I like that Monzo is a young company with personality.
But I don’t like facile release notes that bury any useful content in self-referential in-jokes:
Think the effort that goes into these hilarious japes might be better spent delivering meaningful updates to the app itself, which hasn’t moved on for a while now.
if you take a look at Monzo’s mentions on Twitter after each release, you’ll see a lot of people sharing these notes. That’s marketing which = growth which = funding which = more developers to add features to the app.
Stop moaning. Android has been even further behind than iOS and only just catching up. Think yourself lucky that you have often had features before poor Android users!
You’re right, if they didn’t spend 5 minutes once every few weeks writing a couple of lines of text then they’d be able to magic out of thin air thousands of extra developer hours to build new features.
I really like the wit/jokes! Very refreshing. I was a Barclays/HSBC/City customer for years and their robot like professionalism was draining my soul.
Also question to the OP - do you have the slightest clue how long it takes to create a smooth app like this that is stable for thousands of customers and has just an odd bug there and here? Do you know how small Monzo dev team is compared to Barclays?
I like wit and jokes too, and you’re right, it’s certainly “different” to hear irreverent banter from a bank.
Whilst Monzo is riding an unstoppable wave of adoption driven by its technical progress, the self-indulgent “bantz” are probably fine.
But as soon as Monzo hits its first high-profile bug or scandal, the outside world might start to judge the iOS dev team’s irreverence and compare its release notes to those of a two-bit social media startup.
We might find “Mantham Dave” and his 250 Twitter followers aren’t as competent at PR damage limitation as they are at praising the bantz.
Just my two cents. I otherwise love Monzo and the iOS app is great.
There have already been a few issues. Issues which by all accounts could have caused massive problems for the growth of Monzo. In each case they have been almost universally praised because, much like their release notes, their communication is infinitely better than “proper banks”.
For my two cents, whoever writes those release notes should get a raise. They always make me chuckle.
Funny you should mention this. The contractor who worked most recently on the Barclays iOS app is a personal friend of mine and worked through TATA consulting to develop their app.
Astonishingly it sounded like he was the only one working on the app at the time (although he’s now moved on and I don’t know how big the team is currently).
Good article, and for a chat product like Slack I totally get it.
And don’t get me wrong, I love genuine wit and humour. Very different from self-indulgent banter that’s directed at a particular crowd who enjoy particular in-jokes.
lol you are talking about a… well what is pretty much a legacy product. PingIt and Barclays apps have been developed several years ago. Do you know how big was the original team? 300 people. Yes I also have a friend or two there.
Also, (Sorry Monzo Devs), Devs do not write these jokes… I guess you are lucky there with your what sounds like normal friend from TATA… but devs do not have the sense of humour to write this stuff neither would they have the permission. :))
Usually you’d be right & one of the marketing team would write the notes but this is Monzo it’s James (one of the iOS developers) who writes the notes.
Turns out I got this wrong & it is actually Tristan (sorry!) who writes the notes
I think it is disgusting and a total waste of time and money someone sitting there carefully thinking about something witty for updates in hope that they raise a chuckle from us, how very dare they!!
I vote they that should be bland and boring from now on just like Uber and Deliveroo.