant Core enjoyed the terrifyingly good fortune of working closely with the Mozilla team to design the official theme for Firefox 2. Designing for a group of users larger than the population of Canada is hard! Learn about the challenges of cross-culture/language/platform application development, and why passionate users are both a blessing and a curse. Plus, we'll share the big secret about great design!

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