On competition, web 2.0 sarcasm and watching television on Friendfeed

A few things that caught my attention this morning. First, an excellent review by Walter Mossberg on the new Google phone called G1. He describes many of its new features, strengths and weaknesses.

My take on it? Competition is a good thing. It will raise the bar yet again and force Apple and others to build better mobile phones and especially better software on mobile phones. One thing that worries me is the lock-in Google has build into this phone. Google is everywhere, but where sites like Facebook are bounded by their own platform (you can stay out of it if you want), Google gets a grip on the entire online world (web and mobile). This would be ok if you weren’t forced to use Google accounts for it. It turns the entire online world into a Google garden. Scary and not the way to go forward. It’s a privacy’s nightmare, just like the stuff Facebook is doing on their platform.

Then a post that made me laugh out loud, a post by Silicon Alley Insider with a presentation from a “venture capitalist” that understands what is going on. It’s meant to be funny, but there is always some truth to be found in such ironic presentations. We all see the crazy web 2.0 fundings, advertisement models, a business plan that doesn;t create value and only aims for a “Google buy me”  scenario. It’s happening out there and if anythign this financial crisis should lead to rationalization and get rid of these destructive business models.

I’m sure the Friendfeed fan club will get all exited about it’s latest feature. Friendfeed  can now show shared items in real-time instead of a user having to hit the refresh button in his browser. Great feature, but as the underlying issue of irrelevant and unintentional content sharing isn’t really solved it will only provide us a real-time update of fairly useless stuff. No sense in trying to do that too often. If anything, the one strength Friendfeed had,  comments on entries, will be lost in this real-time update. Nothing to get exited about for me. It’s like watching tv, you sometimes enjoy staring at things without having to activate your brain. Useless but relaxing nevertheless

The incredible power of being able to think and act big

Possibly the most important characteristic of web giant Google is their ability to think and act big. Thinking big is really hard to do but has made them the most successful web company in history. Google, the name, refers to the word Googol meaning 10¹⁰⁰ which is a huge number. The name itself suggests that Google has the ambition to index the entire web. It certainly has made them the defacto Internet search standard.

This ability to think big isn’t that rare. Most web entrepreneurs that start a new venture think that they have fond the single idea to conquer all of the Internet, to become the next Google. Most fail too. It isn’t good enough to think big. You also need to be able to see the bigger picture, to understand it’s complex nature, to see what is needed. It is also important to understand the ecology of such matters, to understand that to have a big impact you need others to do that. And once you understand all of this you then need to execute big. And that is where the power of Google lies. It has become their second nature to think that way. And doing that they can amaze us all.

If you understand this about Google then it isn’t so hard to understand what they are up to now. Google is trying to become the social glue of the entire web. They are the first to acknowledge the power of socializing every application. Most web 2.0 companies have chosen a business model that forces them to become the number 1 destination site in order to be successful. Mark Zuckerberg runs one of the largest walled gardens in the world (if you exclude the mobile operators, they hold even larger walled gardens AND, unlike Facebook, make a whole lot of revenues on them). Almost every web 2.0 business model is based upon traffic and advertisement. That business model trap puts the entrepreneur in the destination mood. He’s got to build a large destination site to become successful.

Google has taken a different approach. Thinking bigger than the rest they leave the fight for social destinations to others (except for the search engine google.com, but they have won that battle long ago) and look at the bigger picture. Instead of having one destination to be a playground, they see the entire web as their playground. And if socialization is the trend, then Google will be the one that connects everything to everyone using their OpenSocial and FriendConnect projects.

And they are extending even beyond the web as we know it. The next addition to this playground will be the mobile device. Again, instead of building one super mobile application, Google simply builds a mobile operating system called Android. They create a whole new ecology, bypassing closed, walled garden. platform developments by the mobile hardware manufacturers. Who cares about Symbian, Windows mobile, or any of the other non-interacting mobile platforms. Google will try to open up these hopelessly closed ecologies and scattered mobile developments by setting a new open standard with Google’s Android. They are in the mobile game now, shaking up the industry as no one has been able to do (with the exception of Apple of course).

Just look at a few of the strengths Google has:

1. They run the largest Internet infrastructure in the world, which includes not only huge data centers but also dark fiber connections. I doubt there are many bits traveling the web that aren’t passing Google infrastructure at some point
2. They are the king of search, both on the web and mobile space. And accompanied by that they are the king of advertisement, taking some 75% of the entire revenue stream worldwide.
3. They have Orkut, Google Earth, Google Maps, Picasa, GMail, GCalendar, Google Docs, Google Gears. And on top of that they have OpenSocial and Friendconnect, API’s to potentially unlock any popular destination site on the web. Resistance is futile, but even the mighty Facebook can’t resist this force much longer. Their feeble attempt to block Google’s FirendConnect will backfire on them.
4. They are the king of RSS, with Google Reader and Feedburner, letting a lot of content flow through their network
5. They have bought one of the best mobile teams in the world. People are always wondering about Google’s move to by Jaiku and then let the service slowly bleed to death. Let’s not forget that the early adopter crowd loved Jaiku at it’s peak, even though Twitter was way more popular. Jaiku simply had better technology and an incredible development team. And these people are now working within Google on who knows what. Best buy they have aver made probably. Who cares about Jaiku, Google has the team!
6. They have created the Android mobile operating system. It isn’t there yet, but it will attempt to dominate mobile development due to its open nature. If all developers jump on Android and the iPhone, the rest of the mobile OS’es will be buried very soon.

Does that mean the competition might as well go home? Does it suggest that Google will take it all. No, of course it doesn’t. I even doubt there was a master strategy that has lead Google to all of this. But one thing is clear to me. All of this is due to their ability to think and act big. And it is really hard to compete with that. Google is getting ready to become the next “Operating system” on the web, including mobile. They have the infrastructure, technology, the capacity, the data, and people to do it. While this is good news for the web user, it is also scary to think that one company can have such a huge impact on our on-line life.

Mozilla enters the mobile arena with Apple and Google but we already know the winner!

