Befuddlement

It is a common misperception that the worst possible outcome of a feature launch is the noise of crickets — and that, more than anything else, the success condition of a product announcement is some version of engagement or indulgence. The worst possible thing that can happen with a feature launch is that it strikes fear and doubt into the hearts and minds of your active users. This is because companies exist to both generate and subsequently capture value, and any change in their feature list is in some sense a declaration that their thesis of how and why they should best do that has changed. Most often, that change is horizontal or vertical expansion. Other times it is the dreaded pivot — and a customer's reaction to a pivot is almost necessarily negative, because it is an admission by the organization that its current course has been deemed a failure. And other times — such as with the announcement that presaged this quick essay, in which Aqua, my voice-to-text app of choice,…