The title of this post is probably a bit too specific. It should really say “why all people who build and work on web and software based products should blog”, but that’s a mouthful. In a recent post,  I alluded to some of the reasons I’ll discuss below:

…it behooves me to have a well organized site where I can not only express ideas, but where I can tinker, experiment, and otherwise play with whatever social media or web detritus I might want to understand.  A blog these days can be very technically sophisticated, and with all of the plug-ins, social media integration, and SEO capabilities now available…

I felt like it was an interesting enough nugget to pursue and expand upon.  The main purpose of my post isn’t to point out what I consider to be the “obvious” reasons for blogging, and these are, in my view:  sharing ideas, communicating with people in your profession, increasing your professional profile, scratching a creative itch, doing something productive while drinking, etc.  I’m sure there are many eloquent articles and posts out there espousing these benefits. My interest was in how blogging helps people in the “Product Management” world better at their jobs.

A lot of Product Managers DO blog about their profession and share useful information, and my blogroll has a lot of links that are worth checking out, but here are a few: Adaptive Path, Jeff Lash’s Blog, Silicon Valley Product Group, Derek Morrison’s Blog, and many more… I’m always on the lookout for new stuff.  Back to the task at hand, though — here are some reasons why I think Product Managers should blog.

You get to do it all.

As the blogger, you are a combined microcosm of all the departments and functions that you normally coordinate with.  You are forced to make cross-functional decisions across marketing, content, engineering, and product. This kind of authoritarian power is actually humbling, as you start to recognize your weak areas.  It offers great perspective on your “day job”, and it creates feelings of empathy for your design and engineering co-workers.  I also believe that it hones your ability to see forests and trees all at the same time. Also, for some of us, getting your hands dirty is fun.

Social Media Bootcamp

Creating, updating, and promoting a blog is, IMO, an amazing way to really get in deep and understand how the social web really works.  You get to see interrelationships and integration options that you probably never knew existed, since your regular work is typically focused on a few areas at a time.  I remember that a lot of people were confused about  @replies, early on , on Twitter, but the hardcore blogger weren’t … they saw them as trackbacks/pingbacks for micro-blog posts, which is, pretty much what they are.  Recently, I read a post in Dave Winer’s Blog, where he pointed out:

Meanwhile, TechCrunch has caught onto the idea I borrowed from Steve Rubel, almost. They noted that WordPress was growing while Twitter’s growth has (perhaps temporarily) stalled.  The phenomenon is not, as some have said, the “death” of blogging (I hate that word!) — rather huge growth in blogging at the low-end as NBBs discover its joys through Twitter and Facebook. Perhaps very few of them will want more, but even a few is a lot! Expect a huge surge in medium-range and high-end blogging in the coming years, with products like Tumblr and Posterous and WordPress perfectly poised to capture the growth.

I agree with him, and once you start to head down the rabbit hole of how you can integrate your blog across the social web and how you can intertwine your blog with all of your web identities and application, you become blown away by the sheer number of options, but also the abundance of quality solutions that are really effective and cool.  I was recently working for almost two months straight on social integration to an e-commerce site, and I did a ton of research and testing.  I probably learned just as much from tinkering with my blog.  Which leads to my next reason…

Tinkering

I’ll admit that I like tinkering with my blog maybe as much as I do writing for it.  Our world is now full of multi-platform capable, socially integrated, SEO’d, API using, user interacting products. With even a semi-sophisticated blog, there are a lot of interesting decisions youneed to make about what app, plug-in, widget, social aggregation service, RSS feed, or whatever is right for what you want to accomplish… and that’s after you figure out what you are trying to accomplish with is half the battle.  Since its just your blog, you probably aren’t going to go through the hand-ringing process of MRD/PRD/ Cost Analysis stuff… you are just gonna tinker and see what works best, which is a great exercise for those of us who are sort of paid to do all of that hand wringing, its liberating and enlightening to not have to. From a research perspective,  its really interesting to see how different plug-in developers, who all properly identify a particular need, develop so many different solutions to the problem that add value in different ways.  All of that tinkering really helps you to get grounded really see what the web is, how the software functions, and where is all comes together in the user experience.

