6 Important Traits of Leadership from 6 Years in Meta

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At Meta we celebrate one’s Metaversary – the day you joined Meta. On my 1st Faceversary I posted the 10 things I learned during my first year at Facebook. For my 2nd Faceversary I posted about the 10 things I unlearned. On my 3rd year I posted about the 3 things that defined my 3rd year. On MV4 I posted about 4 things that I took away from year 4. On MV5 I posted 5 tips for success from 5 years in Meta.

For MV6, which I celebrated yesterday, I decided to share 6 traits which I believe contribute to my success as a leader, not just in Meta but definitely in my personal journey here. And while the title says “leadership”, I believe that these traits are critical for everyone, not just those of us working in “tech”:

  1. Resiliency – From talking to a a lot of colleagues who have all been around for a while, with a long career in tech and an impressive journey at Meta, I realized that the term “resiliency” comes up again and again. Resiliency is the ability to withstand, or even better – to recover quickly from obstacles, difficulties, changes. Tech is a fast-paced environment – products come and go, technologies too. Most of today’s promising ideas will quickly become irrelevant. People change too – your colleagues, your managers, re-orgs. There are always reasons, good reasons, to stop, give up, move on, break. Robert Jordan wrote: “The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.”. The ability to bend, to proactively let the wind pass, is a valuable asset for any journey, but critical for leaders on a long one.
  2. Simplicity – a few months ago I learned about Bounded Rationality, the idea that when making decisions, people have limited capacity to understand the problem, limited cognitive capability and limited time to take a decision. Decision makers are therefore forced to come up with “satisfactory solutions” based on what they are able to come up with under these limitations, not necessarily the best solutions. Therefore if you want to improve decision making, or comprehension of a problem, a strategy, a product – it is your responsibility to work with those limitations – simplify the problem, limit the cognitive capacity and the time it will require others to grasp what you are suggesting. It is not always easy, it may require a lot more work to be concise and simple, it may even not be feasible for all decisions, but having “bounded rationality” in mind will help you get better results when asking others to align or take a decision.
  3. Doing the right thing – “All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy – but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that’s how I am guided.” – Maya Angelou. As I already explained, trends come and go, and so are people and ideas. It’s not easy to navigate your way in life, and in your professional career, without a clear compass. Throughout my journey I found that doing the right thing never fails me. While it may not always lead me to immediate success, or popularity, it always feels good. And that feeling is what keeps me motivated and driven. It is also the easiest route to explain and populate. Doing the right thing in what you’re working on, in the decisions you’re taking, in your prioritization, in the way you conduct yourself with people. That’s how I am trying to be guided, and I never regret that.
  4. Recharge – a few months ago I took a 6 weeks (!) break we call “Recharge”. Meta allows employees to take such a break after 5 years. The motivation is clear – time off is important. Significant time off, to clear the mind and charge your batteries, is critical. I spent some of the time in Japan with my family. I spent the rest at home, with the kids, with friends, and with myself. Taking that time off work to decompress, spending more time with my loved ones, pursuing hobbies, traveling – plays an important part in my well-being, and that well-being in turn helps me stay at my best at work. This is a flywheel that is easy to skip, to deprioritize, but one that I truly believe is essential for one’s long term success.
  5. Great partners – They say that life is not meant to be lived alone. This is also true for work. Having partners that complement you, give you feedback, pick you up when you need some help, run alongside you when the going gets tough. Yes, there are successful soloists, but I always find it less rewarding, not just less fun, to run at it alone. Throughout my career I was was blessed with some great partners (you know who you are…), and I have had the privilege of working alongside amazing partners here at Meta. A good opportunity to thank all of them, but especially my current partners for being there for me every day.
  6. Founder mode – a few weeks ago Paul Graham caused quite a sensation when he introduced “Founder Mode”. I may not agree wholeheartedly with what Graham (or Brian Chesky, who inspired him) describe, but I definitely am more of a “founder” than a “manager”.  Managers are often expected to leave the details – and the execution – to others. Founders get more involved in the details. That doesn’t mean micromanaging, which I personally hate. On a recent podcast Chesky said:  “There’s a difference between micromanagement—which is telling people exactly what to do, and being in the details. If you don’t know the details, how do you know people are doing a good job?”. One thing that I personally love to do is to take personal ownership of some projects. When you see Mark Zuckerberg do that, you realize it isn’t something that junior managers do, but a trait of successful leaders. Understanding what’s happening in your team / group / org, what’s moving in and if it’s moving in the right direction, is critical. It gives you the confidence to not just take decisions, but also say the hard things, or taking the less popular route. I heard founders refer to it as a “spidey sense”, and it only comes from being on the ground with the troops, not in some isolated ivy tower staring at some slides.