I just watched the Mozilla video showing a demo of their first visions on what a mobile Firefox browser should look like. I love it already. Not because of the way it looks or the cool technology underneath. I love it because when listening to the screencast Aza Raskin talks about the user experience all the time.

Mozilla has clearly looked and thought about the current mobile browsing experience. It sucks on anything but the iPhone. Apple has set a totally new standard with their multi touch browsing experience. Mozilla takes that experience and adds two powerful features to it.

1. All input activities are taking into account that the user has relatively big fingers compared to the mobile touch screen. That means Mozilla will be spending an enormous amount of time thinking about the best possible input controls. In the demo we see bigger buttons, and neat tricks to avoid typing in letters if possible. Best of all, Mozilla is showing us that the entire screen can be used for content while there is still an intuitive way of finding the navigation buttons.
2. The browser will be open source developed. This is an incredibly powerful force Mozilla brings along. If anything, the mobile development phase we are entering now will be a fight over usability. Apple has set a new standard and others will add to that. But Mozilla has by far the most open development environment thinkable. It will attract a lot of smart people and experience to the browser development. They will be testing all kinds of usability schemes and doing that in the open will help them find the best possible user experience.

We can see the same thing happening with Google’s Android. Where Mozilla is the king of open source browsing, Google will try and become the king of mobile operating systems with Android. I think this is a very compelling move. Apple has build the “coolest” mobile handheld device so far. There isn’t one that can match that experience. But there are now a few strong competitors entering this domain. And where the Mobile handset manufacturers have mostly lost the capabilities to design a unique user experience, these new initiatives will provide us exactly that.

The interesting thing about this is that we can see a new era of mobile connectedness arise. Most business models in the mobile space currently fail due to huge barriers. Data plans by the operators put incredible strains on the cost factor for the user. But another issue is the overall usability. The mobile handset manufacturers such as Nokia, Samsung and their competitors have spend the last decade building more and more features into their handsets without a fundamental redesign of the user experience. They have chosen to ignore this issue. But the newcomers on the block have a totally different approach. Each of them has thrown the current design principles out of the window and started all over with the user experience in mind. See an earlier post I wrote about that topic called “The mobile web experience needs fundamental rethinking.”

The fight on the mobile platform will be a fight for usability. And already we know the clear winner. It will be the user.

Now all I can hope for is that these developments don’t forget that the mobile phone is primarily an interaction device. Next to this great browsing experience I still want to be able to make phone calls and send people messages. And yes, we do need to enter text there. That issue hasn’t been resolved yet, even though Apple took a good first shot at it. It’s why I wrote that the iPhone is probably one of the worst mobile phones I ever used. Not because of it’s browsing capabilities. But because it is really hard to use the thing as a phone when you are physically on the move. Try walking and typing at the same time, you’ll understand what I mean.

Now where can I get me one of those mobile Mozilla browsers

Why the iPhone is probably one of the worst mobile phones I have ever used

There is a lot of talk these days about the iPhone. You can’t open TechMeme without seeing yet another rumor about the next generation, 3G, whatever version of the iPhone Apple is about to release. As soon as any other mobile initiative is released it has to go through an iPhone comparison. Google is working with developers around the world to create a new mobile platform called Android. As soon as the first demo’s appear the tech blog community measures them up against the iPhone.

Well, sorry to say this, but the iPhone is probably one of the worst mobile phones I have seen in quite a while. Now, before you get all excited about that and state that I have gone mental, let me try to explain what I mean by that.

The iPhone, in my opinion, isn’t really a mobile phone. The iPhone is probably the most innovative handheld computer in the world. It has a unique feel to it, a nice operating system, a touch screen (which is old news in Japan and Europe really) and great usability. It provides us with a browsing experience unlike any other mobile device. It has a great display, a mediocre camera, it lets you play music, video, browse the web, anything a gadget lover might need. It just sucks as a phone. You can tell the iPhone was build by a computer manufacturer. It is a handled where someone decided to also add phone capabilities to. And it’s phone capabilities are worse than I had thought.

What are the two most important functions of a mobile phone (and no, I’m not talking to all you smartphone lovers out there)? Calling and SMS. It is as simple as that. This is an estimated 1 Trillion dollar business world wide! While the USA lags behind in SMS, the rest of the world produces 5-10 SMSes on average per user per day. SMS is a $ 100BLN business. A business larger than ALL social media and advertisement business on the entire web! Probably less than 5% of that big pile of revenues goes to data services. It will be growing for sure the coming years. But $ 1000 BLN is a really big number.

When we get all excited about the iPhone I’m sure we aren’t getting excited over it’s phone capabilities. We are excited about it’s ability to browse the web, to act like a small yet powerful handheld computer. And that is great. Apple surely did set a new standard there.

But have you ever tried to make a phone call on it. With all due respect, I could navigate my “old-fashioned” Nokia N95 way better than the iPhone. I’m estimating that using the N95 menu structures I can find and call a contact approximately 50% faster, and more importantly without making any errors. While the contact list on the iPhone looks flashy,  the touch screen controls create a lot of errors for me. I can’t search for a contact (Sorry if I can’t remember all 800 names in my contact list). Scrolling is great, but landing on the right name is difficult. How many times have you found the contact, clicked on it (expecting it to start making the call), clicked on it in the next screen (why for heavens sake), and then only found yourself to be in the “change details” screen instead of the calling screen.

How about SMS? I use that function as least as often as I call. I might type 30-40 SMSes on any given day. But with the touchscreen keyboard of the iPhone this has become a real pain. I touch the wrong letter too often. Not only was typing on my Nokia without an actual keyboard faster, what is more important, it was way less error-prone. And honestly, the pre-iPhone interfaces weren’t that good either, but a hell of a lot more workable than the iPhone now. I have written before about the need to rethink the mobile experience fundamentally. Apple did it, only they forgot the current main use of a phone. They were thinking handheld computer when they designed the iPhone.

I tried using the headset provided with the iPhone. Worked fine for calling. I took it out, left home without the headset. And I found out the hard way that the rest of the day I couldn’t make a phone call because the iPhone for some reason assumed I still had the headset installed. Probably a “bug” or mishap, but not being able to call without using the external speaker all day is a real pain. Never had that happen to me before.

