September 2011 – LIVEdigitally

Why User 111091089527727420853 Is Wrong About Google+

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

Scobleizer doesn't have quite a "ring" to it...

Wondering who that is? Here’s the link, and just for fun, I’ll try to get through the whole post without otherwise identifying him. Oh who am I kidding, it’s the infamous Scobleizer, Robert Scoble. He recently wrote a post on why he’s betting on Google+. Here are some key reasons, and I believe they are represented fairly in context:

What I’m noticing is Google+ gets the best stuff first. And this is “with no one on it.” (That claim cracks me up, a new post shows up every 20 seconds, 24 hours a day, and that’s with following only 5,000 people here)

My videos get more views after a month, due to Google and other search engines, than they do in the first day (which is when you’d see them on social networks).

Google+ items are the best way to get my media into Google search. I’m already seeing that. Now that there’s a search engine here on Google+ it’s even a bigger deal.

How do you best capture the EMOTION of your time? Blogging? Not for me anymore. Tweeting? Not for me anymore (I will continue being there, mostly to let people who won’t leave that system know what I’m doing and where I’m doing it — it has turned into a UI for my Facebook and Google behaviors). Facebooking? Yes. I’m still there and will be for forseeable future at http://facebook.com/robertscoble

But other than that, what is my blog for? Monetization? Nope. My bosses are very willing to pay me even if I give up my blog completely. Branding? Does having a big logo help anyone? Really?

I think I can summarize his arguments into the following statement: Google+ is a great content discovery tool for both content consumers and products, and a personal blog and Twitter don’t capture enough emotion and conversation. And I think he’s right — for Robert Scoble, and possibly a handful of others — and I can further understand why they have the passion for the site. I’d argue, strongly, that for the majority of other people, and not just mainstream users but technically sophisticated ones as well, Google+ is utterly lacking the experience consumers want. It doesn’t have my actual friends in it, nor does it seem to have the features that they will want (and they’ve reinvented the use of the + button, and there aren’t multithreaded conversations, and and and). But I’ll instead just do the counter to Robert’s key points above.

First, it’s my assertion that most people don’t much care about finding “the best stuff” nor do they care about the speed at which they find it. To my friend Robert, it’s a very important thing, which is understandable given the nature of his career. Most people, however, are consuming a trickle of content, and are not living in “real time”. Most people found out about Michael Jackson dying, Steve Jobs resigning, and the Japanese tsunami many many hours after the events, with only a tiny fraction of us in the few seconds or minutes after it was announced. Considering the availability of blogs, twitter feeds, and other streams, if the mainstream really wanted to consume more stuff in real-time, we’d already see much higher spikes in traffic to some of these sources. Google+ being “best” or “fastest” is one of those situations where “good enough” beats great by a long shot, and this isn’t going to send it users.

If I run fast enough, I'll have all the news!

Robert’s next two points have to do with getting his content to a wider audience – I’ll keep this point short and sweet: the vast majority of people rarely create content that they share with the general public.

Next up is creating emotion – I don’t mean to sound too harsh here, but the “emotional fabric” of Google+ is roughly on par to that of a sheet of loose leaf paper, maybe slightly less. Google+ is about as bland and expressionless an environment as I have seen online, it’s only slightly more “warm” than their search results. Facebook is unquestionably a better experience from this perspective, and as clever as the Googlers are, incorporating the warmth it’d take to create this kind of environment is simply beyond their DNA.

Let's just put it this way, in the movie version, they get Costner to play Google+

Lastly, on what is a blog for? It’s about identity. It’s only because of the “.com” that Robert grew an identity as Scobleizer (like it or not). If a random person were to hear about Robert Scoble and decide he wanted to learn more about him, read his works, etc, he’s going to end up at his personal identity site. Which is, at present, his blog. In the future if it’s a smorgasbord of content distributed across the blog, YouTube, Building43, Google+, Facebook, and the occasional tweet, he’s diluting his brand. Now luckily for Robert, he already has a brand, and he can really push the limits of sites like G+ and Facebook to accommodate his following behaviors. But again, none of this ties into the identity of a random individual online, who is, like it or not, probably based on Facebook, with occasional presences on Twitter, Yelp, and other sites.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t question if Robert himself is getting a lot, at present, out of Google+, it’s clear he is. But I’m shocked he’s betting the future on it. I feel like we saw this play out once before, back in the FriendFeed days. At the time, he was warned by Michael Arrington not too invest too heavily in that service. And just because “it’s Google” isn’t enough to be certain of permanence, in fact Google’s killed quite a few products recently. And if Google+ really becomes a “ghost town” that the founders themselves aren’t interested in participating in, I wonder how long it can survive.

Expectations for Tim Cook's Oct 4th Event

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

The rumor mill has it that Oct 4th is the next big Apple event, in which we can expect to see Tim Cook kick off his term as CEO. Here are some of my thoughts on what we can expect , in no particular order (note that I’m skipping all the pre-announced stuff, like iOS 5, etc):

No Steve Jobs
A variety of folks are speculating on whether or not Jobs will make an appearance. I’d say absolutely not, other than possibly in the audience. Jobs walking on stage would undermine Tim’s role as CEO and send a weak message to the media. It’s time for Cook to run the show, and Wall Street in particular will be paying close attention to his every move (yet another example of how Wall Street’s mere presence harms us, but I’ll save that snarky feeling for another time. too late). Granted I think we’d all love to see Jobs make an appearance, but unless they can figure out a way to do so without sending a lack of confidence message, I’d assume he stays on the sidelines. This, by the way, will lead to rampant speculation about his health, again (under the veiled theme of “its news!” – tip: it isn’t, let the man be.).

