I don't want to be overly dismissive -- I'm sure this is a huge engineering achievement -- but I just don't get it. A mobile phone, where battery life is precious and a big differentiating factor between devices, seems like the absolute last place you'd want to mine bitcoin. Manufacturers have spent years optimizing for battery life - why would they want to shoot themselves in the foot? What consumer in their right mind would buy a phone advertised as, "your battery will die much sooner, but hey, you don't have to use your credit card as much"?
Perhaps I'm wrong, and I'd love to be corrected. But I don't see the point.
My favorite thing about Slack is how they've thought of all the little things. My go-to example is that when they send you a notification email, it includes links to silence further emails with a single click.
Obviously, this isn't a big "feature." It's not going to show up on their marketing materials. Nobody will ever say "hey, you should try out Slack because they let you silence emails." But it's this sort of UX philosophy, of anticipating and cleverly solving tiny little annoyances, that make it a really pleasurable product to use.
It is a legal requirement to allow users to unsubscribe from your email newsletter, yes. What Slack does that is really cool is at the bottom of their notifications email they have:
Snooze these notifications for: an hour, eight hours, a day, three days, or the next week. Or, turn email notifications off. For more detailed preferences, see your account page.
"hour", "eight hours", "three days", "next week" are all links that silence the notifications for discrete periods of time. Pretty neat.
It's not just unsubscribe. They let you turn off emails for an hour, a day, etc. Really convenient if you're generally interested in notifications, but just need a little break.
Another example: when you change your password, Slack will send you a special link to sign-in on mobile so you don't have to type out your new password on a tiny keyboard.
I think this completely misses the point. The "magic" part of Magic isn't that it's over text -- that's just an implementation detail. Rather, the value is that it navigates all these services for you. You don't have to mess with Instacart or Postmates or Doordash or any specific app. You don't have to search or filter or download or re-enter your credit card a million times. It just happens.
So, creating a single-business-specific Magic seems kinda useless.
Well, there are two aspects to Magic... one is that it's versatile, the other is that it's low (close to zero) friction. Sonar seems to take care of the low friction part, I guess the versatility/usefulness is up to the business implementing it.
I believe a lot of the value is the simplicity of SMS. No logins, save the number in your phone and just text them like you would your friend with a request...done!
You're right though, the aggregation is definitely a big part of it.
The 'magic' of Magic isn't that unique either. It boils down to an open channel(s) to communicate with a personal assistant / concierge service. And I suspect that that calling a live person to describe the initial request seems much more expedient that bouncing texts or emails back and forth...
Right. Ordering stuff over SMS isn't that great an idea. There's going to be a lot of back and forth - what size do you want, is it OK if your flight has a change of planes at DFW, do you want anchovies on the pizza? Sending an order for a bag of groceries via SMS is going to take a lot of typing.
Processing the order is currently manual. You're back in the call center era. For the back and forth, you'd probably be better off using voice. As in, the customer calls the service on the phone.
The big advantage of web ordering is that the user gets to browse the catalog and select. They can find out if it's in stock before they order. The order gets captured correctly and automatically. There's one central service for buying, and it's called Amazon.com.
Speaking personally, half of Magic's draw is precisely because it's over text. Sure, part of the allure is that I don't have to deal with the services directly. However, for me, the other benefit is that I don't have to interact with the people behind these services directly. Maybe I'm just antisocial.
Mmm.. his terrible facial hair made me think it was an amature video. Hilarious that people are paying the guy money to put himself in their product videos and he doesn't even tidy his beard up.
I don't think anyone has mentioned this: in my mind, the whole point of calling a business is getting an immediate response.
Most of us are conditioned to treat text as a fundamentally asynchronous medium. Texts aren't something you have to reply to now -- you should get to them eventually, but they don't demand attention in that moment. Much like email, the sender really has no idea when, if ever, the receiver will respond.
Phone calls are different in that they're totally synchronous. The receiver responds immediately, and you're not left in the dark wondering if they're busy. Even if you're put on hold, someone usually answers the phone first to let you know they'll be with you soon.
Phone calls are comforting -- you know for certain that you've been heard, and you get your answer right away. I can't think of a way for text to provide this, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
17. At least in my social circles, it's polite to respond to texts (and Facebook messages) within a couple hours. Texting definitely carries more expectations than email (for example, I'd consider it rude to text back the next day, yet emailing in the morning is A-ok), but it's certainly not on the level of calls.
Good point. I would hope that part would be automated so that if a person isn't going to respond within the next 45 seconds requestor gets a message and maybe even an ETA for when they'll have their answer.
Perhaps I'm wrong, and I'd love to be corrected. But I don't see the point.