Product Development (in a weekend !)

So after the presentations, we started talking about our application concept. Bemmu Sepponen, our only software developer on the team with MySpace app development experience, suggested we do a much simpler app; Friends share their playlist with other friends and get a thumbs up or a thumbs down.  Good. Something that is simple enough to finish in a weekend and has the “share with friends” thing happening.  But what makes it appealing ? We need some cute characters to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Geri Wittig, our team’s talented artist/designer came up with some great character sketches which she continued to refine over the course of the weekend. With Bemmu and Alex Yarmula coding into the wee hours of the morning (neither of them left Google that weekend) the goal of completing the app in a weekend was realistic. Carl Heiney and I (Peter Huboi) spent most of the weekend “rediscovering MySpace”, writing taglines, creating and testing playlists, thinking about app ports to Facebook, thinking about viral marketing strategies, and blogging. I wrote a short blog entry entitled Start,Adapt,Do detailing my observations on what it takes to successfully launch a product within the tight schedule constraints of a weekend.

To give you some idea why we followed Bemmu’s sage advice, look how many users he has with with his MySpace app called Coolest Friends !

… and here are some of Geri Wittig’s awesome graphics she created for our Playlist Power app:

 

OK, it’s Cute, but is it Viral?

Friday evening started with some excellent speakers before the teams began the application design phase. Dave Westwood was one of the featured speakers that evening. Dave created Buddy Poke, an OpenSocial application with over 30 million downloads.  If you look at Buddy Poke, it has several things going for it. For one, it is delightful and cute, instantly appealing to the MySpace demographic.  A second important feature is that it is social. You can send a virtual hug to a friend. If the friend had never seen Buddy Poke before, the 1st thing they’ll do is install the app and send a hug to one of their friends … and on… and on. Now you see how you get to 30 million users in less than a year. It spreads virally (in a good way).

Challenge (from previous post): Develop a product that will appeal to the target market. We picked our target market, the “Under 25″ demographic.

Action:  Develop something that is cute, fun to use, and that you share with friends.