building mobile mashups at yahoo!

Mobile Mashups

Ariel SeidmanDirector Product Management

Yahoo Search

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Mobile mash-ups take free or low cost data sources (Twitter, snow reports, metrics conversion, etc.) and/or multiple services (maps, flickr, etc.) and build a mobile application.  

What is a mobile mashup?

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Some examples of mobile mashups

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BOSS API (free)Web

News

Search Suggestions

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Inquisitor | Free

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Delicious API (free)≫

Delicious BookmarksPro | $0.99

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Twitter API (free)

TwitPic Integration (free)

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Tweetie | $2.99

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Weather data (free)

Snow reports (low cost)

Mountain Maps (free)

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Ski Lodge | $4.99

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Fast

Efficient

Beautiful

Fun Hook (i.e. marketing)

Ingredients for Awesome Mobile Mashups

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Fast≫

More importantly, it lets you start typing in a query less than four seconds after launching it,...about two seconds faster than Google's voice-powered search app, and slightly faster than starting a cold search from Safari.

CNET

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Efficient≫

Pre-loads web-pages before they fully load Extracts Phone # and Directions

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Efficient≫Efficient doesn’t = lots of features:

Test A Test B Test C

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Beautiful≫

Texture in support of a theme ConvertBot

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Fun Hook (i.e. marketing)≫

Tweetie PEE

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Fun Hook (i.e. marketing)≫

Shaking the phone clears the search box.

Metaphor from Etch-a-Sketch

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Fun Hook (i.e. marketing)≫

Voice Search

Cool feature, yet...

Doesn’t solve a big problem (typing ~2 words with search suggestion is very fast)

Privacy issue

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OK, now you have a fast, efficient, beautiful app with a fun hook feature.

Put it on the App Store and nothing happens*. Oh yea, Marketing. 

*It is not Apple’s fault.

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Get cool people to use it (Tweet about it)

Make People Laugh (Tweetie PEE)

Viral enable the app (don’t force it)

Demo video (with great music)

Get on blog best of lists (not easy)

Blog about how you built it (help others)

Do: Marketing Your App≫

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≫ Treasure hunt (requires $)

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Ads (any form)

Don’t: Waste of Time Marketing

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2003

Remember, Nothing Happens Overnight

2001 2002 2004 2005

4th GenerationOctober ’04

3rd GenerationApril ’03

2nd GenerationJuly ’02$10

$20

$40

Stock Quote: Yahoo! FinanceConcept from: Bill Buxton, Sketching User Experiences

1st GenerationOctober ’01

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Emergent Phase is About Experimentation

Time

Cos

tof

Mai

ntai

ng

Addressable Market

Cost of Maintaing Product

In Emergent Phase Experiment to get Product/Market Fit

TeamLearning systems Improving product execution

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Costs Type Amount

iPhone SDK Upfront $99

Data Upfront $5,000

Your Time Upfront$100/hr @ 480 hrs (oppty cost)

Domain, Website Hosting, misc

Upfront $1000

Apple fees Each Sale 30% of Gross

Total Upfront $54,099

Sample App Micro-EconomicsC

ost

s

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Sample App Micro-Economics

With costs (cash & oppty cost) of $54,099 break-even at:

$0.99 $2.99 $4.99

78,065 25,848 15,488

8K sales per week to stay in Top 100

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Data

Talent

Acquisition SignalsIf something strikes a chord with users could be interesting acquisition.

Yahoo has lots of open data:developer.yahoo.com and YQL.

Recruiting ground for talented developers

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Why does Yahoo! care about mobile mashups?

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aseidman@yahoo-inc.com

www.aseidman.com

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How to contact me

twitter.com/aseidman≫

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