hi bud buds,
a lot of yesterday’s big product news was about ai features from major tech players:
a key source of vc yapping debate around ai is whether it disrupts or sustains incumbents—a huge question for startup lovers, since it shapes how many disruptive startups will emerge from this ai era.
disruptive innovation creates entirely new markets and services. sustaining innovation improves, accelerates, or refines those that already exist.
from a product perspective, launches like ^ tell me that incumbents are having no trouble rolling out compelling ai features on their platforms. it doesn’t feel forced or frankenstein’s monster-ey. in fact, it feels the opposite: seamlessly integrated into existing users’ existing workflows in an organic way.
this reinforces my belief that distribution remains the most important factor in the ai era. in most industries, ai feels like a killer feature for incumbents to offer their existing customers, rather than a foothold for new startups to disrupt incumbents.
still shaping this belief tho, reply if you see it differently!
love you bud buds, talk to you tomorrow
xo,
dj satoda
twitter: @djsatoda
email: [email protected]
yesterday’s product launches
cool
tubi launched scenes, a tiktok-type video feed feature that lets viewers find what to watch by allowing them to scroll through short clips from movies and tv shows. at first I thought this feature sounded incredibly stupid, but honestly feels like a really good content discovery feature to match passive users with content that might hook them, and thus meaningfully improve retention
youtube launched ai-generated video backgrounds for shorts, allowing users to generate video backgrounds instantly with just a few words
thank the lord
apple rumored to be working on an llm-based conversational version of siri. honestly love this, because siri is IMO the biggest travesty in tech. hundreds of millions of customers’ audio data to train on, and all siri is mildly good for 10 years later is setting kitchen timers… and she messes that up half the time
american airlines introduces new boarding line shaming technology to discourage line cutting. “passengers who board before their assigned group will trigger technology that makes a sound to alert the gate agent.”
mildly interesting
spotify testing expanded audiobook features like short video clips and author pages
threads adjusting its algorithm to prioritize content from accounts you follow. interesting as this feels like one of tiktok’s main advantages in attracting new creators
brave introduces ai chat for follow-up questions, making it easier for users to get quick and accurate answers to their initial queries. pretty cool… except who uses brave?
bye bye, love you,
dj