The Challenge for Mobile Web Success

The tech and marketing pundits are looking for the silver lining of these bleak times and "everything mobile" seems to be it. Perhaps another "bubble" to burst? Yet the numbers and chatter certainly seem to be pointing that way as indicated on Marketing Charts today. Such research by Tellabs says upwards of 71% of Americans and 41% of Western Europeans will use mobile data services more this year.

Of course the main concern of users is reliability, speed and...cost. Regardless, we've witnessed the gold rush of apps makers to cash in on iPhone apps (despite evidence that the Power Law Curve is very much at work here in that 97% of the apps downloaded don't get used more than 2-3 times before they're forgotten.) BlackBerry apps trail behind and then it trickles down for Google's Android and other devices. And therein lies what I see as the single biggest problem.

Cross-platform development capability. It's just not there. In fact, it reminds me of Windows Vs. Mac not so long ago. You had no way to interchange or share files. Today, this is not the case. The Web has further eliminated this divide with Webware apps.

Today, developing an app for a mobile device pretty much means you have to devote significant resources to one particular device or find a way to deliver the service via a WAP browser to reach other devices. All of which increases costs through larger development teams, increased learning curves and support.

One interesting service that may be an indicator of the ability to cover this "gap" is, well, PhoneGap. Best of all, it's Open Source. While it isn't perfect yet, I suspect it may be the "Linux" of mobile apps.

Until we see such a service broaden, I suspect user satisfaction will remain limited and the true explosion of mobile apps somewhat stunted.

What do you think? Have I missed the mark?

The Meaning of Twitter?

Twitter is the next killer app of the Web after email. It may also be the world's most powerful barometer of societal emotion and the first truly societal opinion measure. And it's only in its infancy. Twitter is a temperature gauge of society, a mood monitor and the search engine of emotion.

I'm beginning to think Twitter may just be the social tool that signifies the immense societal changes underway that we are yet barely able to understand. Some anecdotal evidence of this can be found in how news and stories break today and the rapid vertical growth of Twitter in every day use.

Twitter tells anyone who wants to know what people are thinking, doing, feeling, planning, hate, love or care about. In this context it is no surprise that some of the earliest add-on tools to Twitter to be created was TwitterGrader (we all like to know our social standing in a community.) Then there's TwitterSearch which was an app bought by Twitter and integrated. TweetDeck soon appeared for "power twitterers" (guilty here of using it!), in fact here's a list of over 60 Twitter apps that have developed.

Our most basic nature as human beings is to socialize, whether that's on a large scale or small (i.e. just a few people for Twushi - Twitter folks gather for sushi), we crave social connections. Forming groups is fundamental to our everyday living - for work or play. Sharing information/knowledge is what makes our society grow, for good or bad.

Twitter is an enabler of fast group dynamics - faster than email. You can connect quickly around an issue; like the #coalition discussion in Canada that showed a fundamental societal difference in Canadian politics demographically. Obama's extensive use of Twitter in campaigning. When a topic gets heated in Twitter, people assign a "hashtag" to the theme (i.e. #coalition), and in fact you can define a hashtag.

All of this points to a simple communication tool that has enabled the connected world to find a powerful voice. As Twitter and it's ecosystem grow (like email did) we will see more and more examples of societal change driven by social tools.

Twitter is an early indicator of this impending change. Twitter, I think, is the first mass-scale societal radar, temperature gauge and barometer. Social protest in the future will be marked not just by marches on government buildings, but CyberMarches that take place using tools like Twitter - and spread virally to other connected networks....reaching more people faster than ever in human history.

Just as Wiki's an "argument-based" social tool, Twitter is an opinion-based tool.

What's your theory?

Social Media: Democracies and Autocracies

That President Obama made the first truly effective democratic political use of Social Media is in no doubt. Obama engaged, communicated honestly and we've seen the result. Social Media is inherently democratic, since that which the masses deem "valuable" whether that be news, a good story or picture or video, rises to the top.

Today, the government of the U.A.E. (the Emirates) officially blocked Flickr. Last year the U.A.E. government censored much content on YouTube, although not all. The Chinese government also has a team of people constantly shutting down sites it feels are threatening. In Belarus the government often disables the mobile phone network to stop txt messaging use for rallies.

What I believe we are seeing is the impact Social Media tools are having politically around the world. Even Facebook itself has been accused of political interference of an independent filmmaker who did a film about Cube and America and easing the political sanctions; Facebook says that's absurd - but they did delete his account. The Brazilian government places restrictions on electronic media usage for political candidates as well.