Product Marketing

Blog promotion is a great exercise in Product Marketing. Your blog is the sum of all of its parts, and your users may be coming to your blog for a lot of different reasons.  Sometimes its other bloggers just checking out how you’ve done something, sometimes its someone searching for information you’ve covered, and sometimes its someone interested in you.  Your “mix” of advice giving, commenting on other blogs and articles, personal anecdotes, and everything else that can be slapped on a web page is all up to you.  You have to think about your “brand” and how your product choices affect the brand.  Believe me – - as soon as more than a couple of people check out your blog, you are thinking about it. If you are someone like me who is typically being hired for how I think perhaps more than anything, your blog might be more important that your resume to some people.

It provides freedom to look “outside” for inspiration and answers.

It would be pretty hard, and frankly, pretty pretentious  to casually mention that Locke’s Social Contract theory may have something to do a confusing user behavior being analyzed in a meeting; however, looking at other disciplines is really useful.  My personal “fetish” is economics.  This is partially because it was my major in college and I’ve stayed interested in the field, but its also because the more I think through economic theories (mostly micro)  that explain  people’s behaviors, the more it becomes relevant to my work.  When I can think through and view a problem from a different perspective that is grounded in an established theory, it can often yield really sound insight. I’ll be working on a post soon about how I think that Vincent and Eleanor Ostrom’s theories of rational choice might help explain why digital media piracy “seems ok” in the minds of piraters.  Not exactly something you want to throw out in a strategy meeting, but its useful for me to think about, since a lot of my career has been trying to figure out how to get people to pay for stuff they can easily steal.

There are lot of other benefits, but the downside is the time-suck, and this is where the discipline part comes in.  That’s good for you too.

I have to partially borrow the title of (my friend and former colleague) Eliot Van Buskirk’s article on Wired.com for this post:  Music: Too Expensive to Be Free, Too Free to Be Expensive.  I need to borrow it, because when it comes to the state of digital music business models, this phrase nails it more than any I’ve heard in a long time. I’ve worked on both the consumer and the “rights-holder” side of this business, and the institutional barriers in the music industry have always been, in my view, the biggest obstacle to progress — for all parties involved.

Advertising was supposed to be music’s magic bullet, enabling fans to get the free music they’re going to find anyway while contributing at least something to copyright holder coffers. That dream is fading fast. As legitimate sources for free on-demand music dry up, fans will likely head back to file sharing networks, which is bad news for everyone involved in music — except for, perhaps, hard drive manufacturers.

That paragraph elegantly sums up what I see as a summary of the core institutional issues of the music business. The revenue generation happens so far away from the consumer experience that the two don’t recognize each other anymore. This model worked for a long time while the entire creative, intellectual property, manufacturing, distribution, and retail channels were in the control of a few large entities, because, well, that’s how oligarchies are. The industry’s bent towards “rent seeking” models, however,  grew old and tired and then the internet came along and put them all out of their misery.  Understand that I lump labels, publishers, and performance rights agencies together into the word “industry”, and rightly so, because this disaggregation of rights is a big cause of their woes.  I’m going a bit beyond the scope of Eliot’s article in discussing the various rights owners and their motivations, but it applies when you are a consumer company who must consider the cost of entering a business involving music (and I ‘m not even talking about up front costs and guarantees).

In a recent MidemNetBlog post titled “A Delicate Balancing Act“, Ted Cohen is sympathetic to both sides of the   “music industry vs. tech start-up” predicament, and he alludes to the cultural differences between tech entrepreneurs and industry types:

Having been on the label side, I understand the desire AND need to extract value from assets. In my current ongoing work with start-ups, I appreciate their passionate desire to do something innovative with music. These two goals shouldn’t be at odds with each other, and yet they are. The ‘asks’ by the rightsholders are frequently substantial, the expectations from the start-ups are often unrealistic. Neither side is really listening to each other, they are each focused on their own immediate concerns. Understandable, but not very productive.

The expectations for start-ups are often are unrealistic, but innovation is like that, and ultimately, “explaining” the music industry to someone with a good idea and a grasp of the demand side of the equation doesn’t solve the problem. The cultures do need to understand each other better, but the institutional structure of the music industry and the high costs that it creates in comparison to the questionable (and perhaps, now, unknowable) demand is a really, really big problem.

