The Story of Riya Continues...

Munjal writes part II: the euphoric launch and the setting reality...

This is awesome. I've actually been holding off telling the 'Riya Story' myself because, well, I believe it is up to Munjal to tell that story. As the co-founder and the guy whose dream it was to launch Riya, it is so important to hear the story from him. That being said, I will add a bit of perspective from the 'marketing end' of things...and from a little earlier on...;)

From August 26th of last year until launch, it was my job to build the 'buzz' around Riya. As you well know by now, my approach to this is a bit unconventional and non-methodical. In fact, if you would have asked me to write down my grand plan in September, for instance, I couldn't have done it. Or maybe I would have, but what ensued had to take shape organically.

Lucky for me, I had already been building a relationship with Mike Arrington - having been a fan of TechCrunch in his early days (before he was 'internet famous') - and he was one of the first people I told that I was moving down to California to work for the coolest company I had ever heard of. Mike, being the skeptic, congratulated me, but replied he had seen alot of cool stuff, so I would have to really impress him. ;)

Mike was in for a total treat...I knew he was. I know I'm biased, but when Munjal told me about Riya's premise, I just about fell off of my chair. I had never heard of being able to search inside of a photograph before. The concept was fantastical to me. Previously, I was floored by the idea of searching audio...but images? Wow.

So, of course, when I was finally able to talk about it openly...Mike was impressed. I know people have, since, thought Mike had a bias about Riya, and maybe knowing me ahead of time could be construed as such, but I'm 100% honest when I say, dammit, Riya is pioneering new ground for search. Sure, we have a long way to go, but when you think about it, it's the next big issue. It heads into AI territory.

Blah blah blah.

I arrived in California 10 days after my offer...in a daze...totally green...stars in my eyes...kinda unprepared for the world I was about to enter...

Okay...so I think I was floundering a bit for the first few weeks...yeah. I really was. Lucky for me, I had been hired by the 'darling of Web 2.0' (as quoted in various sources), so getting on track was pretty simple.

My turning point was Webzine. There, I met a group of geeks who lived for this funky new social technology thing that was emerging. They spoke in a strange language and had seen it all before. Skeptics. Dreamers. Innovators. Revolutionaries. Geniuses. You name it, I met them. It was at Webzine that I realized that the Cluetrain was right. A conversation was needed before going forward.

It was also when the 'trouble' started. ;)

You see, I don't think Munjal and team bargained for a loudmouth when they hired a marketing type. I mean, marketing had always meant that you should form a message, then send it out to as many people as possible to get them to buy into your product. But I had different ideas. I didn't want to form a message and I certainly didn't like the idea of sending out messages. I was more interested in building relationships, then bringing messages into the company to shape the product.

Crikey.

I remember Munjal and I sitting in the boardroom while he was trying to wrap his mind around my proposal that I do nothing but hang out with geeks and travel to hang out with other geeks, then bring back all of the information I could to integrate it into the product, perhaps throwing the whole schedule into chaos. I don't blame him for the look he gave me. And when I said, "You'll just have to trust me," I don't blame him a bit for being skeptical.

[A good marketer plans a little, but changes alot]

But I do have to give him HUGE kudos for saying, "Okay, but if you f*$k up, you are the only one accountable."

And off I went...leaving Munjal pacing the floors back at the office.

What did I do then? I'll put it in point form to make it easier to read:

1. I became a Flickr power user.
   
   Sure, I already had a pro account, but I had very little experience with it. I knew the Zeitgeist of Flickr, but hadn't experienced it myself because very few of my friends back home used it. I started uploading photos from every event I was attending. I tagged them diligently. I 'friend'ed people. I began to fall head over heels in love with 'the competition'. (although we were trying not to position ourselves as competition with Flickr, it was an unavoidable comparison - and their public search was and is still the best in my opinion to date)
   
   [A good marketer is her/his own client]
   
   
2. I read everything I could get my hands on and joined everything I could that had anything to do with tagging.
   
   If Riya was to revolutionize search through auto-tagging, I had to know what it was about tagging that was so infectious. What works. What doesn't. Where is it going? Why didn't labels work years before? How scalable was tagging? Did auto-tagging wreck the gorgeousness of folksonomies?
   
   [A good marketer is her/his own client]
   
   
3. I started carrying my camera with me everywhere.
   
   And I mean everywhere. I took photos of everything that interested me. I took oodles of shots of my new friends. I met Scott Beale and Thomas Hawk and asked for their advice (both are very unique and popular photographers on Flickr)...both have since become good friends. I uploaded these photos to Riya and Flickr and Webshots and used iPhoto and Kodak Gallery. I started making oodles of friends, near and far through Flickr. I even uploaded mockups and screenshots of Riya to Flickr and these friends followed our progress along.
   
   [A good marketer learns to use the tools available to them]
   
   
4. I blogged about my marketing theories, my frustrations, my victories, my whereabouts and my life online...and sometimes about Riya, too.
   