6 years is a(nother) great milestone. More than ever, in these turbulent times, I feel privileged to be working in a great workplace that keeps challenging me, allows me to grow and also rewards me for my success, and most of all to be working along the best people who support me in my journey. This includes not my colleagues and team members. 

Here’s to another successful year at Meta, and hopefully a better new Jewish year for all of us!

5 Tips for Success from 5 Years in Meta

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At Meta we celebrate Metaversaries on the day people joined Meta. On my 1st Faceversary I posted the 10 things I learned during my first year at Facebook. For my 2nd Faceversary I posted about the 10 things I unlearned. On my 3rd year I posted about the 3 things that defined my 3rd year. On MV4 I posted about 4 things that I took away from year 4.

Today I’m celebrating MV5, a BIG milestone, even in a big company like Meta. In 5 years I grew significantly as an individual, a product leader, and a leader in general, and have been quite successful. So I decided to sum up this exciting, challenging, and rewarding period, and offer 5 tips for success, for product leaders in “big tech” but also for everyone:

1. Success is never a straight, clear line.

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis’. One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis be aware of the danger, but recognize the opportunity.” – John F. Kennedy

I’m sure you know the viral drawing. Sign up for the hard problems and projects. Avoid “shiny object syndrome”, and instead focus on getting consistently better over a long period of time, tackling harder, bigger problems and project.

2. People tend to overlook and undervalue relationships. With COVID, hybrid and remote working models, online async tools, it’s easy to undervalue and overlook personal relationships. But relationships are key for success at any scale, definitely on a BIG scale. The (sometimes hidden) cost of bad relationships, or even non-existing relationships, is bigger than what most people estimate.  Invest in relationships – get to know the people you work with; make sure your partners and stakeholders know you and feel comfortable to reach out to you; help others – you never know when they will be able to help you.  

3. Take your PTO. Yes, it’s THAT important. I’m actually on one today. Lucky for me I’m working in a great workplace that not only provides employees with lots of PTO, but also encourages them to take time off, so that they can de-stress, clear their minds for a few days, and return to work with renewed energy. While I am not a huge fan of the marathon analogy, working in tech – especially over a span of more than two decades – often feels like an endless set of sprints, where the only way to win is to take the time to properly recover before you head out again.

4.Know your “Captain”. Organizations, especially big ones, often feel ike a big ship. Big ships need a strong engine, and a great Captain. To succeed on such a ship, you need to get to know your “captain” – learn what their goals are, understand their needs and work hard to fulfill those using your “engine room” team. This means that most of your job as a leader is to translate and communicate, from the “captain” to the “engine room” and back. 

5. Understand how things work and why. I’m a strong believer of Chesterstone’s Fence, a simple rule that suggests you should never destroy a fence (or change a rule or alter a process) if you do not understand why it was created in the first place. It’s often very tempting for opinionated leaders to provide feedback or suggest changes without really understanding how things work and even more importantly – why they work the way they are. Instead I try to focus most of my time on the understand part – asking questions a lot more than answering them, and striving to get to the why. Only when I feel that I really know why someone made a decision (or process), I would offer a change or conclude that they might be wrong.

It’s really hard to believe it’s been 5 years. I am deeply grateful to be working in an amazing workplace that keeps challenging me, allows me to grow and also rewards me for success, and to be working along the most amazing people who support me in my journey – managers, colleagues, team members. 

As I’m headed for a new year at Meta, and a new Jewish year – Shana Tova, a good year, for all of us! 🍏🥂🙏🏻

4 Things I Took Away From Year Four at Meta

At Facebook Meta we celebrate everyone’s FaceMetaversary, the day they joined Facebook Meta. On my 1st Faceversary I posted the 10 things I learned during my first year at Facebook. For my 2nd Faceversary I posted about the 10 things I unlearned. On my 3rd year I posted  about the 3 things that defined my 3rd year.
As this is now somewhat of a tradition, I’ve decided to wrote another post in the series, despite being on a long vacation, and this time – the 4 things that I took away from year 4 at Meta:

1. It’s all about people: working at a fast-paced, always-changing, highly-demanding work environment might sound intimidating to some, challenging to others. But this is what I love about the profession I’ve chosen and the types of companies I chose to work at. To be not only successful, but also happy, at such a work environment, and for a long time, you need great people around you. I’ve built teams before, in some cases from zero; I’ve joined teams that were already established; I had to layoff people and replace them – I’ve been around the block a few times. The one thing that stands out at Meta is a truly unique collection of great people that I’ve had the privilege to work with and have around me. People you can count on. People who have your back. People to take on great challenges with. People to celebrate wins with. People to fail with. And if you are fortunate enough to have great people around you most of the time, then time does fly, and you can practically achieve anything you set your mind, and your team, to do.

