June 15, 2009
Posted by Erik Larson at 12:01 AM
Today we take a big step towards realizing our vision of a new way to work on Acrobat.com.
Today we end the public beta for Acrobat.com. We launch Acrobat.com Premium subscriptions for more intensive business use (yes, the free version of the service is still available, and still free :-). And we give a look into the future of Acrobat.com for the coming year, starting with the unveiling of our spreadsheet product, Acrobat.com Tables, on our Labs website. Lots of news! Oh, plus two weeks ago we released Acrobat.com Presentations.
We're busy because our customers are busy.
Continue reading "Hello (Business) World - Welcome to a New Way to Work" »
June 11, 2009
Posted by Erik Larson at 10:28 PM
It's not that we are smarter or more creative. It's not because we like each other more. It's because we've found a new way to work.
We get more work done, much better than your team, in much less time, because we use Acrobat.com.
And from a personal standpoint, by working this way I get fewer emails and spend less time in meetings, yet I get more done, have more time to think, and enjoy my work and my co-workers more. How does that sound to you?
Let me give you a real world example of how this happens.
Continue reading "Why our team can beat your team" »
May 14, 2009
Posted by Erik Larson at 4:28 PM
Will social networking and instant messages replace the standard business phone call, the client lunch and the handshake? The Acrobat.com team recently completed a survey with Directions Research, Inc. that points toward an evolution in office workplace culture, including the changing ways white-collar workers are interacting and coordinating their tasks, and how business will be conducted in the social media-rich environment of the 21st century.
Continue reading "The Future of Work - good-bye martini lunches, hello working poolside" »
April 6, 2009
Posted by Erik Larson at 8:56 PM
There has been some commentary about SharePoint over the past couple weeks that helps mark the path we are taking with Acrobat.com, so I thought I would weigh in.
To some extent, Acrobat.com owes its success so far to the SharePoint story. No, we don't use SharePoint, and we don't directly integrate with it either (maybe someday). But SharePoint has introduced people to the promise of better collaboration, or as Thomas Vander Wal said, it is acting as the "gateway drug to enterprise social tools." And at the same time it has opened up an opportunity for Acrobat.com to actually deliver on the promise of better social collaboration at work without the pitfalls that Dion Hinchcliffe recently described as "the issues and challenges of using SharePoint for Enterprise 2.0."
A recent survey we did of Acrobat.com users highlighted the gap between the big promises and meager payoffs of Enterprise 2.0 so far. I think this is the most interesting statistic:
There are as many people who have stopped using SharePoint for sharing and collaborating on documents as there are people currently using it.
Continue reading "SharePoint, Enterprise 2.0 and Acrobat.com" »
March 31, 2009
Posted by Erik Larson at 1:30 PM
It doesn't take long to see the difference between where Google is coming from and where we are going with Acrobat.com. This tweet from a few weeks ago is one pithy perspective:
"I must admit Adobe's Buzzword looks like creamy, fattening butter next to trim, healthy margarine GDocs. But I like butter..." - @mahyuni
I love seeing that sort of emotional response to Buzzword and Acrobat.com. At the risk of dangerously mixing saturated fat and cardiac metaphors, I think the reason people respond so deeply to Acrobat.com, even in its early "unfinished" stage, is that we believe great designs engage both hearts and minds.
Continue reading "Google Docs, Acrobat.com and Great Design" »
March 26, 2009
Posted by Erik Larson at 3:17 PM
Acrobat.com is growing like gang busters, with over 100,000 new people signing up each week. This is happening even though we are still in beta and have a long way to go before the product is "done." Why is this happening, who is using online collaboration to change the way people work together, and what we are doing to make Acrobat.com the best choice out there?
First let me set some context, using a picture from the early 1830s. I first saw a similar picture in a business history class with Professor Richard Tedlow:
Continue reading "What 100K People a Week Tell Us...about the future of collaboration" »