I hope Google’s Android will lead to developments that do not always match the iPhone. It has set a standard in it’s own, we don’t need others cloning that. I hope Android developers will think about a better integrated experience. Not just the “new world” of web browsing and media consumption. But also including being able to call and send messages (sending e-mail has the same obvious problems on the iPhone).

Touch screens are great, but we either need bigger ones, or I need to sharpen my fingers to hit the right letter on the tiny little keyboard. One thing I do like about the iPhone’s SMS capabilities is the way it displays successive SMSes as conversations. Perfect, because that is what they are!

I’ll end this with a small wish I have written about before in a post called “We need a revolution in Mobile U thinking”:

I’ll give away one idea for making things better. Why not get rid of the whole inbox-outbox messaging paradigm. It sucks on a mobile phone. Instead convert the entire paradigm into a life stream, similar to the way Twitter and Jaiku work. It fits human behavior much better. We don’t always want to look into or respond to every message we receive. Showing these messages as a constant stream allows me to look at it whenever I want to. It doesn’t call for my attention whenever a message arrives, but I get to decide when I wish to give the message my attention. It allows me to pick up things that are important, and it also provides me easy ways to respond to on ore more people. And it lets me ramble my thoughts to whoever is willing to listen to them.

And we could easily integrate calling behavior in that same life stream too.

The iPone may be the best handheld mobile computer there is right now, but it’s probably one of the worst mobile phones I have ever used.

Is Mobile the next advertisement heaven?

I’m thinking about Erik Schmidt, CEO of Google, who says that mobile advertisement will be the next thing. Actually, he says it a little different:

First: There is still a lot of revenue in search – as we get the technology better or as we can do more targeted ads. There is no limit for search marketing. People assume that there is a limit, but we have many more ideas about technology. Second: The most obvious large space of advertising is the mobile internet. Every German has a mobile phone. Just take the success of the iPhone: It has the first really powerful web browser on a mobile device – and many more are still coming. Nokia has one coming, Blackberry has one and Motorola has one. They are all supposed to be released this year. By these products, the advertising gets more targeted because phones are personal. So targeted ads are possible. And that means the value of the ads will grow. The next big wave in advertising is the mobile internet.

It’s interesting to see the thinking pattern of Google on this. The first thing Erik says isn’t about the mobile phone being personal. He starts out by saying that there are so many of them (already 3.3 Bln according to this post). I like that. Google seems one of the few companies that never stops thinking in terms of huge. While most web 2.0 companies are trying to claim their own space on the web, Google just takes the entire space for granted (the web) and works on that as their walled garden. Right now, they are the only ones even remotely capable of managing such a large walled garden. Not only do they own important data centers all over the world, but they also own a large part of the infrastructure and data pipes the web runs on.

I’m pretty sure that it is precisely this thinking that has lead Google to start the Android initiative. They saw the impossible and futile platform wars on the mobile devices and realized there wouldn’t be a clear winner. These platform wars are a major cause of the lack of innovation in the field and penetration of mobile services. Google came with Android and they potentially have the power to open up this space filled with technologically disconnected devices. If Android can overtake these platforms and create a major open source platform for development then we will probably see an enormous speed of innovation arise in the mobile world.  It’s pretty smart too, because Google would then hold a similar position in the mobile domain as they do on the web. They are everywhere and it will allow them to continue to think huge and come with advertisement services that will be difficult to compete with.

He goes on by saying that since the mobile phone is personal, the advertisement can get more targeted. And targeted ads lead to more value. This sounds like the new Walhalla for advertisers. What if we could get our message across every mobile phone, the most personal device on the planet? But it always makes me think about the user. What about him. What is in it for him?

Advertisement on mobiles might work, but it is even more difficult to be successful than it is on the web. Remember, the mobile phone is a personal device. It is our remote control to my life. We use it for the most important things in life. Communication with family, friends, co-workers etc. Not only phone calls. According to Toni Ahonen, SMS is used often everywhere in the world with the exception of the USA, who are lagging behind. We use it to make pictures, or sometimes to record a video. We use it to listen to music. And slowly, we are also using it to browse the (mobile) web and for localization services.

Personally I think that before mobile advertisement has a chance of becoming successful we need to fix a few things that inhibit mass adoption of mobile browsing. I wrote a post on that a while back called “The mobile web experience needs fundamental rethinking” For the sake of the argument we will assume that developments such as Google’s Android and the iPhone will deal with most of these issues. We are then left with the mobile operators that run the largest walled gardens in the world!  With their access monopoly, simlock schemes to enforce which device can be used on their network, impossible to comprehend calling, roaming and data plans and worthless custom Mobile Web portals, the user is left with total confusion over the services and costs involved.

Most of these hurdles have inhibited the mass adoption of the mobile device as an Internet device. SMS rules (100 BLN in 2007!), and mobile data revenues are growing at a much slower rate. But the 3.3Bln devices out there form an incredible potential. Not just for advertisement, but for anyone that wants to set up a business  with healthy revenues. In my opinion advertisement on mobile will have to follow similar rules to the web to be successful:

1. Do not get in the way of my interactions with friends. I can’t stress that point enough. When I’m interacting with friends advertisement is trespassing.
2. Don’t even think you can be successful with bannering or display ads. Have you seen the size of a mobile device screen? There is no room for bannering on that. Sure, everyone tries it, but it’ll just be an annoying flashy little thing that clutters a space that is too small to begin with. If you want to get users annoyed, try using banners.
3. The advertisement in itself has to provide the user with value. To me that means the advertisement itself needs to be contextual, localised and personal Example. I’m in a bar with some friends and I’m showing them a picture I took earlier and posted on the web. Showing me an ad that tells me to drink Heineken beer will be more than annoying. Providing me with a bar code that lets me buy a next round of Heineken beer with a discount in this very same bar we are at is pretty cool.
4. The possibilities for advertisement are endless. But the point remains that advertisement works best when I’m either looking for something or planning to buy something (which is just another way of saying I’m looking for something). I might be using a mobile version of search, I might be looking at locations or maps, I might be on some e-commerce site like eBay, those are the moments when advertisement can provide both the user and the advertiser value. For the rest, just leave the user alone and let him interact. BTW I’m not discussing branded activities here, just advertisement.