2. Hard work, consistently, for a long time, pays off: In one of the early Q&A sessions that Mark holds for the entire company he was asked what it would take for the company to be successful. In hard times, for the industry, the company, my team and myself, I’m often reminded about his answer – it takes hard work, done consistently, over a long period of time. After 20 years of career, I can testify that – sadly maybe for some – this is indeed the secret for success. Yes, you can be successful taking some shortcuts, gaining some quick wins, but in the long run you realize that like everything in life this not a sprint, but a marathon. And the way to win is through hard work, day in day out, for a long time. After which you start to reap the fruits, to enjoy the success. Especially in an environment which appreciates impact, and acts accordingly when it comes to compensation and promotion. An environment I’m privileged to work in.

3.Work hard, play hard: Working hard consistently is not simple. This is why playing (hard) is as important. Celebrating wins, enjoying time spent together socially, being able to enjoy the fruits of success, having fun together as a team – all of those are critical to sustain a consistent level of effort, of dedication, of teamwork. And it’s not just the investment in the events themselves. It’s the acknowledgement that it’s OK to stop from time to time and smell the flowers. I’m thankful that I had a lot of such opportunities this year, some great events and some awesome parties, to enjoy with my team.

4.Embrace change: In this day and age, and definitely in the industry I work in, nothing is certain and nothing is fixed. Change is happening, and it’s happening a lot. In some cases faster than one would imagine. You fail fast, and you try something new just as fast. Which means you need to adapt to change, embrace it. A change doesn’t have to pull the rug under your feet. It usually means that a lot of possibilities are now open, a lot of opportunities to chase, a lot ways you can improve.It’s been a year filled with changes, and I’m happy to say things turned out for the best in the end of the day. Maybe not the way we (or I) originally planned, but most of the time you don’t really know what’s at the end of the road. You just need to learn to stop being afraid.

This has been another great year I will always look back to with pride and a smile. And I continue to be grateful to the people who help me in my journey, as I’m headed for another year at Meta, filled with new challenges, and as this also marks a new Jewish new year, I wish everyone – myself included – Shana Tova, a good year.

3 Things that Defined My 3rd Year at Facebook

At Facebook we celebrate everyone’s Faceversary, the day they joined Facebook. On my 1st Faceversary I posted the 10 things I learned during my first year at Facebook. For my 2nd Faceversary I posted about the 10 things I unlearned. To sum up my 3rd year I decided to write about the 3 things that defined my experiences this year:

  1. Repotting: I was introduced to this term by Guy, who has been somewhat of a mentor for me at Facebook and whom I replaced in my new role early in my 3rd year. “Repotting” is most commonly associated with gardening – taking the core plant and introducing it to a new environment or a bigger pot as a way to encourage additional growth. John W. Gardner originally introduced the repotting theory in 1964 as a way for revitalizing creativity and energy. Gardner suggests that “Repotting” – changing roles, workplace, career focus – is an effective way to  revitalize creativity and energy.  The most significant growth and potential come from being challenged. New experiences and challenges require creativity and engagement.  Planting one self, along with the roots, the leaves, the green and the yellow you have accumulated, in a new, exciting environment is beneficial for both you and the new “pot” you find. And this year I learned how much this is true. I changed my team, my product, my responsibilities. A new org, a new manager, new stakeholders. A new domain. But in the same company, with the same culture and processes. Which allowed me to best utilize my experience and past learning to grow and positively impact everyone around me. The fact that Facebook allows employees to move between teams, between roles, is a real privilege, and I’m grateful that such a great opportunity has come my way.
Houseplant Repotting, Explained - Visit the plant experts at Platt Hill  Nursery
  1. Mission: One of the main reasons for choosing the product and team I joined early this year was its mission. It’s easy to dismiss the importance of a company or a team’s mission, to underestimate its value. But from 20 years of experience I can clearly say that when people have a strong sense of purpose, they are more content, more satisfied, more engaged. It’s easier to identify with the mission when you are the founder. In a larger organization high meaning and high purpose are key to high performance and high satisfaction. A meaningful purpose balances an ideal goal with realistic capabilities, a dream with actual resources, and a commitment to long-term goals with the necessity to pivot as situations change. A meaningful mission aligns everyone, including culture and strategy, and creates a strong sense of personal fulfillment. In one of the “sell” meetings I had, a very experienced VP told me that this is the most meaningful thing he ever worked on. All the people I talked to emphasized the mission and what it means. It was very easy to relate to, very encouraging to join. A year later i still feel charged by the mission, despite the last year being a true rollercoaster. When everything around you changes so rapidly, when ups and down occur so frequently, it’s the mission that keeps you going. At the end of the day it’s probably the one thing that really matters.
Academic Mission | yagoe
  1. The new normal: I joined my new team while WFH. I took the decision while WFH. It’s not easy, but as soon as I realized THIS is the new normal, I understood that this is yet another thing I would have to adjust to. It took a while for me to meet my team in person, but where there’s a will there’s a way. A year later I still haven’t met my manager in person, as well as many of the key stakeholders and leaders who I work with very frequently. Most of the meetings this year where over VC, including 1:1 meetings, which means I had to build personal relationships remotely. But as time passed and I realized it might take long before this reality will change, and adopted this as the new normal. It has its advantages, it has clear disadvantages, and it’s the only normal we have, so we should simply make the most of it.
May be an image of bottle and indoor