Ok, so I’m getting my blog going again.  Or… rather – for the first time.

I’ve probably started and abandoned more than a dozen blogs in my time.  Blogger, Wordpress, MovableType, Tumblr, and probably a few others that I’ve forgotten, are littered with the skeletal remains of various attempts to enter the blogosphere in a meaningful way. I really made my big push about a year ago when I chose WordPress as my platform of choice, and even went so far as to register some domains, including my vanity “timjmitchell” moniker. Although, as much as I like to hear myself talk, I really had a hard time getting posts started and even a harder time completing them.  Part of that inability is simply life (work, marriage, social, music, etc.) taking up time, but part of it was really  not really understanding why I was doing it in the first place. A quick search on Technorati can yield for you any number of other people’s reasons , but I think I’ve finally come to my own conclusions.

The practical and “hard” answer is that given what I do for a living, it behooves me to have a well organized site where I can not only express ideas, but where I can tinker, experiment, and otherwise play with whatever social media or web detritus I might want to understand.  A blog these days can be very technically sophisticated, and with all of the plug-ins, social media integration, and SEO capabilities now available, a good blog can be a real asset to one’s career. As a product management type, it’s really an interesting experiment to have one property/destination/whatever where there is no “cross-functional-ness” at all – it’s just me, some tools, the web, and my own good, bad, or neutral decisions.  I’m working on a post now that goes into this in more detail, so I’ll spare you more discussion. Ultimately, given what I do, its almost a problem NOT having a blog – - whether or not that says something positive or negative about web-working I’ll leave to others.  At the very least, I own a domain with my name in it and an email address that goes along with that – frankly, that was the main reason I set it up in the first place.

A more metaphysical and “soft” answer is that it allows for a certain type of mental exercise that falls outside of work and/or normal social discussion. Never mind my predilection for using Facebook http://www.facebook.com as mostly a container for funny links and videos or snarky comments on other people’s posts  – - I mean, isn’t that what its for? Ok, Ok, I know that there are meaningful ways it can be used for business, but that’s for another post – - I think Facebook should mostly be for fun, and that’s just me.  My blog has got to be a sincere attempt at expressing sincere ideas. I think being able to post about subjects that I am not an expert on, for example, is a really productive way to remind yourself how to acquire and analyze new knowledge.  So for me – yeah, my blog is professionally focused. You won’t see posts about my vacations or good meals or movies – - there’s nothing wrong with that, but for me, it just wouldn’t keep me interested and blogging.

Oh, I changed the design, too — i had this really frothy japanese-themed look that just wasn’t pro enough… I wanted slick and so forth, but you can be the judge.  I’ll post a screenshot of the old interface and explain later.

Now for the snarky comments back from my friends on Facebook when I start promoting my sincere (and to many, probably extremely boring) posts.  I can take it.  I can blog about it, I guess, too.

There is a subject that comes up in the digital music world all of the time, and I’ve had many discussions with many different people about it. I recently found myself in a position where I able to argue my case… a case that I had previously been unable to argue for real – - that is, I was on the other side of the table from the digital retailer – - now I WAS the digital retailer, and I had the opportunity to make things “right”.  The “controversy” in question was whether or not to expose “Record Label” as a data node in a music e-commerce site. The data typical feeds coming from the labels, distributors, and content aggregators certainly contains the information, and the question that comes into play is whether or not it is worthwhile to display the data as part of the meta-data for albums and tracks, and also whether to index it for search and linkable to display all albums and artists within that label.  The contents herein are from an actual internal email where we were discussing this feature for the site we were building at the time.  Special thanks to Dick Huey who got me all riled up so that I would spend too much time writing this… well, at least I get to reuse it for a blog post.  I did redact some stuff that probably isn’t appropriate for a public post, but most of it is here – feel free to use my arguments should the necessity ever arise

Why Label?

