hi bud buds,
my favorite feature i saw last week: spotify added a new “plays” metric for podcasts, displaying to listeners and creators how often episodes are watched / listened to.
as someone who actually takes podcast recs (damn am i great guy or something) and loves exploring new podcasts, i’ve wanted this feature for a long time.
even in an ai revolution, it’s good to see some solid, common sense product getting shipped.
xxo,
dj
last week’s product launches
interesting!
substack released an audio-only livestream feature, letting publishers connect without video. i’m super curious to see how high engagement this will be; i’m sure the supply-side (creator) demand is there for this feature, but not sure if consumers really will find this that compelling?
netflix released a mobile-only vertical feed, featuring short clips from its original titles. this feels great for optimizing content discovery
amazon released enhance my listing, a tool that suggests better titles, attributes, and descriptions
reddit is tightening verification to keep out bots
spacex got approval for starlink in india
product response to court ruling forcing apple to allow web payments
patreon released web payments, letting users pay via credit card, venmo, paypal, and apple pay
amazon released a “get book” button that lets users buy books via browser
other fun ai thingz
figma released ai tools for creating sites, app prototypes, and marketing assets
anthropic released an api for web search, letting claude models fetch real-time info
stripe released an ai foundation model for payments. example use cases: fraud detection
netflix released a generative ai search tool, letting users search in natural language
google released simplify, an ios feature that summarizes dense web text; just highlight and tap “simplify”
bye bye, love you,
dj