Beginner's mind

I saw this middle-aged man using a live broadcasting app on the bus one day, and it got me thinking: why do people watch strangers talk, eat, or sing all day? Why it has become so popular in China as well as in the States? That was the beginning of the topic, live broadcasting. Bo is really serious about the two definition: live broadcasting and live streaming. You will know more in the end.

01:00 Our talk starts from a video on Vice. The video is only available in Chinese, but the gist of it is the economy of beauty or live broadcasting in China. It has become full-fledged streamlined business, running by agencies and online platforms. From there, we discuss the notion of live broadcasting, and the multiple format and diverse content on live broadcasting platforms.

11:00 It seems the content on Chinese live broadcasting apps is more general, while the western ones is more focused, like Twitch for gaming, live coding, etc. Yet, the connection between the genre of the content and the platform is not as deep as I thought.

17:00 The economy of gifting on live broadcasting: we compared the different business models between Twitch and Chinese live broadcasting apps.

22:00 We try to differentiate live broadcasting and live streaming. Then we got into serious discussion of the ethics of live broadcasting, which relates closely to what happened lately in the US.

38:00 I asked Bo again to clarify the two concept: live streaming and live broadcasting. And also why does it matter?

In last episode, we ended our talk with a new topic: how wearables are helping users to better manage information? How do people feel about wearables that are always on? We continued the discussion this time.

Sometimes I feel the talk we are doing here is not about getting the answer to questions, but instead generating more questions from the talk. If you share similar interests in whatever we are talking about, feel free to share your thoughts with us.

01:00 Bo got his first Echo last Tuesday, and he’s been using it for a week. The first part is like a how to use Echo for dummies. Another interesting question came up is about how voice assistant like Alexa will be able to create some type of “TL;DL” of podcast.

15:00 How do people process information? Or narrow it down a bit, how do people prioritize information? For Bo, the solution is using Apple Watch to help him set the boundaries of notifications. What interests me most is the idea of watch face switch. What if the face switch relates to mode switch, setting different scenarios for notifications?

36:00 As I read somewhere in the news that kids are competing their parents’ attention with mobile phones, that worries me. And thus we have the discussion whether wearables are taking people away from pocket computers, which might be some improvement.

46:00 What do you think about wearables that are always on? Now that we have smart phones on 24/7, it seems we are so used to have all these gadgets around us without thinking about how they’ve been listening to us and collecting data all the time.

Apologies for skipping one week. We actually recorded the talk, but it didn’t go well. We had a fight, because of lack of preparation and miscommunication. The talk has always been casual conversation between two friends, but knowing there are actual listeners makes us feel stressful. We both get more concerned about whom we are talking to and how listeners are going to understand the show. Still, we are going to be who we are and talk about what interest us, but we do need to spend more time for preparation and setup better structures of the talk. We are working on it!

Till now we have no idea who have been listening to our podcast, we want to thank you for the attention, and we hope to hear from you for any feedback.

1:00 We start slowly by talking about Slack has been down for a while and people complained about it on Twitter. Bo’s company has been using Slack and it works pretty well for a 60-person company. In China, most companies communicate over Wechat groups. It’s interesting to see some new mobile apps have designed hidden surprises for users, like Slack and Snapchat.

9:00 The problem this time that we are interested in is working IMs (instant messenger) has been blurring the lines between work and life. We are receiving emails or work-related notifications 24-hour a day. Bo thinks it’s not because of the IMs, but because of the smartphones, or pocket computers, as Bo spontaneously coined the word.

16:00 We dive into some features in IMs that make us stressful, like “typing”, “have seen the message”, etc.

32:00 While it’s quite common for users from the West and the East to have multiple IMs installed on their phone, users in China seem rely mainly on Wechat for communication for social and for work. This might be because of the heavy-feature nature of apps from Asia. We side-tracked a bit and discuss the cost of living in the Bay Area and Beijing.

50:00 As we returned to our topic, we also realize how it relates to wearable, a topic that Bo has always enthusiastic about. We discuss the notion of information triage and wearables that are always on, which we will talk more about in the next episode.

We were out for two weeks, mainly because of technical issue. Last week, it took us half an hour to start the conversation. By the time we started to talk, we both felt exhausted because of the on-and-off calls. It was frustrating and discouraging. So we continue the conversation about coffee shop this week.