Ok… so I’ve put it out there that I have a strong opinion about this, and I don’t want to spend a lot of time stating my case, but I do think it’s useful for folks to understand where I’m coming from.  This is a philosophical AND a technical/ User Experience position, but suffice it to say, my time in the industry has led me to see this issue quite clearly.

Introducing the concept of “label” is, IMO, the cheapest, simplest, and most effective filter for everything “south” of major labels.  It is also the most glaring omission from iTunes, Amazon, and others.

My philosophical bent on digital music retail goes well beyond just this label issue… I believe that online music stores, for the most part, don’t even come close to taking advantage of the data and technology available, and they could be so much more to the consumer… they could increase the average amount of music purchased by the average user, but they don’t, because they are content to feature the same over-saturated crap and rehash the same merchandising and discovery approach as every site before them.

Long Tail, Blah, Blah…

Say what you want about the “Long Tail” – frankly, I don’t think it’s a relevant discussion anymore, as there is no agreement as to what constitutes long or what constitutes a digital phenomenon or just noise – doesn’t matter and here’s why.  The reality and the numbers show that there is a lot of music being sold in the thick part of the tail that is below the biggest major label acts – - no one can dispute this, but those who haven’t been exposed to this sector of the market in an intimate way don’t understand it.  Catalog (i.e. older stuff) sells… Classical Sells… Jazz sells … World Music sells… Regional Music sells…  The interesting truth here is that a lot of the music that people want to buy in some of these less “omnipresesnt” sectors isn’t even available (or at least easily or handily available) on P2P networks – a lot of it can only be found on legitimate services!

Sell, Sell, Sell

Make no mistake – - I understand our mission, and that is to sell lots of music to lots of people. I have heard it said “let’s just have something better than iTunes + our unique twist on the business model”.  Well, having record label displayed, browsable, searchable, etc is one damned easy way to have at least one useful thing iTunes doesn’t.  We aren’t going to match their editorial staff or probably even their recommendation technology (Genius took a ton of development, I’m sure), but we can be nimble and smart – - zig where they zag.

We cannot be all things to all people, but we also can’t just rely on users coming to our site to buy the latest Beyoncé single – we need to leverage the entire marketplace and create a lifetime customer value that exceeds iTunes.

My Argument

Again, not trying to spend too much time on this, but here is a quick list of reasons why to include “label” in our data model in a meaningful way.

■        Labels are incredibly important brands in the “indie” world and even major too (Def Jam, Blue Note, Motown, etc.)

■        it is a cheap, easy, and effective recommendation engine, because all of the albums (and subsequently artists) associated with labels are categorically tied together, regardless of AMG data linkages

• AMG data does not even come close to keeping up with the flow of releases from content partners, but new and catalog releases coming from content partners flow in with complete meta-data, including label, all day long

• If we get a new release from an aggregator, you have only a fleeting chance that AMG already has the data, and only a small chance they’ve already put in the editorial work to assign similar artists, etc.  But, we  HAVE label as a common data node to tie the new release to all other artists and releases within that label – that means we can immediately surface a meaningful filter that associates the artist and album

■        Catalog sells – a lot.  We’ve all seen the stories in the past couple of years about the success of Classical, Jazz, and World music online – - I’ve seen it firsthand at IODA.  Our “cool, popular, hip” sales paled in comparison to the evergreen titles coming from our classical and catalog labels.  Most of the labels representing these catalogs have a history and a common thread that ties all of the music together.

■        Classical labels, for example, have reputations based on era, recording quality, genre, etc.  BIS was one of our biggest selling classical labels, and many afficionatos will only buy from “reputable” labels.

■        There are many labels who represent large evergreen catalogs, and without their guidance as a filter, it would be impossible to make recommendations

■        The Industry will be disappointed if we don’t point to label, but they will be happy if we do – simple as that.  Including label will open up not only good PR from our partners but also merchandising opportunities and the ability to coordinate merchandising with our partners better – this does lead to higher sales when done well – I’ve seen the results.

■        When we get down to merchandising and the editorial work that we will do, having label as one of our data points gives us many more options and creative ways to drive sales.

■        eMusic does this well.