Mobile advertisement may be the next big thing. But it is probably much harder than advertisement on the web. And we already suck at that (unless you are Google). It’s a pretty big gamble with high investments, high risks, and potentially high revenues. I’m sure there are lot’s of entrepreneurs out there working on it already. It’ll be interesting to see what will happen. What do you think?

The mobile web experience needs fundamental rethinking

Michael Mace reports that mobile applications, or the development of software that runs on specific mobile platforms is dead. Michael Mace is an expert from the industry so he probably knows what he is talking about.  He writes:

We told ourselves that the fundamental rule of our business was: Mobile is different. But we lost sight of an even more fundamental law that applies to any computing platform:

A platform that is technically flawed but has a good business model will always beat a platform that is elegant but has a poor business model.

As it turns out developing software specific for mobile platforms developers encounter many difficulties. According to Michael Mace there are at least 10 different platforms software needs to be developed upon. The software needs certification, which costs a lot of money. But most important of all, the mobile operator has effectively taken over all distribution making it nearly impossible for a mobile software developer to distribute his software. The solution to this, Michal says, is the web:

Meanwhile, there is now an alternative platform for mobile developers. It’s horribly flawed technically, not at all optimized for mobile usage, and in fact was designed for a completely different form of computing. It would be hard to create a computing architecture more inappropriate for use over a cellular data network. But it has a business model that sweeps away all of the barriers in the mobile market. Mobile developers are starting to switch to it, a trickle that is soon going to grow. And this time I think the flash flood will last.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about the Web. I think Web applications are going to destroy most native app development for mobiles. Not because the Web is a better technology for mobile, but because it has a better business model.

His most important argument to support this is that on the web the domination of the mobile operators is broken. I agree with Michael on that. The mobile operators do not control development, distribution, marketing and sales on the web. For this reason Google and Yahoo have very effectively pushed the mobile operators back into their role as access provider. It is the mobile operators arrogance, coming from a world in which they had a monopoly, that has lead to failed attempts to move up the value chain. Experiments with content distribution and other innovative services have failed. Mostly because the mobile operator, unlike most web companies, never had to think about providing the user with value.

So where does that leave the user? He is stuck with the world wide web that really doesn’t fit very well onto his small mobile device.  Browsing the web using a mobile device leads to a number of problems:

1. Browsing is expensive. Current web pages aren’t optimized for mobile devices forcing the user to download a lot of redundant information. As mobile data rates are still expensive the user is left with high monthly bills.
2. Browsing is slow. I currently use a Nokia N95 with UMTS/HSDPA connection and still it takes ages to view pages on the web. Not nearly as fast as my laptop, making it a cumbersome experience
3. Inputting data is a pain. I don’t have a keyboard to type, so I’m stuck using the mobile phone buttons. The overhead is at least 50% forcing me to type way more than I want to. And I tried using the iPhone’s keyboard. It’s arguably better than using the mobile phone buttons, but I still mistype a lot, because of the small size of the keyboard.
4. The screen of the mobile phone is just too small to look at web pages. Apple has invented the touch screen and smart gesture UI allowing me to quickly zoom in/out ad move around on a page. But it really isn’t solving the problem, the UI is simply providing an optimized solution for a problem that isn’t fundamentally resolved.
5. My Nokia N95 has GPRS/UMTS/HSDPA/WiFi/BlueTooth and Infrared capabilities. While this is technically probably the best you can get right now, it isn’t simple to use. This makes (affordable) access for naive mobile users a difficult task.
6. A mobile phone isn’t a computer. It has all the technology inside that computers have too, but it is fundamentally different due to not only its size but also the way it is used. For me it isn’t a computer or a telephone. It is my remote control of life. Web developers often fail to understand the implications of this. We need fundamental rethinking of service development for mobile devices. Developers that translate web services onto mobile devices will not succeed in addressing these issues.

How can we get the mass to adopt the mobile web? In my opinion a few things need to be addressed first in order to make this happen:

1. Mobile operators need to lower their data rate plans and come with easy to understand flat rate rate plans that allow users to download and upload as much data as they want without having to pay too much for it. The operators won’t be doing that just to please us of course. But with the increased competition in mobile voice, and from access technologies such as WiFi and possibly WiMax leading to price erosion, the operators will have to rethink their mobile data strategy.
2. Hardware manufacturers need to rethink the software currently residing on mobile devices. It is too technical, too functionality oriented and is not fit to fill in my desire to make it my remote control of life. I’ve explained this earlier in a post called “We need a revolution in Mobile UI thinking”. Apple is doing a much better job than any of the hardware makers such as Nokia and Samsung and that should really make them think about what they have been producing so far.
3. Service developers need to really understand what I use my remote control of life for. It isn’t a very small computer that I use to do the same thing I can do much better on a full size laptop. My mobile device is an interaction device. I use it to interact with others. I do not (yet) use it as a TV screen. I don’t need to have all my web services on it. But I do need every innovative service that allows me to interact with my family and friends. It contains my most important address book. It allows me to send and receive messages, I can call and talk to people, and in the future I can see other people on it too. I can capture images and video with it and I might want to share those immediately with my family and friends. I want to know what the people I follow closely are doing and I want to be able to reach one or many of them without any effort on my side. I want to see all messages addressed to me or messages the people I follow find important enough to share, no matter if it is SMS, e-mail, a Tweet, IM, whatever. Sure, I listen to music on it, I surf the web every once in a while, and I even sometimes watch some video or TV on it. But not nearly as often as I interact with others on it! Once we get the interaction right, we might start thinking about other services like identification or buying and selling of stuff. But interaction comes first, always.

The desire of humans to interact and use their personal remote control for it will be large enough to ensure that mobile Internet will become successful in the end. Since the (technical, cost) barriers are still quite large I think the mass will not adopt it yet.  2008 might be the year in which a number of the issues will be addressed. We might see further improvements in usability, platform standardization with Google’s Android, improved mobile search, the breakthrough of Twitter like services to the mass, and even a few optimized mobile web based services. We will see a few (ad-based) experiments to offer free or low cost mobile services. But my guess is that mass adoption of Mobile Internet will take a bit longer. First we need people to rethink the fundamentals so that the mobile device can support the interaction between the user and his contacts better than it does now. It’s usability could be so much better!