01:00 How do you like coffee shops? They are part of our lives, and we are curious about coffee shops as a product. Why has it been so popular internationally, and how is it going to evolve into the future? We discuss the topic from the location, the interaction in the coffee shop, etc.

17:00 “The future of coffee shops might still be coffee shops. The new future space is actually co-working space”, according to Joy. Coworking space is mainly about the network and supporting infrastructure. And there’s more connection between coffee shop and co-working space –– Starbucks has great potential in becoming the giant network of coworking space.

36:00 If Starbucks expand their business into coworking space, how does it work? How do they make money? Bo said, by renting out lockers instead of charging customers by the space they are taking. The reason that Bo thinks Starbucks can be coworking space is that they offer good experience for customers, which is essential for coworking space. Then we got into this really interesting question as to the globalization of coffee shop –– why it became global trend that people start hanging out in coffee shops nowadays?

49:00 So would the next trend of globalization is the co-working space?

Have you ever tipped someone on the Internet, for an article you read, or for an answer you get? For me, it’s always interesting why people pay for the content, while majority of the information on the Internet is free, Wikipedia, Quora, or articles on New York Times, Buzzfeed, you name it. So what we are actually paying for? What do you think about the tipping model?

01:00 Have you heard about Jelly? It’s a platform that you can ask questions anonymously, and get answers from users on the platform. The company brand the product as the new way of search on mobile. We started with Jelly, the online Q&A platform, and then slowly get into the topic of content monetization. Bo talks about his main point: nothing on the Internet is free. We talked about soft advertisement, sponsored content, Instagram and Medium.

24:00 An interesting feature that I’ve been interested in is tipping articles on Wechat. I am interested in why people decide to tip articles they read, and how people feel about paying for information on the Internet. Bo explains the rationale behind it in his nerdy way – calculate how much every minute worths when you read the article if you decide to tip something online.

40:00 Another perspective that I am interested in is paying to get answers online. Products like this includes Quora’s new feature: Knowledge Prize.

50:00 We also look into the subscription model vs pay by each piece of content, like membership on Spotify vs buying individual song on iTunes. And we reached the conclusion for this episode: when looking at content monetization on the Internet, one should go beyond the content itself, but think about the cost of the content producer, the server, and etc. Those are what we are actually paying for on the Internet.

Warby Parker is an online eyeglasses retailer, and was named as the most innovative company in the past years by Forbes. Casper creates award-winning mattress for the decade and also new ways to deliver and sell mattress, renewing the traditional industry. We like both companies a lot. Bo is a loyal customer to both companies too. He bought the mattress and a pair of glasses, and talked about them all the time. It’s a fun talk, as we started from this two companies and extending into other topics.

1:00 Instead of calling Warby Parker one of the most innovative companies of the decade, Bo thinks its business model is similar to old-style mail-order catalogue model.

10:00 As I was researching on the two companies, I came across Amazon’s retail shop in Seattle. We discussed if there’s any connection between this move and the two companies.

17:00 Bo points out one thing the two companies share is how they address privacy. Trying out eyewear and trying out mattress are something pretty private. People would like to try by themselves instead of being exposed in the public to feel how the glasses look on them, or how the mattress feels.

22:00 Then the topic extends to subscription model. We try to draw the comparison between some monthly clothes subscription model to Warby Parker.

32:00 At some point, we digress and start talking about Wikipedia, because Bo think Wikipedia has not been mentioned enough lately. It's interesting to think about this question: if you can re-innovate wikipedia to make it more modern, what will you do?

43:00 If Wikipedia exists as a non-profit organization is based on the assumption that information is free on the Internet, then why there's a new trend coming up that people have to pay for information on Quora or Facebook?

Everyone is talking about chatbots lately, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. We’ve looked into this realm since last year, so we think maybe it’s a good time to revisit the topic.

1:00 Why all of a sudden does it become so popular? Facebook, Microsoft and Wechat all have started to become a platform of chatbots. To some extent, they are like the new little “Internet sitting on top of the Internet”. Partially it’s because of mobile as the new form factor and new way to interact.