■        Labels define grouping of artists and albums that are unique and cannot be achieved any other way.  Labels represent musical movements defined by geography, artistic collaboration, time period, sound, cultural ties, etc. Labels are based on people in their element, and so are musical movements.  Before grunge broke, Sub-Pop represented “that thing”. Every college DJ knows that IRS was THE alternative label of the 80’s, focused, originally, around the jangle-pop of REM.  Those of you who’ve seen 24 Hour Party People know the history of Factory records and how it almost single handedly made Manchester, England ground zero for a time.

■        the iTunes staff laments the lack of label (don’t quote me on this)

■        AMG will not always keep pace with the content flow – in fact, it rarely can… but you can tie new releases to a label and thus to other artists simply by label association without having any new editorial data from AMG

■        Many independent labels are artist run and represent the musical taste and proclivity of a single artist of note.  There are many, many example of this (Riteous Babe, Quannum, SST, Merge, etc.)

■        Labels will often have one or two bigger artists, and AMG will show other artists of similar popularity, but the other artists on that label will have very close affinity, and the label association might be the only way that users will discover those other, completely relevant artists.

■        Genres like world music – the label IS the binding factor – its one group of people going to Africa and finding these artists all from one region and musical style

Implementation

■        I don’t think we need a “browse” functionality right out of the gate, but ultimately we’ll want core nav for all labels…

■        I do think we should surface labels in search results if there is a match

■        I think label should be displayed as a link associated with albums whenever possible

■        I think that we should be using label to recommend similar artists and albums – we can create a “more albums from this label”, which is easy, or we could combine with the AMG similar data  – - as I said, many times, we won’t have anything from AMG

■        Yes, there will need to be some level of editorial intervention, and our tools can leverage the label data to help us along

Don't bring a knife to a gun fight, but you don't need a nuke, either

I believe that I have reached the saturation point with regards to news, commentary, and punditry regarding the financial crisis, the war, our botched foreign policy, and a litany of other ills – - I think we are all there. The “never waste a good catastrophe” faux-optimistic cliché isn’t much help, but it does ring true for me, and I figured it was an opportunity for me to put it to good use.  Other than taking time off from working in order to have the leisure time to sit around and think about this stuff, I figured it was also a chance to examine the relevant life and professional lessons that might be gleaned.

I watched President Obama’s inaugural speech, what I was most impressed with was his pragmatism, and I think that America is seriously jonesing for a healthy dose of pragmatism (as opposed to blind faith, dogmatism, etc.).  The other night on 60 minutes, again, I was impressed with his pragmatism – - at one point, Steve Croft gave him a bit of a hard time for laughing, but I would argue that in the face of partisan bickering from all sides, what could one man do but laugh. A lot of people talk about Obama’s competence as a major reason for their affinity to him and his message, and here’s to that, but pragmatism, I feel, is always a key ingredient in building competency.

So what do I mean by pragmatism?  Well, in general, it seems the consensus is that there are two major definitions: the dictionary definition of the word (“a practical approach to problems and affairs”) and the philosophical movement surrounding the work of men such as Charles Pierce, William James, and John Dewey in American in the late 19^th century. The two meanings, while different in terms of the level of complexity and provenance, are quite similar in practical terms (yes – practical… forgive the sort-of pun).  The definition I like the best is the first line on the Wikipedia Page for Pragmatism – a quote from William James: “Pragmatism is the philosophy of considering practical consequences or real effects to be vital components of meaning and truth.”

Competence and pragmatism seem linked to me, and I often think that pragmatism is a prerequisite for competence.  Once in a while, you may encounter someone who seems effortless in their competence and success without showing any signs of pragmatism – - they seem to float above any need for a pragmatic approach and they forge their reputation and empire on ideals and brains alone – - they appear to never to have to make a trade-off.  I’m not saying they don’t exist, but my feeling is that they are just very good at making it look easy (the best at anything always do).

Its always so easy to look at a problem or a challenge through the lense of emotion, religion, cultural bias, or even superstition – we are wired for that.  Real competence is to look ahead the reality of consequences and understand that principals are very important, but only if positive results are ultimately achieved.  If there was ever a time for pragmatism – - man, this is it.
“I want to conquer the world, Give all the idiots a brand new religion…”

-          Bad Religion