The Issue with Offers

I have never before considered the possibility of providing screenshots of my personal email on my blog; I am now, unfortunately, able to do so. While this is just a sampler of my inbox, it is a reasonably fair representation of what I'd refer to as "Offer Overload". I am, of course, using the word "Offer" loosely, but you will see that both my personal accounts are, in disturbing manner, filled with offers - explicit - from "offer"/"deal" services, like LivingSocial and Google - and implicit - from services that I use or have used in the past. Sadly, also from sources I have no knowledge of ever having interacted with (spam). I don't remember signing up for LivingSocial, but there we are!

This is an issue with the offers model, or at least the model as it stands today, where a daily deal is sent (pushed) to someone's email. Coming at a time when Groupon just went public (issued at a premium, I might add), it is ironic that Amazon just figured that "Deal Fatigue" may be desensitizing users who get too many email offers, and may actually hurt customer relationships. Amazon recently started unsubscribing certain users from receiving offer emails.

Amazon has said that many of its customers had shown significant inactivity in using the daily deals e-mailers and thus, their un-subscription was justified. Amazon seemed concerned about its consumer relationships that span across more than a decade and thus, not bothering its users with unwanted emails was also hinted as a reason.

This does not mean that offers are not attractive, or not useful. Groupon is, in fact, amp'ing it up with Epic Deals this holiday season (what's more Epic than 90% off? (free?)). There's a human penchant for a good deal - something visceral that makes a deal too good to pass up, and therefore a deal to consummate. It is much like the addiction of going back to a social network and seeing "likes", "pluses" or comments on your post, despite knowing that  the visit  is likely unimportant, and will waste valuable time :-)

You'll notice an important change that happened with Facebook - we no longer receive emails when there's activity on our streams. Once there's an important and sticky engagement channel with the user, there's no need for a "reminder" channel, like email, which was really built for a different use. Facebook has earned daily engagement. I still get reminder activity emails from LinkedIn, which goes to show that LinkedIn has not been successful with sticky, daily engagement. LinkedIn is a successful networking tool when professional networking is required - it is an on-demand network, not a social network, as I see it.

The current offers model seems artificial - an "out-of-band" model - and will continue to be so, until it becomes integrated with a stickier model that filters out the irrelevant offers and shows me the right ones at the right time. Instead of impinging on my email-box,  it needs to be integrated at the point of intent, i.e., search, or within, say, my daily social network interactions, or when I watch TV. The "daily dose" services - Facebook, Google - can do this.   Maybe Amazon, if they can take over my regular online music/media needs, or even Yahoo! (did I just say that?) since it is still a destination site for millions!  LivingSocial and Groupon on their own (without sticky channels)??

Offers will eventually have to be made at a destination site/daily "portal" application, e.g., iTunes/Pandora, Flipboard, etc.,. Note that there's also a big difference between the Y! Mail splash page and the actual email stream. An offer needs to be like a relevant targeted ad.

I have already started ignoring all "offers" in my e-mailbox, despite the fact that some of them are great offers. Offer overload is resulting in Offer offload!

The question is, will I ever succeed in cleaning up my email stream from invasive offers?

Or is it time to wean myself off email?

Live your own life!

Two seemingly unrelated things happened yesterday ... 

First, I receive a phone call from my 16-year old son in the afternoon to inform me of the news that Steve Jobs had passed away. It was initially not on NYTimes, not on CNN, but I did see it on Twitter, and I finally believed that it was not a hoax. I was not surprised, given Steve’s failing health, but it was still a very empty moment. 

Second, I went to my son’s school for an orientation on college admissions - how my 16-year old will select his college. As I sat there, noting that one of the parents was making notes on an iPad, it struck me that in a very short time, my son would leave home for college. Time has flown - our time with our loved ones is very limited. 

This morning, on my ride in to work, I saw this Tweet from a former colleague of mine that gave me pause:

Steve Jobs passed at 56. Far too young. He fought pancreatic cancer, had a liver transplant. Individually, he had a very interesting life. Professionally, he had a hugely successful life. Every luminary thought so. He’s left legacy - in multiple fields - computers, movies, music, phones... - technologically, anyone would love to be in his shoes. 

I lost my father earlier this year. He would have turned 84 this month. A good long life. He was diagnosed with liver cancer in early June and passed away a mere 6 weeks later. He left a different kind of legacy - a different kind of field. He was responsible for building a couple of parks in Bangalore that many people still enjoy everyday. 

Many of us are people with no legacy - not big, not little, nothing of note … When I go, there’ll be a few pages that may live on for a while until someone blocks them due to inactivity. Yes, it’s easy to wax eloquent about our accomplishments, but only a few people really matter have enduring legacies. (Correction 10/08 - based on a comment that not only a few people matter)

The question I asked myself today is - “What’s important to people?” Would I trade off 30 years of life for the ultimate glory of being an icon, an innovator, an almost-Edison? Would I rather be rich, successful and famous or would I trade that in to be able to live long enough to be able to see my sons graduate from college, get their first jobs, marry, .... Given a choice, would I trade off anything for living long enough to see my sons’ sons? 

I guess Steve himself said this best (watch this if you have not) - we don’t have a choice about death, and “death is the single-best invention of life - life’s change agent” - so we do the best we can to follow our dreams and live our own lives. 

Your time is limited... so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. 

As technologists, as consumers, we will all miss Steve Jobs. 

As a son, I really miss my dad! Especially today.

High tech gets the boot!

My first “paid job” entailed writing software for one of the professors in the physical education department at Rice University. We did custom athletic modeling and animation using stick figures and motion vectors. There was not much available out-of-the-box then. I wrote programs on the Mac using Lightspeed Pascal, if I remember correctly. Interesting stuff. We actually presented this work at the AAHPERD conference in New Orleans! It may have even been my first publication! 
I don’t remember how much I was paid, but I also bought that professor’s car later - my first car - a yellowTotota Corolla SR-5 hatchback that I called “Porsche 0.1” since it had one tenth the pickup of a Porsche - that's a motion vector for you!! Today, I see news about this really hi-tech Adidas soccer cleat that automatically records the motion stats of the athlete - speed, sprint times, distance, stride rates, ... - allowing coaches and athletes, and, of course, websites, fantasy leagues and commentators, to speak volumes of sports data!
These stats are important. Critical, in fact. Yesterday, I watched Barcelona win a Champions League fixture 5 - 0, and the stats (passes attempted - >700, passes completed ~87%) clearly represent Barca's total domination and the reasoning for the crushing win! More impressive, see the 10 stats with which Barcelona dominated Manchester United during the last Champions League final. 108 kms. run!! This entire story - the set of stats - could be automatically compiled for every game if they used the magic Adizero Mycoach (or equivalent) soccer cleats! That’s an activity stream for you! Remember, though, that there’s only one stat that really matters! How many times did the ball get in the net?