Welcome to My TED Talk
It is time for another look at some interesting numbers—this time we are looking at the Nothing Playground and Essential Widgets. The Playground launched about two months ago (in October), and the standout highlight was an AI-based widget creation system.
Got an idea for a widget, but don’t know your Kotlin from your Java? Think an IDE is some cousin to IKEA? Have no fear. Using AI wizardry, anyone can enter a prompt, make a widget, and share it with the community. It sounds like a dream and is actually an interesting and innovative idea.
However, two months on, the Playground is still in “Alpha” and community members, like myself, are still waiting to enter.
Let’s have a look at where things stand today. Who is actually in the Playground making widgets currently? How many are there? The numbers have been crunched, and below is a breakdown of the widgets by authors.
The Numbers
In total, there are 80 widgets available in the Playground. According to the latest Nothing investment deck, there are over 145,000 community members. So, how many are playing in the Playground?
27
Yep—you read that right. There are currently 27 authors who have made 80 widgets amongst them. That is a far cry from the 145,000 folks in the community; to be honest, it’s a drop in the ocean.
Let’s break those numbers down further:
| Role | No. Authors | No. Widgets |
|---|
| Community | 15 | 40 |
| Employees | 7 | 26 |
| Moderators | 5 | 14 |
| Total | 27 | 80 |
> Note: Data is broken down based on checking X profiles, known usernames, etc. It makes some assumptions but provides a solid overview.
The Analysis
We can see that there are quite a few employees playing in the Playground, and they have made a total of 26 widgets. That is quite a large portion of the 80 considering the size of the community base.
We do have 40 widgets made by what seem to be actual community members, plus we have 14 widgets made by moderators. While moderators can be counted as community, they do have a vested interest and bias similar to employees. They act in the best interests of the company.
If we combine the Moderator widgets with the Community widgets, the split looks like this:
| Role | No. Authors | No. Widgets |
|---|
| Comm + Mods | 20 | 54 |
| Employees | 7 | 26 |
The employee-made widgets make up 32.5% of the total, which is rather telling given the marketing emphasis on “The Community.”
Let’s pause and remove the moderators from the community numbers again to look at the “real” access rate. We have 145,000+ community members. This means, within two months, the Playground is currently giving a 1 in 9,667 opportunity to access and create a widget.
To be frank, that is pretty poor for a product that is meant to be a crucial part of the AI push tied to the release of the latest operating system.
Conclusion
Anyway—are you still waiting to access the Playground and make widgets? How long have you been waiting?
What would you create if/when you get access? I’ve been waiting since October, and frankly, I’m bored and tired of waiting now. The thrill is gone, as they say. How about you?
Thoughts?