This has been a great year. And I am grateful to the many people who helped me make the transition work and push onwards and upwards to beat my expectations yet another year.
Can’t wait to to see what the next year will bring!

10 Things I Unlearned During My Second Year At Facebook

WFH 2nd Facerversary

At Facebook we celebrate Faceversaries, the day you joined Facebook. On my 1st Faceversary I posted about 10 things I learned during my first year at Facebook.
For my 2nd Faceversary I decided to post about things I unlearned, a term I actually learned about in my 2nd year. Unlearning is the process of discarding something that you learned, preconceptions or misbeliefs. Alvin Toffler said: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn”.

So here are 10 things I unlearned in my second year at Facebook:

  1. Diversity and inclusion. It’s really easy to forget how privileged you are when you’re a male, raised where I was and by who I was. in fact through most of my career I was surrounded by people like myself, so i didn’t really have to bother with issues like diversity and inclusion. And it worked pretty great. Or so I thought. Only at Facebook I realized that diverse teams actually do better, that diversity and inclusion start at the top of the funnel, that you need to work hard if you want to change the current landscape. I’m really happy to be working in an environment and culture that actively encourages and pursuits diversity and inclusion in all aspects of the day-to-day work.
  2. Feedback. In most companies there are usually two types of feedback, the “Sorry, but it’s not working” that usually comes way too late, and the “Wow, that was amazing!” which is flattering but there’s not much one can do with it. At Facebook you might notice the sign “Feedback is a gift” around the office, and what I had learned is that providing short, actionable, timely feedback to your colleagues, and actively asking for such feedback from them, is very important, and if given with respect and good intent can help the everyone improve themselves, which in turn improves everyone’s work.
  3. Authenticity. It is very common to have 2 personas in life – one that is personal, and one that is professional. At work you dress different, behave different, talk different. But why? At Facebook I manage to bring more of myself to work every day, and I am inspired every day by others who do the same. People promote causes that are important to them, are not shy of expressing their believes or exposing their way of life. They are being honest with their struggles and their challenges, especially in a time like this, and this makes the work environment a lot more intimate and also a lot more interesting. 
  4. Find your passion. To most people it would seem counter-intuitive that a company, or a manager, would encourage their employee to find their passion. But at Facebook I was had found that you can pursuit your passion with all the support, and even the resources, to do so. In the last year I finally started a podcast, lead various initiatives of supporting the community, was able to share my Product experience with others and actively mentored new product managers in Tel-Aviv and London. There is probably nothing more rewarding than finding what makes you tick, and following it through.
  5. Everyone is struggling. The last 6 months have been rough. COVID-19 has introduced a lot of challenges, and personal struggles, that one might have been able to hide until then. At Facebook, because of the authenticity and openness that is core to the culture, it is much clearer that everyone is struggling with something, and that’s OK. Once you realize it is not shameful or embarrassing to share about it, then the struggle in many case becomes a little bit easier, and sometimes you can even take comfort knowing others are coping with similar challenges themselves.
  6. Purpose. In your work, especially if you’re building products, t’s really easy to invest yourself in the “what”. At Facebook I re-learned about the ”why“ – why am I working on this? why does this matter? what purpose are we trying to pursuit? When the task, the product, the mission is meaningful, when you’re serving others or serving the greater good, it allows us to feel more connected. We have an inherent desire to be part of something that’s bigger than ourselves, and when you can see the impact that you have on another person, another community, on the world, that carries a lot of weight.
  7. Leadership. I could say I’ve been a leader for more than a decade now. But I think that only at Facebook I saw for the first time what leadership really means. Leading a large team without authority is always more challenging – and more rewarding – than leading a team that reports to you or works in your company. And witnessing how other leaders, those who work alongside you, those who lead you, are conducting theirselves and their teams, is a truly inspiring experience, and one that will definitely help me become a better leader.
  8. Take care of yourself first. Remember that airline safety video we all hate? The one that shows you the exits and tells you how to buckle your seat belt? Well, here’s one thing that these videos always emphasize, and we tend to forget in real-life: take care yourself first. In many companies the culture revolves around “the team”, how “there’s no me in team” and how you should always think of the benefit of the company before your own. At Facebook, although the company definitely emphasizes how we’re all in this together, and how we all work for the same mission, it’s always clear: you first need to think of your own safety, your own health, your own well-being. You and your family, of course. And in the last 6 months this was even more clear than before. I feel privileged to work in such a work environment, and can’t imagine ever working in a different one. 
  9. Clear communications. I proud myself as a “communicator”. This should be probably clear, if you’re reading this. And still only at Facebook I learned how important clear communication is, and how hard it can be to communicate in a concise, accurate and extremely clear manner. I can contribute a lot of this unlearning to the constructive feedback I got, the effective training, and great examples I am reading on a regular basis. Communications skills are a great power, and clear communications are a super power.
  10. Expectations. Meeting, and even exceeding expectations is the best way to conduct yourself. But to do so you need to know what is expected from you – in your position, in a specific project, in a specific task, and then meet those requirements as best you can. Knowing what is expected allows you to be determined and motivated to meet those expectations, as well as committed to exceed those as much as possible. While this may seem trivial, I don’t think that I ever had expectations defined so well, so clearly and so effectively, as they are defined at Facebook. It’s key to the performance review, to any progress review, to any feedback conversation, to any conversation. Knowing what are the expectations from me allows me to create my own standards, improve my skills and differentiate myself. Expressing the expectation I have from my team and from the people I work with allows them to do the same.

