Ritvvij P.

How far are we from personalization converging with Generative AI?

Most news reports lose their utility after ~3-7 days. Hence, all stories in news product after 3-7 days (typically organized in the time continuum) should collapse into a Wikipedia style digest (space continuum, also called map) aiding knowledge assimilation. In some situations, they can be organized in space-time continuum, much like Wardley diagrams.

This doodle best showcases 😅 what frank conversations with mentors, who have at least a decade more experience than you, feel like: tactically, you realize gaps in your thought process 🤕 ; strategically, it offers great course correction 💪🏻.

TV news anchors have a vast following. Do news companies monetize on their social following and do influencer deals?

“a growing trend of advertisers beefing up their influencer marketing budgets, including companies that you wouldn’t typically associate with creators. Next year, spending on influencer marketing in the U.S. is expected to rise nearly 15% to $5.89 billion, according to a forecast from Insider Intelligence.”

“Influencer marketing has been a way to reach customers who don’t know about the company. “The creator economy is huge for that because they’re hitting up people in various stages of the buying cycle,” said Ravichandran. “The person is not ready to buy, but then something will happen … like somebody tried to steal [their] credit card.” When that happens, the individual may remember the creator’s message and subscribe to Aura.”

– Why a Cybersecurity Startup Is Boosting Its Influencer Marketing Budget

Leverage a “participatory design” approach as they seek to solve the stakeholders’ problems, engaging with them directly instead of making wild guesses. People are at the heart of technological developments like these. Hence, the goal was not to put technology first, but be stakeholder first as a platform. The stakeholders are periodically invited to the office to have long conversations to discuss the app’s features and challenges.

– Dharmesh Ba in https://newsletter.theindianotes.com/p/story-of-namma-yatri-part-1

“Initially, X enticed Y with attractive Z. However, as time passed, these Y were at the mercy of ever-shifting algorithms and unpredictable company policies, leading to diminished income and shattered aspirations. A widespread feeling of discontent now pervades among the Y for these X.”

– Dharmesh Ba in https://newsletter.theindianotes.com/p/story-of-namma-yatri-part-1

When communicating value proposition of subscription products, focus on
both substance and salience.

• Substances: What is the depth, quality, insight density, value, etc.
  you promise?
• Salience: What aspects are you giving more emphasis over what else?
  And why?

Just do great things and talk about it. But for that, you first need to start building rigor for documentation and writing.

All subscription content products should have this feature! If the user has already paid for the service, then simple UI hacks like this demonstrate that we care for the user’s time.

I absolutely loved Sharad Sharma’s articulation. He says, and I paraphrase, in a 5-day test match, it’s acceptable to have periods of rest. Then came the one-day international matches, condensing play into 4-5 hours of intensity (one innings). This shift drastically increased the demand for fitness. Being a Gavaskar was no longer sufficient; you needed to be a fit Gavaskar. The demands for fitness, temperament, and skill escalated further with T20 matches.

Similarly, our careers are undergoing a transformation. Will most of us be able to transition from test matches to ODIs to T20s, adapting to these changing times?”

Want to learn to lead cross-functional teams, even if you’re not deeply versed in the specifics of their disciplines? One effective approach is to familiarize yourself with the primary “thinking techniques” of different professions. These techniques — the ways professionals in various fields extract, absorb, process, and react to information — significantly influence their problem-solving and idea conceptualization methods. For instance:

• Economists, Data Scientists, and Investment Bankers often employ predictive and mathematical thinking.
• Accountants, Quality Assurance Testers, and Lawyers are known for their meticulous attention to detail and systematic approaches to ensure accuracy, efficiency, and compliance.
• Engineers, Management Consultants, and Product Managers generally excel in creative problem-solving and innovating solutions.
• Salespeople, Politicians, and Diplomats are adept at influencing others, building relationships, and negotiating.
• Editors, Information Designers, and Information Architects are skilled curators of taste.
• User researchers and reporters tend to display healthy skepticism and thus are able to question and extract information from people.

By training yourself in these thinking techniques, you can better empathize with your team members’ perspectives.

However, it’s important to remember that these are broad generalizations; individuals in these professions may have diverse and unique approaches. Additionally, mastering these techniques requires time and effort, and there’s significant value in fostering an environment that encourages collaboration among diverse perspectives.