Fortunately, in Western Democratic nations such censorships are not in place. Despite Elections Canada stating election results cannot be "broadcast" before polls close in lagging time zones, they admitted there is little they can do. At least in Canada, America and Europe citizen opinion and democratic liberties are debated and discussed more openly.

What do you think? Will we see increased censorship of political dissent in communist and autocratic countries in the coming months/years? Can these censoring governments control the push to democracy? Already Social Media tools are being used by people to result in democratic changes and reforms...how "deep" will this go?

It's certainly a challenging and difficult issue to address.

The Next Wave of Wealth Will Be Astounding

The development of centralized power generating plants in the late 1800's resulted in today's power utilities. The invention of the motor resulted in motors that have become so ubiquitous we don't even think of how many are in our home today (computers, fridges, DVD players...) and now computer chips are becoming ever smaller micro-chips and fitting into so many devices.

Then there's the Web, a chaos-oriented network. Like the hydro system of 100+ years ago, we're moving our data and processing into the "cloud" - out onto the Web rather than inside our computers - interconnecting banking, health care information, voting for public leaders, financial management...and general creation and discussion.

And now we sit in some so-called financial crisis. Sure it's a crisis - a crisis for the those who tried to maintain central control on a global market that doesn't work centralized. Because money can move anywhere today, it is now the masses that will influence the financial market in the future. The Centralizers messed it up, they got it wrong and they got greedy. Now, because we can share and talk unlike ever before, we learn more globally and therefore we're starting to demand changes.

Because of the Web and the embedding of technologies , because processing power is cheap and increasing in vast amounts and because we can connect and develop ideas unlike ever before, we are about to undergo a huge global societal transition. Have a look at this Time article on 10 ideas changing the world.

I think the current "financial crisis" is going to spawn entirely new ways of addressing what isn't working in our current society. In fact, as we kick out the financial centralizers and develop a newer, more chaos-oriented system, we will in fact become more wealthy than ever before - not just financial wealth, but health and broader human knowledge.

I'm happy the financial centrists screwed it up, because now we can toss them aside and make a better system, and that is what's happening. We're so much more interconnected...the "swarm" concept is growing and other changes we won't even realize for ten more years.

What do you thunk?

Generational Change & The Recession

Over lunch with a good friend today, we discussed the recession, although by the packed restaurant one couldn't really tell a recession was underway. Perhaps we thought, what is partly evolving now is a global change in the guard. Most of the financial instruments such as sub-prime mortgages, that lead to this current state of affairs were designed by the Old Guard...the 55+ demographic. The bunch that took over senior management in the financial sector during the 1980's.

Those of us born after 1965 through to about 1980 (there is significant debate over naming the "generations") are stuck like mystery meat in the middle of the Boomers and the Echo (sic "Y") Generation and Generation X. We don't have enough numbers to really be economically or politically persuasive. The Mystery Meat Generation rode the back-end of the 80's into the 90's (born '66 through '76 or so) and were dislocated by Nirvanna and the Spice Girls. Yet we garnered the insights of the Boomers and fed on the energy of the Echo's. We're neither bitwixt nor between. Our wealth, such as it may be now, is off the drippings of the Boomers.

President Obama is of this in-between generation, sitting on the tail-end of the Boomers. Yet he has clearly grasped the changing shifts underway and the new guard coming in. It is those who know how to understand and manage the vast amount of information via the Web and the new medium it represents, that are pushing out the old guard.

Personally, I think that's a damn good thing. The old guard were those who controlled information because the concept of the Web, of cross-functional collaboration of moving fast and developing ideas on the fly, of social justice and transparency, did not exist in their time. It only takes a few good ideas to catch on...and wham! We have change. Or we have a crisis like today...and change becomes necessary.

I was caught up then in this video "Do You Know?" found via Twitter (hat tip to Anne1942 on Twitter) who sells Hammocks. And once we realize the volumes of information we're learning to comprehend and manage, one realizes that perhaps yes, there is a generational shift underway.

The tools that make up what we call Social Media enable us to push ideas fast, to gather quickly and attend to the issues that matter to us - the frictions and tensions of social groups are removed. If we don't feel an issue is important, we move on to what is important to us. If an issue gains enough momentum, it will spill over into an actionable act of change in the real world. Whether that's democratic, political change or simply dislike of a certain style of clothing.

I have no answers, only speculations. What do you think? Is part of this recession, these challenging economic times, a change of generations who are leveraging information in the same way printing changed society hundreds of years ago? Is there a generational shift underway?