This is also a great opportunity to thank the many people who helped me beat my expectations this year.
Can’t wait to see what the next year will help me learn and unlearn!

10 Things I Learned During My First Year At Facebook

At Facebook we celebrate Faceversaries, the day you joined Facebook. Last weekend I celebrated my 1st Facerverary.

The reason I love this tradition is that it’s a great opportunity to celebrate the contribution of each person to the success of the company and of the team he belongs to, and also a good excuse to ponder about not just your achievements during the year but also what you learned.

So what did I learn in my first year at Facebook?   Here are 10 things:

  1. Working with great people is an amazing experience. It’s hard to explain how challenging, and fun, it is to lead a team of talented people, each in their own domain. To work with people who push you to succeed, not by pushing you from behind but running in front of you. To learn, to listen, to grow. 
  2. It’s all about high standards. Everything done in Facebook is of the highest standard. Without compromise. It starts from recruiting, open position the can remain open for months but no one will dare to compromise on a candidate that is not a perfect fit. Everything we do is of the highest standard. Even the food (oh, the food!), everything. During this year I had to apologize, in a few occasions, during the production of various events, that we simply don’t know how to organize something that is not 100% perfect. For a long time I told myself this just privilege. But when you take a good look at successful companies, when hear those entrepreneurs discuss their learnings, you realize there is no other way.
  3. Transparency is power, not a problem. Almost everything on Facebook is transparent. To any employee. It enables anyone to give feedback, state an opinion, suggest a solution. During the weeks I joined Facebook there was a vicious attack of leaks, that naturally were filled with negative incidents without context. During the weekly Q&A, which I attended, Mark was asked whether it was time to restrict the transparency to stop the leaks. He answerd: “We recruit the best people in the world. Not giving them all the information is like tying one of their hands behind their back.”
  4. Feedback is a gift. You hear it a lot when you’re at Facebook. It’s hard to explain how essential feedback is in the company culture. It means everyone, and that means any one, is expected to give feedback when there is any, to any one. I remember a few friends in pilot training who told me how embarrassing it was to give feedback to a high commanding officer flying with them. At Facebook you give your manager feedback twice a year, you give peer feedback, you give feedback to the people you collaborate with. It comes from the right place, of constructive feedback, and with respect. People give feedback to others who give them service, to the chefs in the cafeteria. People learn to receive feedback, to learn from it, to improve. To realize it is indeed a gift.
  5. “The best way to complain is to build things.”. This James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem) quote appears on many Facebook walls around the world. Everyone knows that people in tech like to complain. At Facebook you’re expected to do something about it. And it works great. Tools being developed by frustrated employees, team offsites, sport classes, meetups. They are all being built and organized by those who care, by those who want it to happen. 
  6. “At Facebook nothing is somebody else’s problem”. This is another mantra that you can find on many Facebook walls. Pretty soon you realize you have no one to complain to. Realized there’s a problem?  It’s partly your responsibility. To inform, to sort out, sometimes to solve, to organize. Add that to the James Murphy quote above, and you wind up with an organization where the employees are greatly responsible for their quality of lives, for their work environment, for the culture of the site, of the company. Yes, without any “well-being department”, HR, operations or anyone else you normally blame or throw the responsibility at. 
  7. You can dream big inside a company. I’m an entrepreneur. In the last decade I realized it’s in my DNA. All of the above would have been a little meaningless for me, if the place I work in wouldn’t allow anyone to dream big and pursuit their dream. Each with his own interests, each with his own domain, and what they like to experience, to achieve. As long as you are willing to make those dreams a reality, of course. You got that part already, right?   And so I found myself many times during this year working on making my dreams reality, with loads of support from the great people around me. And boy, this is the best feeling ever, when you see your dream materialize, together with awesome people who help you along the way.
  8. Trust your employees and great things will happen. A lot of things are being done differently at Facebook. I’ve run a few companies already, and I know I would have been extremely cautious about running such an open culture that is based on fully trusting your employees in any aspect of their job. It’s basically “we trust you, do whatever you feel makes sense”, and it applies to everything. And in return you get a work environment where employees invest a lot more than anywhere else, care about their work and their team, feel that they belong, strive to be the best and do their best work. Because they are trusted.
  9. With great power comes great responsibility. Sorry for being a bit of a cliche. I didn’t mention any challenges or hardship, so here goes. Leading a product at Facebook means getting great power. You literally can influence the lives of millions. And as such it comes with great responsibility. Not just because of the extreme level of scrutiny, but also because knowing what your decisions impact is a significant burden. It really helps to be surrounded by people who are focused on doing the right thing. And when you do the right thing, it’s much more enjoyable to succeed.
  10. Say thanks. I did learn to say thanks even before Facebook. But here also it is amazing to see how hard the organization is working to get thanks inside the culture, the day-to-day life. In how many organizations do you see employees thanking the culinary team for the feed they ate today (yeah, food. It’s a big deal here)?  They thank the organizers of an event they attended, that person who helped them fix some problem, a team mate who gave them the right tip or invested valuable time in helping them. There’s even a #thanks bot that counters the thanks and informs your manager when someone thanks you 🙂