Will Microsoft and Yahoo create the biggest social network ever?

There is a lot of talk about the Microsoft takeover attempt of Yahoo this weekend. TechMeme is flooded with blog posts about the subject. I’m not so interested in the “breaking news” factor, but I am more interested in the effects this might have on the web and its users. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have great assets, which combined might even make Google become a bit nervous.

I doubt it will be in advertisement. Google is the absolute number one in that game and it will be nearly impossible to beat them at their own game. Microsoft has large aspirations in the advertisement world, and Yahoo has performed rather poorly there given all the traffic they receive.

If Microsoft wants to create more value by acquiring Yahoo I would suggest that they start combining and innovating over one of the biggest assets they jointly would have, e-mail.  There are more e-mail users worldwide than any other web service. E-mail is, although outdated, still the most frequently used communication tool. It is more popular and has more users than all social networks like MySPace and Facebook together. Consider the possibilities if e-mail was to be updated and improved to become the ultimate social network. No need to acquire new users, simply offer the hundreds of million users worldwide the possibility to interact in a network.

I said this before in a post entitled: “Dear Yahoo, Microsoft, Google e-mail: Forget Facebook, start innovating!”. E-mail could very well be the heart of a new type of social network. Tim O’Reilly makes a similar observation in his excellent post here. It would need a major redesign though to make it fit for what users really want. In my earlier post I mentioned 9 possible improvements to make e-mail the ultimate social networking environment. If Microsoft/Yahoo would join efforts in making e-mail a social networking tool then Google would have something to worry about. And that isn’t bad at all.

Google really needs competition to keep them sharp. Should they be really worried? Well, yes, a bit. But Google also has assets that could easily be combined into great social networking tools. Let’s not forget they have GMail and chat, Orkut, Google Maps, Android, OpenSocial, RSS and Jaiku. When these assets are combined the right way Google could easily facilitate the ultimate social network, with Gmail at its heart.

It will be interesting to see what will happen the next months. Will Microsoft and Yahoo create the biggest social network ever? Will Google pick up the challenge and roll out their version of a social network? Facebook and Myspace, you better watch out!

The usability of mobile phones could be so much better

A few days ago I realised (yet again) that the mobile phone could be made so much better. In such a way that the interface would start working for me as a user, instead of me having to work the interface of the phone (disclosure: I use a Nokia N95, but previous phones from Nokia, Samsung, SonyEricsson gave me very similar experiences). (Another disclosure: yeah, I’m one of those suckers that hasn’t got an iPhone).

It started when I wanted to SMS something to Twitter after I woke up. The following happened:

I pressed the icon for SMS. Started typing “twit” in the address field, the N95 understood Twitter and I could continue to write the actual SMS. Started typing “Woke up early this morning, about to go to the office”. The display showed “Wolf up das?”. Darn, wrong language set. Pressed options, arrow up, arrow up, arrow up, enter, arrow down and selected “English”. Then pressed c,c,c,c,c and started typing “e”, pressed * to change the word “Wolf”into “Woke” and continued the sentence. Had to change “in”into “go” and finished the sentence. Options, then send. After approximately 100 key presses I was able to send away my 53 character message. An overhead of almost 100%.

Next thing I did was get into my car and drive to the office. I decided to turn on the Twitter message stream to my mobile so that I could see who was doing what. So every few minutes I would get an SMS notification from Twitter. I’d pick up the phone, pressed new message and read it while driving. After reading the message I would immediately press options, arrow down, delete message,enter and then the big red button to get back to the main screen while I was still driving. I need to clean up Twitter SMSes immediately as they clutter my inbox way too much. On a typical drive of about 1 hour I get as many as 30-40 messages, and when there are a lot of people on-line even more.

Naturally I wanted to respond to a few Twitter messages, so while driving, I typed a few short messages to Twitter friends. It takes 7 presses to get the @ sign needed in Twitter. I had to switch 3 times back and forth between languages as I follow Dutch and English speaking Twitter friends. In the mean time I answered a few calls, and I got behind in reading the Twitter alerts who would come in during the calls. I ended up with some 10-15 unread Twitter alerts, not to mention the irritating signalling of the alerts during my call.

I wanted to check something on-line, so I fired up the web browser to go on-line. I needed to type in the web address, which is pretty lame to do while in the car. Took me a few minutes, then waited for the web site to appear, only to find out it was too big to see on my mobile display. So I ended up scrolling the site to reach a point where I needed to enter text for a search. Of course I was typing in the wrong language. Ended up wiping out a lot of pressed characters and entering them individually, with spaces between them, which I then erased again to prevent the phone from thinking for me. The Twitter alerts kept coming in.

By the timeI got to the office I was about 20 messages behind. It took me a lot of time deleting them (reading them too me too long). Twitter produces enough alerts to overflow my inbox. I finally switched off Twitter by sending an off message and then I could start work.

Later that day I wanted to check something on my weblog using my mobile phone. I fired up the web browser, tried to connect to a WiFi access point only to discover I didn’t have access. Reverting back to UMTS I typed in my web log address and waited for the content to appear. The site is too big for the screen so Nokia provides me with a cursor to scroll back and forth. This is not nearly as cool as the iPhone does it (you can zoom in/zoom out and move around with your fingers on a touch screen), but at least I can get to the place I wanted to look at. I tried to open and stream a video embedded in the weblog. The phone started a video player which was hopeful, but the video never showed. Unable to grasp why it didn’t work I pressed the big red button to get to teh main phone screen. I saw a nice sunset from my office window and decided to take a picture of it. I opened up the camera at the back of the phone and wanted to take a picture. I got a “not enough memory, please close other applications first” message. It took me a while to figure out that the Internet connection was still there and I needed to close that off explicitly. Closed the camera, and opened it again to activate it and finally took the picture. Luckily Shozu worked fine and I could upload the picture with one press to my Flickr account.