Recently, I met with a decade-long acquaintance, someone whose insights I’ve admired, to seek advice. In our conversation, I confided in him, expressing my frustration at not being able to pinpoint my core strength, given my experience across diverse fields, and my lack of a clear specialization.

With the composure of a Zen master, he offered a one-word revelation, “Sense-making!”

His voice carried a note of certainty as he continued, “That’s your superpower, and it’s a skill highly valued by all CXOs. More often than not, the challenge in leadership isn’t just getting things done, but in making sense of ambiguous problems, deciphering them so that solutions become clear.”

😶 Huh! That is such a clean and simple articulation.

Your X-factor is what excites your target audience the most about what you are doing.

Sampling involves trying out different things until you find what works, namely, what meets all predefined criteria for success.

Humans can micro-optimize in the short-term. It is impossible for people to stay on top of all factors that contribute to the system for all the time. They will switch off. Hence, one of two things will happen:

• Humans will only be able to catch some of the cases
• The increase in CTR will not be sustained after the focus has reduced

Likely Factors

Twitter understands what is important based on if the content is about a big handle and if the topic in the content is being spoken about by big handles.

Observations

It seems that Twitter has implemented a rule on top of its recommendation algorithm. It’s common to see a retweet or reply to a specific tweet, let’s call it ‘Tweet X,’ in your feed, followed shortly by the original ‘Tweet X.’

• This pattern suggests that ‘Tweet X’ is surfaced through the personalization algorithm, while the retweet or reply is introduced by a set of rules.
• These rules likely operate under the assumption that if you are interested in ‘Tweet X,’ you would also be interested in related content.”

Annual Operating Plans typically outline Goals and Interventions, which are specific, desired outcomes to be accomplished from nearly specific outputs within certain constraints — such as time, money, and effort.

However, there are three limitations to this approach:

• Delayed Gratification: All gains from outputs and outcomes are in the future and require upfront investment (time, money, effort) today.
• Rigidity in a Dynamic Environment: In our fast-changing world, we are subject to shifts and shocks within the environments we operate in. Overly rigid goals may not account for unforeseen changes, leading to pursuing outdated or irrelevant objectives.
• Undervaluing Improvements: A goal-centric approach might overlook or undervalue the enhancements made to processes and systems if the goal remains unachieved.
• Possibility of regression: Heard of stories of people gaining back kilos after weight loss? This is true for business goals too. Without a system, it is possible that we might not sustain gains made from achieving a goal.

While it’s important to have end goals in your annual operating plan, integrating them with a strong system-based approach makes the journey more enduring yet robust:

• By concentrating on systems, the focus shifts to building effective processes and practices that inherently lead to desired outcomes.
• This method emphasizes continuous improvement and resilience. These improvements are felt immediately and gives a tangible sense of progress.
• Finally, if the environment changes, then the processes can be adapted to deliver new outputs.

I recently saw a subscription-based product use this phrasing for their Customer Dependency Index survey: ‘How would you feel if the product was not available from tomorrow?’

The Product Manager must have thought: ‘Let me gather these responses to demonstrate to stakeholder how dependent our users are on our product.’

Meanwhile, the customer thinks: ‘Hey there! I’ve already paid for an entire year. What are you implying? Shouldn’t I be able to rely on your service?’

Most Annual Operating Plans happens in the horizons of one or two years. However, this doesn’t take into account the larger shifts happening in our environment and how vulnerable you are to it. Thus, by the time you get to it, the larger environment has already changed and you are still playing catch up. This is not only applicable to business/work but also to one’s career, one’s health and personal finance or even parenting.

Martin Wolf of the FT has a neat framework to help think through how the larger environment is changing. He argues that one should list the shifts, shocks, and fragility in your system and include them as factors in your planning.

• Shifts: Long-term structural changes that are occurring and are likely to continue. These changes are something you cannot control and have to adapt to.
• Shocks: Absolutely conceivable Black Swan events that could happen but we cannot forecast when and then they do happen — Covid-19, Israel-Palestine War, Russia-Ukraine War, etc.
• Underlying Fragility: Characteristics of the system that make these shocks so destructive.

Each raaga has a structure and within which there is freedom to make hundreds of compositions. It is the beauty of mathematics in music.