Last point is a great opportunity to thank the many people who made this year so unique and so awesome.

One year at Facebook. I learned so much. Can’t wait to continue and learn next year!

Jay Z and the Exclusive Content Myth

Pasted_Image_5_13_15__10_54_AM“The tide is high, but I’m holding on
I’m gonna be your number one…”
(John Holt)

The tide was high last week when Jay Z launched his new (=recently acquired) music streaming service Tidal. ICYMI, Jay Z – superstar producer, entrepreneur, billionaire, Beyonce’s husband – acquired Swedish music company Aspiro for $56 Million 3 months ago with hopes of challenging Spotify and taking the streaming music market by a storm.

However when the tide went out,  there seemed to not be much under the Tidal hood but a £20 a month price tag. Yes, there was this noble vision of giving more revenue back to the artists, and the promise of lossless streaming (won’t even get into this one…), but at the end of the day – how does Jay Z plan to justify the pricey subscription fee and beat the competition?  Exclusive content.

Yep, you heard it right – exclusive content. The same weapon that every Spotify rival has tried before, including the exclusive content masterminds of Apple, the clever folks at YouTube/Google and many others. Has any service won on exclusive content?  No!

Has anyone joined Tidal because Beyonce released her new song exclusively there?  I seriously doubt that.  Has anyone left Spotify for the competition becauseTaylor Swift took her catalog off the service?  A few fans maybe.  Has anyone bought an iPhone to get U2’s latest album for free?  Pffff.   You see, the harsh truth is that there is no such thing as exclusive content, and that with a practically limitless catalog no one really cares about a little exclusivity here and there.

It’s 2015, folks. Every song, by any artist, is available to stream and/or download online within seconds for the average Google-using Joe. Artists have pretty much given up the fight against piracy, and are actively trying to use it for their own benefit (promote their music, grow their fan base, etc.). You can’t really keep anything exclusive once it goes online, and – as Madonna recently learned – many times even before that.

And if something is exclusive, do we really care?  3 years ago Andy Baid compared two of my favorite streaming services, Spotify and Rdio, by their content. He found out, for instance, that Rdio had 12 Bob Dylan albums streaming exclusively (at least back then), while Spotify had 3 from Underworld and 3 from Katatonia. Would that make anyone leave their favorite music service, forget their listening habits, let go of their valuable playlists, playing history, friends?   Maybe some die hard Dylan fan would, but not the majority of users. In fact, I argue that as most people stream only the most popular songs anyway, the majority of subscribers won’t even notice that this or that album is missing.