That very same day the phone froze up on me once, and resetted itself (nice). I used it for another 20-30 SMSes or so, browsed the web about 3 times more and finally drove home again.

So what is the moral of this story? Well, there are a few things I realised once I got home and started thinking about the experiences I had that day:

1. The average overhead in terms of user actions, button presses, menu choices etc. is on average anywhere between 50 and 100%
2. The inbox-outbox principle of the mobile phone for messaging is a real mess and is not capable of handling 50-100 messages a day without tremendous overhead for the user
3. Web browsing sucks. The screen is too small, entering data takes too much time, a lot of the content doesn’t display, and no matter how nice the interface is, browsing on a mobile phone screen just isn’t any good. No, not even on an iPhone, sorry.
4. Multi langual input is a pain. it takes a lot of switching between dictionaries to get it to work for me. Turning the dictionaries off doesn’t work either because then I have to press way too many buttons to type.
5. Multitasking on a mobile phone is nearly impossible. Try web browsing while receiving SMSes, phone calls, and trying to take a picture in between. The phone can’t cope with it.

There is actually one functionality for which the mobile phone is optimised. It works just fine for making and receiving calls! One could easily argue that I’m trying to do things on the phone that are not normal. But, I described a pretty average day for me as a mobile user. Yes, I use the phone in the car. I do all these things, and preferably in parallel. Have you watched (your own) kids lately. They multitask even more than I do. And they deal with the complexity, just as I do. Grow up and deal with it.

But that doesn’t mean that we should be satisfied with the product. It basically is not fit for the job. Most of the mobile OSes are based upon mimicking the desktop PC interface, which sucks. The inbox/outbox principle for messaging is as old as e-mail and is not fit for today’s messaging needs. The interfaces haven’t really radically improved. We have gotten more applications, more possible connections, and ultimately more complexity. The iPhone’s major improvement is the touch screen and some really cool UI inventions. But even with the iPhone trying to do the things I decribed earlier aren’t easy.

I have said it before, we really need people to start thinking out of the box when it comes to the mobile user interface. We need people that first think about what, how, and why people are using it during a typical day. And design a user interface that works for the user to get his things done, not the other way around. With Google Android on its way there lies an opportunity to do just that. Why? Because it is open (how open remains to be seen). If it can overcome the Mobile OS es the mobile phone manufacturers ship with it, then there is hope. We might get to see some great designers rethink the mobile interface and update it to support the multitasking, multicontent, multi messaging and browsing world most of its user are in right now. The usability of mobile phones could be made so much better.

Update: just saw that there is another discussion now about the iPhone producing a lot of data traffic. That could imply that its usability has improved over other types of mobile phones, allowing the users to access the Internet easier. At the same time iPhone users are mostly tech savvy, and capable of handling the complexity provided by mobile phones. But the iPhone, with all its incredible UI novelties is still based upon the idea of browsing the way we browse with a desktop. The browsing paradigm hasn’t changed, it has justgotten a better interface. We will have to wait and see if that is good enough. I doubt it. We haven’t seen a real revolution yet, just a fast improvement over something that was really bad in the first place.

Freedom to the people

We are nearing the end of 2007 so human nature forces me to look back and forth, thinking about things that happened and things to come. I am by no means a good trend or technology predictor, but here’s my take on it.

Looking back the most talked and blogged about subject is probably Facebook and it’s plans with monetization of their build up social graph. The story remains a top item on TechMeme, and it is a controversy as most either love or hate their Beacon attempt. Now that we are slowly recuperating from the privacy backlash they received, the next thing already being discussed is the possible inflation of visitor numbers or even the stealing of people from other companies. Facebook is now getting payback for the hype that was created around it. This almost seems Dutch behavior. In Holland we tend to talk anyone down sticking his head above the play field. Facebook is in that league now and I predict for 2008 that they will get into more trouble than they are already in right now. Not because they might be doing things wrong, but more likely because they are becoming too popular and the blogging community seems to be smelling blood. And that isn’t good. Fear isn’t what Facebook needs now. It needs leadership and making the right choices together with its users.

Looking forward towards 2008 I feel that the time is there to make some major changes in the current web. We need technological barriers to be taken down by developments such as Android, openSocial, OAuth, and OpenID.  It will take time, but in the end the user wins. I’m not going to worry too much about the technology needed, it always finds a way. More interesting is to think about human nature and the needs that we might need fulfilling in 2008.

More than 2006, when Time Magazine unfortunately called YOU the most important person of the year, I think and hope 2008 will be the year where the user gets his long-wanted freedom back. 2008 will be a year in which  we will see the first brand/portal/network/social graph/device- agnostic  services pop up. What does all of that mean? It means that the portal or network concept we are so used to is slowly replaced by initiatives where the user isn’t locked in, but viewed as a traveler reaching a place where service is required.

If you think about  the user becoming a traveler instead of a profile in a network or social graph then you quickly realise that current service isn’t all that fit to service the traveler. We have walled gardens, locked data, privacy issues, spam, free but ad-based web business models, crappy mobile to Internet solutions, locked mobile phones and networks, a total lack of standards, competition on the network and profile layer instead of on the application service layer, customer “lock-in”, advertisers “lock-in”, iPhone wannahaves, Beacon, DRM, etc. Essentially things that are meant to keep you locked into a specific place, instead of letting you move around wherever you want to go.

But a traveler really doesn’t need all that. What would you take with you when you go on a trip? Basic needs probably include:

A passport that identifies you at all destinations, a traveling bag where you can keep your personal belongings, money, food, drink, a good map for the area you travel to, a language guide, and easy ways for you to: obtain relevant information/keep track of/meet/interact with friends and strangers.

It is a very basic and simple list of needs. Translate these needs onto the (mobile) web and we can easily come up with services that address these needs. Entrepreneurs need to think more in terms of running a gas station on a freeway waiting for a car to arrive and servicing the traveler, instead of becoming an amusement park owner, letting children drive a Donald duck car, but only if you visit Disneyland. This sounds easy enough, but with it comes a radical change in business models. Not based upon page views or clicks, as these are easily inflated, but based upon user value.