   People liked hearing from Munjal about his life being a CEO at Riya. They had the startup story there. I documented my marketing efforts in a personal story kind of way. Instead of saying "At Riya, I..." it was implied. People know I'm at Riya, so, I assumed that when I told the story. I took a page out of Robert's book and was human first and an employee second. It worked out better for everyone involved. I enjoyed blogging from my personal experience much more, my readers enjoyed reading a personal experience more and Riya benefited because as my readership grew, so did the community trust.
   
   [A good marketer knows when to back off]
   
   
5. I spent a great deal of time meeting other entrepreneurs, people who live their lives online and other geeks.
   
   Meeting other people passionate about this stuff is important. You get amazing ideas. You strike up early relationships with future business partners. You become impassioned. They will introduce you to even more people. This part of the job seems more like fun than work, too. The more people I met, the more excited I got about what we were doing and where this wacky online world was going. I also had some amazingly smart people to bounce crazy ideas off of.
   
   [A good marketer doesn't only respond to community needs today, but also knows what needs will arise tomorrow]
   
   
6. I got involved in community movements.
   
   This part is all about building trust. Barcamp, Coworking, Winecamp, Microformats, the EFF, Creative Commons, etc....all of these organizations and more were important to me personally, but were also really great ways for Riya to show their community involvement. And we aren't talking sponsorships here. I got my hands dirty. I've spent alot of time on these projects.
   
   [A good marketer gets involved in the community]
   
   
7. I become good friends with our early adopters and alpha testers.
   
   Hell, one of them is even my roommate. ;) Okay...so you don't have to go that far, but real, honest feedback comes from people who know you. Another alpha tester and I were riding the bus on the way to get a beer one day and he said, "I don't know, Tara. There is just something that makes me say, 'eh'." You don't get that kind of feedback from a customer survey. I got to ask him, "Eh? That's not helping me. Have anything else?" Then as he described his experience, I began to realize that there was nothing on Riya to come back for after doing the face recognition. Face Rec was cool, but what was going to bring my friend back? Oh, yes....something incredibly useful...or social...which direction to go?.... (think google images or flickr as the two choices on this spectrum) That question couldn't come from anything but a personal conversation.
   
   [A good marketer rewards the community members who stand behind him/her]
   
   
8. I fought...sometimes too hard...for the ideas that came to me from the community.
   
   Firefox & Camino compatible. The Mac Uploader. Better search. Simpler UI. Less training. An API. Partnerships (especially with Flickr). These are all cries from the community. I wasn't popular when I sat through meeting after meeting, emphasizing the unpopular opinion to a hard-working engineering team. I harped on the issues I thought were important, when they weren't necessarily what engineering thought was important.
   
   I'm still fighting for many of those things, but every one of them are coming in the next release. ;)
   
   [A good marketer is a Community Advocate]
   
   
9. I concentrated on a very niche market and said that I didn't care about the mass market.
   
   I still don't care about pleasing everyone. I think it's a suicidal strategy. You turn into an unremarkable product when you take that path. Riya is and can be remarkable. People who search images online is a small percentage....today. We have the ability to shape how people search images going forward. So, I picked the niche I knew best and went further into that world.
   
   I maintain the main Pinko adage: "Be part of the community you serve." It's like method acting (method marketing?)...the only way you can do justice to that community is to be part of that community 24/7.
   
   [A good marketer knows today's brands aren't built in boardrooms or ad agencies or brainstorming sessions]
   
   
10. I got involved in all ends of the product.
    
    Marketing should never be a, "Here is the product, now what are you going to do to market it?" At Riya, Munjal let me into all of the planning meetings. He involved me in the business meetings. Even if I wasn't in all of the engineering meetings, I was still on all of the engineering mailing lists. I got to know not only what was being made, but how it was being made and why. I really understood how Riya works. Luckily, I'm a geek myself, so the learning curve wasn't huge.
    
    [A good marketer doesn't only respond to community needs today, but also knows what needs will arise tomorrow]
    
    
11. I work as part of a team who cares.
    
    This is probably the most important point - and one I haven't concentrated on very much. Munjal reports that he wrote the survey and responded to many of the feedback emails himself. Why? Because it's way more meaningful for him and the rest of the team to see this first hand. As a company, you can't just send one person out to do this work for you. Sure, one person can be dedicated to continue this work when others can't get to it, but it's so very important that everyone participates at some level with the community. The request for Firefox compatibility wasn't being taken seriously until our VP of Engineering was added to the email recipient list for the "You suck for not being FFX compatible." No amount of explanation from me could have impacted that early direction like seeing actual proof of it.
    
    It's not the job of a Pinko Marketer to replace the community connection. It's the job of the Pinko Marketer to facilitate that connection.
    

And then what happened? Well...day one...1 million photos+ uploaded. Then...as Munjal reported...this rate slowed down significantly to steady at about 30,000 [oops, thanks Danny! Read one less zero] photos or so per day. Nothing to write home about.

Which leads me back to Munjal's tale...who will pick this up and show how we are integrating all of the feedback into the upcoming releases...which I'm really excited about.

::For a previous reference to many of my points above, see this early HPC article.

Tags: riya, web2.0, riyarocks