Hence the need for PR. “Beyonce is streaming exclusively” is a perfect title for a marketing campaign, but other than the entertainment press, no one cares. Because everyone is streaming it already on YouTube, and because it’s simply not enough for me to leave my trusted music service, with its mobile app that I love, and social graph I have built. You want to take your content off my music service?  Well, go ahead. I’ll just look for it elsewhere (if I will look for it at all).

Newsflash: If you’re a music artist in 2015, you need to be everywhere. On every service. In every device. Madonna, who can teach marketing classes to many of the young and inspiring music stars of this day, just released her new music video,Ghosttown, on live video sensation Meerkat as well as old school VEVO, on Jimmy Fallon and on Tidal, and of course on YouTube. Wherever you are, whatever you’re using to listen to music, Madonna will play it for you. Because Madonna knows exclusive content is a myth.

And it’s time to say it out loud, even if it puts us users in a kind of a shady light. Spotify and Netflix have proven that many of us will pay a reasonable monthly subscription fee to get all the content we want. But they’ve also proven that most of us will consume the content we want, even if it is missing on these “legit” services, in any way possible, each according to his own skills, and we won’t hold for anyone. Not even for Beyonce.

“Drink in your summer, gather your corn
The dreams of the night time will vanish by dawn
And time waits for no one…”
(Mick Jagger)


Headline photo by Photosteve101.
Thanks to my good friend Yael Beeri for going over this post and making sense out of it.

5 EASY Things Twitter Needs To Fix ASAP

So everybody’s writing about Twitter these days. Most our writing about it on Twitter. As MG Siegler wrote, if your platform is pronounced dead using your platform, you’re probably doing quite OK.

Having said that it’s clear that something is wrong with Twitter in a sense that users, avid users, feel that the Twitter team is not listening. And by team they mean whomever is in charge of product decisions in Twitter. And by not listening they mean that sometimes (hell, most time) it fells as if those who are part of “the flock” are simply not eating their own dog food.

It’s probably the hardest job in the world to be in charge of product in a company that has at least a million product people as users. And this is definitely going to sound like one of those people’s rants, but I’ll write it anyway. Mainly because I really believe that these 5 (!) EASY (!!) things that twitter needs to fix ASAP (!!!) will not only truly improve the user experience dramatically, but also show that Twitter cares. And understands.

So here we go:

1. Bring back Quote

Retweet is great, but we’re not just product minded people here, we’re minded in general. And we want to add our own comments to people’s tweets. And we want to change those tweets, edit them, mix and remix them. It’s part of the Twitter magic. So why take it away?

Retweet is one thing, Quote (or Retweet with Comment) is another. Don’t force us to Retweet. Don’t force us to do all kinds of hacks (my favorite is definitely the Buffer extension). Bring the Quote back home.

2. Reply to Myself

Telling your story in 140 characters is great. It is what made (and still makes) Twitter a magical platform. But…

There are cases where 140 characters are not enough. And in that case you want to writeanother tweet, and link it to the previous one. How? you simply reply to yourself. Which works great, but has this pesky annoyance in the form of “@yourself” in the beginning.

Now why would I want to mention myself? It really serves no purpose, and is totally not required in today’s UI, where anyone can clearly see this new tweet relates to a previous tweet. Only things this achieves is wasting valuable characters and annoying the user (who now needs to delete the mention).

Time to lose the self mention, Twitter. Nobody needs it.
3. It’s a Conversational Tool

Surprise, surprise: Twitter is a great platform for multiple participant conversations. It starts with an innocent (or not) tweet, and then multiple people reply, and before you know it you’re trying to reply to everyone and run out of characters with all those @mentions taking all the valuable tweet space.

Wouldn’t it be great if I can reply to a tweet (or even compose a new one), select a bunch of people I follow or who follow me, and they will be “tagged” as part of the reply and notified when I post this tweet?

Sure, it’s a bit more complicated then simply mentioning them, but even you guys understand that something is not really working with @mentions. So here’s a great place to solve this, and kill two birds (no pun intended!) with one fix.

4. DM Search

Twitter seems to be taking Direct Messages seriously. After all it’s a great engagement tool. And it’s quite useful too. Well, it’s useful as long as you don’t care about previous messages, because, well, it’s a nightmare to look for them.

Adding a basic search, where I can look for all the messages from/to a friend, is really an essential element for any messaging service. Let me find that DM I sent my good friend a week ago, Twitter, or else I would just use the other messaging services out there. And I really don’t want to do that, you know.

5. Pinned tweet

I was really tolerant towards the new profile page. I even changed mine as soon as I could. But seriously now – Pinned Tweet? You are, at least the last time I checked, a real-timeplatform, which is exactly how we like you. If I open someone’s profile, I want to see their latest tweets, not some old tweet that they thought would look cool on top of their profile.