As Rolf Skyberg puts it, the network should become the commodity. The question is, who’s going to do the plumbing?

My hopes for now lie with new initiatives like OpenSocial, and Android,  because they do the open “talk”. Let’s see if they can do the “walk” too. Let it be noted that I could care less about the Social Graph, web 3.0, or whatever you want to call it. It is time to free the people, who will take the first step in 2008?

Who will free the iPhone customer?

What is the deal with Steve Jobs, who is protecting his iPhone from being used the way users really like it, their own way? Apple not only launches it exclusively with certain partners, telling all you morons that don’t happen to have a mobile subscription there to hop over, but it also doesn’t like it when people try to open it up themselves.

Hacks are reported on a daily basis for the iPhone. I wonder how long it will take Apple to understand that these hacks aren’t just a protest against our savior Steve.

The hacks are coming from two emotions: the techies that just love to prove that “it can’t be hacked!” isn’t true, and the  user that disagrees with the “you have no choice” mantra.  If someone tells you that you only have one choice (his), what do you do? Well, I remember getting these sort of speeches at home when I was a child. Didn’t like it then, don’t like them now.

The iPhone may just be the invention of the year. Apple, just may have proved that mobile communications can be redesigned and evolved into a new user experience. But, having said that, they also ignore a basic need of their customers called “freedom”.  Making it an exclusive phone that is only within reach of a few proves to be an excellent short term revenue strategy. It is already the most talked about market entry strategy in the mobile world. But I cannot help but think it is also a very arrogant strategy towards the customer. If we are to make mobile Internet successful, and let the iPhone be one of its drivers, then  Apple better start thinking about opening up their platform.

If not, then Apple will definitely have a great niche on its hands and make a great living on it. But the mass will most likely choose something that works on all carriers and handsets.

And the mobile operators better rethink their strategy as well. As long as they determine who can get on their network and who cannot, they will remain hijacked to the Apple mantra. Forcing them to pay loads of money to Apple for every iPhone they sell.

It is freedom that sells in the end. Freedom will help customers (re-) discover the Internet on their mobile phones. Freedom is the ticket to increase in ARPU, the thing Mobile carriers need so desperately. Google is trying to jump on the bandwagon of freedom with their recent Android announcements. We will have to wait and see if that will be taking of. In the meantime the question remains. Who will free the customer?

Interview with German Public Radio on Google Android announcements

Yesterday I was contacted by Marcus Schuler from the ARD, German Public Radio. They were going to broadcast a technology item about the recent Google Android announcements on a show called DeutschlandFunk, Computers und Kommunikation.

Marcus had found my weblog via TechMeme where my user perspective analysis on the Google Android announcement was posted. He asked me if I would contribute to this broadcast. We did an interview in the evening by phone, and today the show was broadcasted. The show itself is in German, although the interview with me was in English. Turns out Om Malik was interviewed as well.

Sorry for this shameless plug. If interested, the interview is available here. The show lasts for about 4 minutes and starting at 1 minute 46 seconds they have taken 2 soundbites from me.

It was fun to do, thanks Marcus.

Every generation needs a new revolution

Facebook and Google are getting a lot of attention these days. Everyone, including myself, seems to have a take on it and the urge to write about it. It is time to step back, observe and try to understand what is causing this.

The CEO’s of rivalling companies are falling over each other, often like little children. Personally I like Steve Ballmer best (seriously), he is such an incredible promoter. Just look at his great response to John Battelle’s question on search here, or his quote on Android being a paper tiger for now. Business week summarises a few here (including one of my comments ). Or how about Mark Zuckerberg, the man that seems to have gained a pop star status with his incredible success in growing Facebook to 50Mln users. On top of his success he seems to have stated that the user really has no choice when it comes to SocialAds.

If the Internet has brought us one thing it is the ability to start a hailstorm as a counter-force  to the scooping blogging community reporting on the successful initiatives or people.  The first hacks on OpenSocial have already been reported, as well as a recipe to block SocialAds. 100 Year old laws have been dusted off to explain that Facebook SocialAds are illegal. And some even started a countdown for the downfall of Facebook .

Web 2.0 brought us an explosion of innovations in social networking services. The biggest contest ever for the attention of the user. Web 2.0 companies create phenomenal free services and show unprecedented user base growth. It is all about eyeballs, who has the most users, the largest network. The waves of success were driven by free services. The question how create revenues being the last to answer. But with the success of all these services, monetization becomes an issue. Pressure is now on all the successful CEO’s, how to make revenues that live up to the incredible valuations being drawn up? The way out is provided by the advertisement business, nearly $ 42 Bln is predicted to be available in 2011 in the US only. It is this pile of money available that provides everyone a way out. It is the golden pot at the end of the rainbow that can be used to pay for the costs of free services and to justify incredible $15 Bln valuations of successful web 2.0 companies.

So why the emotional responses, why the polarising blog posts on these matters? Is it jealousy, because some are more successful than others? Maybe, but I am inclined to think it is something else.

I think it is because we are finally starting to realise that everything comes at a price. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Your “free” Facebook account is payed by SocialAds. Your perceived secure privacy on social networks isn’t as secure as you might have thought. The service you thought was build for your needs is now turning into an ad machine. One that takes your personal information and relationships and uses these to provide you with ads that, luckily won’t feel like ads according to Mark Zuckerberg (phew, a relieve here).

These services need your attention, draw you in because it is free, but won’t let you out once joined.  Try taking your personal belongings, your messages, your friends, your emotions with you from one service to the next. It can’t be done. It is the Catch 22 for web 2.0.

I think it is precisely this trap we have fallen into that is now delivering all these emotional responses on the web. We are finally beginning to realise that web 2.0 didn’t give us freedom at all. It provided a well disguised containment, a trap that lured us in. Beautiful sirens singing to us, backed up by bloggers, newspapers and magazines telling us it is all about you. And now with our  saviour Mark Zuckerberg telling us that there is  no way out. But Mark is getting a bit nervous with rivals like Google who, in perception at least, do offer a way out with OpenSocial and  Android.

