 "The best data creates the best user experience: Paul Montoy-Wilson")
Yahoo! has been making acquisitions in the mobile space for some time now. One of their acquisitions was the start-up Aviate, which CEO Marissa Mayer announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The start-up provides contextually relevant information on Android homescreens. Paul Montoy-Wilson, Aviate co-founder and now product manager, Yahoo Aviate, in an email interaction with Abhik Sen, discusses the app and their journey from a start-up to the acquisition. Edited excerpts:
Three of us — myself, Mark Daiss and Will Choi - founded Aviate with the vision of delivering the world’s information at the moment it’s useful. We discovered that the homescreen held the most possibility to deliver on this vision and thus we built Aviate: An intelligent homescreen that simplifies your phone.
The homescreen is the most popular destination on your smartphone - you touch it upwards of 50 to 100 times a day. But Aviate also makes your phone smarter — using context signals it suggests apps and information you need throughout your day.
In October 2013, we launched a beta version of Aviate. The reaction was better than we could have imagined — we received super positive feedback from our beta community and started to refine and add features. We were acquired by Yahoo in January, and the news was announced at CES as part of Marissa Mayer’s keynote. Seven of us (3 founders + 4) came over to Yahoo and we’re so excited to be here.
Some weeks ago we lifted the invite gate and announced global general availability of Yahoo Aviate. For this launch in particular, we’ve worked closely with the Incredible Labs team, the brains behind the personal assistant app, Donna. They were acquired about a month after Aviate and we were super excited. A lot of Donna’s predictive and machine learning technology is evident in the upgrades you see in Yahoo Aviate; for example, the calendar feature.
Is Aviate just a launcher? Or does it work like Google Now? How do you distinguish it from Google Now?
Yahoo Aviate is an intelligent homescreen that simplifies your phone. It replaces your homescreen and becomes your mobile experience. Our intention with Aviate was to provide a clean experience that brings the most useful information right to your homescreen.
Google Now is currently focused on a Google-centric world. Aviate has always been about surfacing the best content and apps to provide the most informed user experience.
How will the app hold its own in the rather crowded Android app space?
Yahoo Aviate isn’t just an app. As your mobile homebase, it’s the last thing you check at night and the first thing you look at when you wake up in the morning. While there’s a number of launchers available for increased customization - Yahoo Aviate is all about simplification. It uses what your phone understands about you to bring you the information you want at the moment it’s useful - whether it’s the day’s headlines, a change in weather, the restaurant menu, or your conference line for a meeting.
How will this app benefit users in India? How is it different from attempts such as Facebook Home?
Of our beta community of users, over half were international - India is a huge market for Android, and we’re pumped to be launching globally. It’s also been exciting to watch the depth of user engagement: People generally touch the homescreen of their phone upwards of 50 to 100 times a day. The homescreen is really the ultimate daily habit, which is what makes it so fun to work on.
Our vision is for Aviate to broaden the conversation and be the gateway to all the useful information on your phone. We surface all information at the moment its useful, not just on specific social networks, or apps.
What is your business model? How are you taking care of users' privacy issues?
Right now, we’re focused on building the best possible product and attracting users. Yahoo is committed to providing our users — including users of Aviate — with a personalized online experience. We’re also deeply committed to protecting our users’ privacy. Our goal is to interact transparently with each user to continuously personalize and improve the service. Users who download Aviate agree to a Privacy Policy, which outlines our commitment to protecting our users’ personal information and how we may use such information.
What are your future plans?
While we can’t comment on our exact product roadmap, we’ve only started to explore how what your phone understands about you can simplify your life. The vision of Aviate - to deliver the world’s information at the moment it’s useful - offers plenty more possibilities. We’re going to keep making Aviate smarter, improving our algorithms, and finding new ways to simplify your mobile experience.
How will it integrate with other Yahoo services?
Yahoo’s mission is to make everyone’s daily habits more inspiring and entertaining through beautiful, personalized, and innovative products. Aviate is a perfect fit within this vision.
Aviate chooses the most useful and popular data and apps. The best data creates the best user experience. In some cases, Yahoo content is the right fit - such as with the news summaries from Yahoo News Digest that are incorporated in Aviate’s new Today Space. In other areas, we may surface third-party information or apps. We’re all about creating the best user experience possible by presenting the world’s information at the moment it’s useful.