I can (maybe) understand the use-case for brands. I honestly can’t find any use for it for individuals. Especially those who tweet often.

Instead, if you really want to make a user’s profile more enjoyable to me, a fellow user, how about showing me their most retweeted tweets, or those who got the most replies, or most favorites (or a combination of those)? That would be a valuable addition. Pinned tweet? lose it.

* * *

And there you have it, Twitter. @Jack once said his goal was “to simplify complexity”, and these 5 easy fixes are doing exactly that. And they will make us simply happier as well.

Like All Good Things The Greatest Hits Take Time

I really need to thank Joel for this – this blog post and this blog (comeback?). His great blogging and amazing content curation have got me back to blogging. Specifically a post by Adii Pienaar titled “The Greatest Hits Are Obvoius“. You know – music, technology… who can resist that?!

Adii writes about how some songs have obvious hit qualities, and how our mind makes a decision that a song is a hit before you can logically and objectively come to the same conclusion.

He himself is puzzled with the conclusion, but still notes that “the greatest hits were obvious“. More specifically (and after explaining the relation between working on a song and working on a startup):

Great ideas remain great ideas. And the greatest ideas are obviously great at first sight.

 

A Few Tiny, Perfect Examples That Will Blow Your Mind

As a music buff, let me start off with a few well-known examples*:

#1: The Blowers’ Daughter by Damien Rice

In 2001 a young Irish musician called Damien Rice released a song called “The Blower’s Daughter”. The song made the top 40 chart, but didn’t become a great hit.
Over the next year Rice continued to record his debut album, O. Released in 2002, the album was quite successful, as the songs “Cannonball” and “Volcano” becoming hits in the UK.In 2004 “The Blower’s Daughter” was included in “Closer“, a Mike Nichols box office hit. The rest is history.

#2: Perfect Day by Lou Reed

Originally recorded in 1972, and featured on Lou Reed’s album Transformer, “Perfect Day” remained hidden from the public eye for almost 25 years, until it was featured on the 1996 classic “Trainspotting”, and blasted through the roof with record sales, cover versions and fame.

#3: Tiny Dancer by Elton John

Released originally in 1971, “Tiny Dancer” appeared on Elton John’s 4th album, “Madman Across The Water”. It was released as a single in 1972, but reached only #41 on the U.S pop chart, and so was not even released in the UK.
The song slowly became popular, mainly due to air time on adult contemporary and rock radio stations, and finally received its break on the 2000 Cameron Crowe film “Almost Famous”.
It finally reached Gold in 2005, and Platinum in 2011. It is now one of Elton John’s most famous and well-recognized hits.

 

So Are Greatest Hits Obvious?

Well, some hits are obvious. But as a music lover I would have to say that most of the songs that have remained with me for a long time seem to be songs that took time to grow on me. And those monster hits, you know the ones – those who rise straight to #1 and stay there for a few weeks – well, most of the time I grow tired of them just as quickly.

As a music critic I know of a few cases where I missed a great song, album even, in real-time. In fact that is the main reason I decided not to write about an album (or song) the same day (or even week) I get it, and I forced myself to listen to it for a while before expressing my opinion on it.

Some great ideas, great songs, great albums remain great. Some of the greatest ideas/songs/albums are obviously great from first sight (or listen). But there are too many cases where intuition is not right, cases where it takes time to fully understand and decipher the magic, that I have learned not to pass judgment too early in the game.

 

OK, Enough About Music. What About Startups?

As Adii well noted – same thing. Some of the greatest hits were obvious. Angry Birds, for instance. But some have disappeared just as quickly as they sky rocketed. Anyone wants to play Draw Something?

And those “obvious” hits, which wowed me at first, like Path for instance, or Google+, have been abandoned by me along the way, with all due respect to their great ideas and execution.

Other services, less obvious at first, became my 2nd nature. Like Twitter, for example. I would love to say that as soon as I joined (2008) I got it and fell in love with it, but that is not true. It grew on me. Instagram?  Same story for me.  Evernote?  Took even longer, but now I can’t live without it.

So you see – I’m grateful to have learned patience, and to allow new ideas to take their time. And as someone who has been working full time for a long time now on my own disruptive startup, I remind myself that every time I look at the metrics, and – just like Adii – wonder.

Intuition is important. I myself give it a lot of credit, too much even. But you owe yourself, and those great ideas, to wait a little and let your intuition do its magic – not just at first sight, or first experience, but also after the fifth or tenth time.

Do people spend the time to appreciate ideas that take a while to grow on you?  I am not sure. We’ve grown to be impatient, and as such we miss a lot of great hits just because they are not obvious. I hope we won’t regret it. I know I have, at least a few times.

 

* I thank Boaz Cohen for his help with the examples.