It is becoming clear to me now that the current web 2.0 generation needs a revolution. If we want to get out if this trap then there is, as always, only one way to do this. We have got to take control of our lives on-line. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Your data is yours! It isn’t Google’s, Facebook’s, or Microsoft’s. We need to start making so much noise about this that these guys will be forced to open it all up. And you have the power to do so. You can use the strength of the network that you have created yourself to protest and oppose this confinement. I can’t wait for the first protest groups on SocialAds to appear on Facebook. Let’s see how many supporters will join that. And don’t get me wrong. I am not against ads, but I do oppose to the idea that we currently have no freedom because of ads!

And in revolution, there are always new thinkers and leaders that can  show us the way. My vote is with people like Doc Searl, David Recordon, Tim O’Reilly, Dick Hardt, Dave Winer and Rolf Skyberg. People that not just complain about this trap, but thoroughly understand it and provide possibilities to get out of it. There are $16 Bln reasons to get out if this web 2.0 advertisement trap and move into a new era of user centric thinking, of true interaction!

It is like President Jefferson already said so long ago: “Every generation needs a new revolution”.

Who is going to add value to my remote control of life?

Today is another day after, this time the day after Google announced its Android Mobile OS initiative. Incredible amounts of posts have already been written about it, many of them talking about the breaking news, a lot of them analysing what it means (for example here and here), and very few talking about what it means for the mobile user (actually, I tried searching for it in Google reader and couldn’t come up with a search term that showed me more about the user perspective). Look at techmeme for the tech bloggers bandwagon overview.

So let’s take a look at the user’s perspective. In a previous post I stated that Mobile Internet will eventually break through to the mass but that there are still a number of hurdles to be taken.

The question is now, does the Android initiative provide possibilities to take on any of these hurdles? The most important aspect of the Android Mobile OS, in my opinion, is that it will be open source. What I hope will happen is that it will trigger many developers to start developing new software for mobile users that will work on all kinds of handsets, and will integrate much better with existing mobile phone functionalities. Off course there are already mobile OS platforms available, Windows mobile and Symbian probably being the most important competitors. But, Android, by its open nature, will bring mobile application development into a new ball game, forcing the other platforms to open up as well.

Besides the smart things other people wrote on the subject I named 5 reasons why mass adoption is not there yet:

1. There aren’t that many really useful services that really enforce mobile Internet into the lives of mobile users. Releasing an open source Mobile OS platform is smart. It will trigger developments, not only by mobile carriers, but by people that understand the mobile being your remote control to life. People that will develop user centric services on your mobile.
2. Mobile devices don’t deliver technically yet what is needed. The main question is always, can a non-tech family member or friend start up your phone and connect it to the Internet. Without you helping out? I think not. But the open source character of the Android platform will force developers to concentrate on UI and user value! It is the only way to differentiate themselves from competitors.
3. The mobile Internet interface is not nearly as flexible, intuitive and usable as the Internet browser and a mouse is on a PC. This is a difficult barrier to take. It not only involves clever UI design and new paradigms to let your mobile phone become the remote control of applications, but there is also a hardware component involved. Phone manufacturers will need to develop better phones with faster CPUs, increased graphics performance, touch screens and new interface paradigms to compensate for the fact that this remote control is rather small when you try to use it in life.
4. The cost is high for a large adoption in the market. You need high end (expensive) handsets like the Nokia N95 or Apple iPhone and transferring data is still pretty expensive.This is an issue that can’t really be solved by the Android OS. We need high end hardware terminals and fast Internet access to make the mobile Internet experience useful to the user. But the mobile terminal manufacturers and mobile carriers need to reconsider pricing of the goodies. Especially data rates are an issue. If I am being punished with high bills for connecting and transerring data between my mobile and the Internet, then I won’t be using it very often.
5. There might be a psychological barrier for users to download new applications onto their mobile phone. It is your most personal device and you won’t put any software on it unless the source is trusted. Trust is an issue. People download ringtones, wallpapers and games to their mobile phones. But will they download social applications which tentacle their way into their address books, pictures, video’s as easily? Tech people will. Business people will, but will the man on the street do it as well? Only if the source is trusted and privacy is a key element in development.

Having said all this, let me state my 5 wishes for functionalities that would really help me as a mobile user:

1. I want to be able to save, reply to and forward voice messages. Sometimes you get a personal message that is important to you. But the message can’t be saved, replied to, or forwarded, and the mobile carrier deletes it after a few days.
2. I want to be able to sent pictures and video messages to my friends phones as well as to the Internet. While applications like Shozu take care of the Internet part. It seems impossible to send a taken picture to a friend, regardless of the handset he uses. Not only does it not arrive half of the time, but I also need to think abut the protocol I use to send it, or look in different inboxes when it arrives. And make sure it is so simple to do that anyone non TECH can actually use it without understanding anything about protocols, message formats, Internet connection parameters, installation etc. An application I will be looking into is Radar. Seems very nice for mobile image and conversation sharing, so I’ll give it a go.
3. I want a integrated graphics enabled inbox for all messages, regardless if they are SMS, MMS or e-mail. Who cares about the different types, the distinction is purely technical. I get all these ugly text based headlines when someone sends me a picture. Show me the thumbnail of the picture and text together so I know what it is about before I actually open the message.
4. I would like much better group features allowing me to call, SMS, send voice messages, pictures, video, or microblog with my friends in the mobile space and Internet space. So if I’m on-line the messages go on-line, and if I’m on the move they go to my mobile. But I hate it the way Twitter clutters my SMS inbox. Having me to look at each message separately and deleting them after I read them. Too much work, and each beep when a new message arrives is annoying (yes I can turn of sound, but that is not the point). We need live feeds, allowing me to follow the flow and only act upon it if I want to.
5. I would like someone to start implementing the best possible distribution platform for downloading cool new applications. How am I supposed to know what software is available for me? I only found out about Shozu after another tech blogger pointed me to it, but my mom will never find it?

I could go on for quite a while, haven’t even said anything about location based services, streaming video, music, applications that have nothing to do with the phone itself (like identification, buying , selling, maps, etc). I am really curious about mobile developments. They can have a huge impact if executed the right way. Who is going to add value to my remote control of life?