Tag / product management

by ameyathorat

Can Google Maps help me change lanes?

Every day when i drive down i-95 south to get to work more often than not, i find myself stuck in the slowest moving lane. I have tried using Google Maps and Waze intermittently to find a faster way.. By now you know at least 2 things

1. I do change lanes a lot while driving in my quest to get ahead

2. I see the glass half full and keep using maps on my daily route with a hope that i will reach my destination within shortest time possible..

Google maps keeps surprising me with new features ever so often. Most recently, it lets me pick the time of travel and gives an idea of the duration of the travel based on this input..thats a lot of data gathering and processing…. taking this even further, i was wondering if google can tell which lane i should be in to move faster?

To provide this level of detail, the real time data processing logic needs to evolve significantly. We all know that that left most lane is the supposed to be the place for every one moving faster than others.. but very often we have these moral police who are the slowest of the lot and love driving in the leftmost lane… more power to them.. but why should i suffer and how can i circumvent the situation .. and the lane changing logic may be the answer..

Again, this is a very raw thought and i am sure there are other considerations needed.. for example, if an app were to tell me to change lanes, everyone using the app with a desire to go faster will change lanes within a 1-2 minute window.. that will just end up making the fast lane slow.. and the app will now suggest that change the lanes back to where you started… so worst case scenario would be everyone just changing lanes.. and creating some sort of sine way along the road..

Another consideration is to create user segments based on the intent, not everyone would want to go fast, some of us do want to drive more cautiously than others and for this segment safety would be top priority, so based on such intent you could pick a setting in the app such as “time no bar” and “shortest time” pretty similar to the settings you have when you select your route.

I am sure i have missed some key considerations, but the questions is can this be done?

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by ameyathorat

Can 7.99$ per month find me a soulmate?

Saturday night at the bar while waiting for the bartender to take my order and secretly wishing i were a pretty chic for him to notice and give me my drinks, I unintentionally eavesdropped on a conversation between, what i believe were 2 boy-nerds making a transition to man-nerds.
The gist of the conversation was about the probability of the woman of their dreams being in this particular Boston bar.

This thought spawned a thread of some creative thoughts in the upper right corner of my head. My soulmate, i thought is sitting at home right now and watching Netflix and there may be a 1% chance that i meet her here.

A 30 year old with 50-60 hour work weeks, i spend an enormous amount of time on Netflix and i started to wonder, if Netflix can help with finding my soulmate. Consequently, I started drifting on a Netflix product improvisation journey and here are some of the features that I believe Netflix can potentially monetize while increasing the value of the $7.99 monthly fee.

Outside of your Facebook friends, create an experience for its subscribers to talk to to each other through forums. This can be based on the weighted score drawn from the common genres, actors, nationality etc.

  • For example, if i am in Chicago and have watched TV shows A, B & C within 7 days and am looking for some company to watch TV shows X & Y, can i create a forum which can act as a platform for me to interact with like minded people around the area also interested in watching Shows X & Y?
  • Can i invite them over for a watching party? Assuming the US population at 320 Million, and taking into account 36 M Netflix subscribers (see chart below), so 1 in every 8.8 persons is a netflix subscriber.
    • The chances of the viewing party being attended by friends of the host’s who are not subscribers is 80%, which is very high. Hence, this also boosts the market cap.

      Netflix US Subsription

      Netflix US Subsription

  • Can Netflix organize the watching party for an extra fee? This could be a crowdsourced activity, where the Netflix can assign ranks of a leader to a person who is willing to host the party, is certified by Netflix based on some criteria and in return he can get Free access for X months.
  • Is there a potential for me to find my life partner through these interactions?

At a time, when 36 million americans are spending a chunk of their time on Netflix, it is definitely worth a shot to facilitate the union of like minded subscribers, where i can be the bartender and attend to every need of my soulmate!