13:00 The limited screen space seems the main limitation from a designer perspective. But chatbots are not limited to text messages, sending videos, or sending red pockets on wechat can also be considered as bots.

25:00 Still, as there are more and more bots coming up, there remains the question: how do you find out what bots to follow? Bo compared that to the history of website and google, saying it’s going over the same cycle.

34:00 When talking about conversational design, one thing that we haven’t talked about is voice. It’s interesting and seems have a lot more potential in interaction. Another approach in built-in search on mobile is through keyboard, like Slash and Input. Besides sending out silly gifs, people can also search videos or location right in the input area. Though it takes some time to switch between keyboards.

44:00 How about Luka? We’ve noticed Luka since it first launched last year. And we noticed they’ve pivoted a bit lately after another round of investment. It’s still a bit premature at this point. I got lost and not knowing what to do while trying the app.

Bo has been talking a lot of good things about Snapchat. I never understood that until I start using it. I learned to use Snapchat for a week. It was fun, but also confusing. That’s how we start the conversation.

0:00 How does Snapchat actually work? I learn to add friend on it, or to watch live event, but still it’s confusing to use it. Bo draws the comparison between Snapchat and the old Facebook when news feed was not live.

13:00 The main difference between Snapchat and Facebook is about the time. Snapchat is more like day-to-day conversation, in which you say something, and it disappear. While on Facebook, it’s like a digital gallery that stores everything you post. We talk about the editorial or curation on Snapchat.

28:00 Another thing about Snapchat is how casual users communicate with others, like how I text message with my friend, or how Everlane communicate with their customers.

33:00 Bo emphasizes that what makes Snapchat unique is that it captures people’s attention. He shares his experience after watching the interactive film, the Room.

43:00 Why is there only handful of channels in Discover? Why doesn’t it provide personalized channels like other services do? Is it good design or bad design? We had a fight over this topic.

0:00 Starting from the last issue of Wired Magazine. The cover features Lei Jun, the CEO of Xiaomi, and the title of that issue says “It’s time to copy China”. Xiaomi’s success is because of its business model and marketing strategy.

13:00 The Internet got lost somewhere, and we didn’t record part of our conversation. So we started talking about other things related to the Chinese market. The new batch of companies from YC 2016 Spring some similar business models from China. Bo says cities in China might be the model of future cities, because they have the most and best resources.

30:00 Given the fact that China is so different and unique in so many ways, it seems impossible to copy the O2O business models from China. Bo argues that if the trend is that more people are moving to the cities, big cities like NYC, SF will learn something from the Chinese companies in how they serve large population.

41:00 I mentioned Indonesia couple times, and Bo spots that, so we start to talk about emerging market as big opportunities for Chinese companies.

We started talking about VR and related devices again.

0:00 Bo thinks VR is not going anywhere, because people are pretty cautious of what to put on their body. He draws comparison among VR,  Apple Watch and Google Glass.

14:00 There are other devices that we are wearing now that people are pretty comfortable with, like watch, headphones. These might have bigger potential in the future. Start from there, we start to imagine the future of smart headphones.

26:00 When talking about wearables, Bo thinks that style is really important to think about. It’s part of the appearance, and people pay attention to that. And wearables with specific purposes are going to be more popular than wearables with general purposes.

34:00 People like to associate themselves with the brand image. From there, we shift gears and start to talk about new trends in men’s wear is getting much smarter.

40:00 Speaking of fashion, Bo talks about one of his favorite brand, Everlane. What amazes him is their marketing strategy, especially on Snapchat and Instagram. He then explains how Snapchat works for me. He compares today’s Snapchat with the old Facebook when newsfeed was not live yet.

46:00 This is the part when the conversation gets interesting. Though I always know Snapchat is interesting, I still don’t have the motivation to use it because I am already using Wechat. Bo explains how he has six messenger apps, and why he needs all of them.

54:00 No one shares their real feelings on Facebook. What we both realize is that most people are just sharing posts or photos on Facebook now, but not that many people share their feelings or stories. It’s interesting to see something that used to be so addictive turns into something more like news platform. Maybe that’s why we have new social networks every year.

65:00 Bo’s prediction/understanding of the future of social networks and we end up with our title for this episode: VR is the face tattoo.