On Zynga/Facebook and Google/Apple
People who fault Google for “backstabbing” Apple when they decided to build their own mobile OS platform should only look at what…transpired out of the relationship between Zynga and Facebook. Zynga, since inception, was completely reliant on Facebook for cheap user acquisition and growth. When Facebook, with their own ambitions for world domination and making money, brought down the hammer on spam notifications and demanded 30% cut on the revenues made on their platform, it was then too late for Zynga to convince users to go to Zynga.comMurali Veeraiyan2 min read
PM 101: Product Feature Prioritization
I recently came across this excellent presentation that addresses one of the critical decisions that one has to learn to make as a Product…Manager, namely “Feature Prioritization”. It is important to realize that one can’t expect to define feature priorities in vacuum. Feature prioritization should follow goal setting. Once you have identified goals for your product release, it then becomes easier to evaluate and prioritize features in your backlog depending on how those features contribute towards your release goals. Additionally, check out this excellent Quora answer by Ian McAllister that provides more context regarding the…Murali Veeraiyan1 min read
Happiness Decoded
Here is a great TED talk that provides insight into how being present in the present moment can increase our happiness:I realize that the findings from this TED talk about the connection between happiness and mind-wandering are similar to what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi terms as “Flow”. “Flow” occurs when we are completely focused on the activity at hand; being engrossed in the present activity increases happiness. So, in essence, if we are to find true happiness in our daily lives, we should consciously engage in activities (work, hobbies, relationships etc) we are truly passionate about, so that, as a result…Murali Veeraiyan1 min read
Google, Apple and the Battle for Mobile
I recently came across this excellent article by Derek Brown. It helped reaffirm my own thoughts on what I believe is happening in the…mobile industry. I agree with Derek’s assertion that hardware and core OS functionality have largely reached a near-term point of peak innovation and the focus has now shifted to web or cloud services. This change in focus will certainly have interesting consequences in the battle for mobile supremacy. Historically, the complaint against Android has been that of fragmentation. Mobile app developers generally have complained about the pain involved in testing their apps across a plethora of…Murali Veeraiyan4 min read
Benefits of Rewriting Reality
The above is a video depiction of abridged version of the audio recording of the “This is Water” commencement speech that David Foster…The above is a video depiction of abridged version of the “This is Water” commencement speech that David Foster Wallace gave to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. I agree with David that one of the true values of education is in providing us the ability to choose how we react to situations. We have a choice in that we can either choose to react in an automatic “irrational” way, or we could be deliberate.Murali Veeraiyan1 min read
On Programming and Minimum Viable Products
This weekend I was doing some coding for fun. As I was writing the program, I was also mulling over the concept of Minimum Viable Product…This weekend I was doing some coding for fun. As I was writing the program (for those of you who want to know, it is a program that uses Twitter and Twilio APIs to retrieve and SMS the latest tweet from any specific Twitter account), I was also mulling over the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) advocated by lean startup enthusiasts. Suddenly, it dawned on me how the MVP approach is similar to the programming best practices that we have come to follow all these years.Murali Veeraiyan3 min read