Major Refreshes to Most Products
With one exception (below), I believe almost every product the company makes will get a refresh, either major or minor. We already know about iPhone 5 and iOS 5, but rumors across everything else have showed up as well. Per the above, it’s time for Cook to show his quality, and I think they’ll opt for over-delivering.

No iPad Updates
It’s just too soon. Apple would frustrate their existing (huge) iPad base, and steal from whatever they’ll be doing in 2012. Also, a complete dearth of competition in the space enables them to take their time and raise the bar next Spring.

New Presentation Style
Whomever created the “Steve Jobs Presentation” obviously deserves some kind of award. But what made his style so special is how well it was tuned for Jobs. I believe they’ll re-create the concept for Tim to enable him to deliver his own personal touch. I don’t think it’ll be a massive departure, but I do expect some change.

Major iPod Changes
I wouldn’t be surprised if, starting next month, the iPod product line is reduced to the Touch and Nano (with WiFi), and everything else is gone. That really is the purpose behind iCloud, and just like the company is killing off physical drives, it seems like the traditional iPod isn’t part of the new vision of the Apple digital lifestyle. I’d like to see some minor “apps” for the Nano personally, but that might be a stretch.

One More Thing – iTelevision?
If they even continue with the “One More Thing” it could be the actual launch of the fabled Apple Television Set. Or it could happen in 2013. Or never…

Tune back on Oct 5th to review how I got 5/6 of these things wrong. 🙂

When Will Facebook Fail?

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

Just like governments, mixing “creativity” with “banking”, taking naked pictures of yourself and hoping they won’t end up on the Internet, and well, this stuff, tech companies have a certain inevitable amount of failure built-into them. Sure, IBM, Xerox and Motorola have existed for many decades, and both Microsoft and Intel still have dominant positions, but if we really think about the “powerhouses” in technology today (Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple), they are all fairly young (I’m using the argument that Apple effectively reinvented itself in the late 1990s). And if we look ahead even 10 years, it’s hard to argue those four will hold they same positions they do today.

Little known secret? Sony guts.

Of the four, I’d personally assess Google and Facebook as “most vulnerable” to obsolescence (just a hunch, I’m sure I’ll be ridiculed in the commentary for such a statement), and with the points made on “why Facebook’s the new Yahoo!” by Mike Elgan and Mathew Ingram, I thought I’d write up a little somethin’.

First and foremost, I see Facebook as in no way similar to Yahoo! Not even a little bit, I’d barely even figure out how to compare the two companies (other than the “.com” at the end of their URLs). The key thing, beyond whatever “Facebook.com” is all about, is that Facebook is unarguably the most well-distributed and deeply integrated service on the Internet. According to Nielsen, Facebook users spent 53 billion minutes in May 2011 using the site – and this does not count Facebook-integrated features on other websites. The Facebook “social graph” is at/near/above 700 million users at this point. That’s a lot of the Internet. A lot.

My God. It's Full of Likes!

I don’t see Facebook dying due to “stale technology” – they aren’t about technology (other than scaling, etc). They aren’t about UI/UX (tip to FB: the “clickable thing” in an update should be the action/verb, not the user nor target/noun). Most of the typical norms of a website’s laws of gravity simply don’t apply to them, due to the massive inertia they’ve built with their userbase. Further, the inertia of existing social graphs make growth of Google+ and Twitter effectively irrelevant – I think speculation that “Facebooking” will shift to a different social network is extremely hard to substantiate.

I used to take the “cool club in town” position on Facebook, and the moment it wasn’t “new” and instead full of B+T crowds, it’s popularity would sink and people would move on. But I don’t think this argument holds up anymore, Facebook is too popular in too many demographics and the “cool kids” are “over” the fact that their lame parents are there as well. It’s like the mall – just because Dad’s shopping at Eddie Bauer isn’t stopping the utes from hanging out in the food court. I know it too is easily picked apart, but I think the mall argument works really well as a parable for Facebook.

Why does the one in the middle look so. much. older?

When you want to open a Gap, and you want customers, you find a mall. Orange Julius? Mall. Crappy replica furniture Bombay Company? Malls.

What’s the online equivalent of that? Facebook, Likes, Facebook Connect, etc. Facebook is the way brands are engaging with customers online. And this is just making them even stickier.

I just hope there's a kiosk with a crazy lady selling mystical gems.

So how might Facebook fall? A few thoughts…

Massive shift to mobile interactions – Facebook’s weakest point at present is its mobile presence. If the world continues its mobile/social/web path, I believe Facebook has less to offer that ingrains it so deeply in the traditional browser/web world. Without the stickiness across mobile apps (especially with the iOS shift to Twitter and Android’s inevitable equivalent with Google+), they could be highly vulnerable.
Massive revolt on social networking – At present, our society is unfortunately radically focused on narcissism and fulfilling ego problems. This may (please, please, please!) change, in which case folks’ll have much less desire to share every (useless) nuance of their (mundane) lives with their friends/acquaintances/people they kinda met once. If these patterns ever emerge, you can put Facebook at the top of the chopping block as it’ll become the target of said pushback.
Massive elongated platform failure – Whether its by hackers or internal problems, a significant outage of Facebook and its related services could cause things to unravel in a significant way. I’d wager that if a Facebook Connect downtime prevents users from logging into websites/apps for more than a few days could cause the digital equivalent of a bank panic by both the web services and the end-users themselves.
Massive rapid shift to post-PC platforms – Similar to (1) above, if the shift from a computer-based world to a tablet iPad, phone, connected TV, and other device world happens, and Facebook can’t provide the same “glue”, they’ll be vulnerable.
Massive privacy breach – When I say massive in this case, I don’t just mean Facebook makes some (typically) poor decision regarding consumer rights/privacy, I mean something really awful happens, and its very public, and its entirely due to Facebook. Like, huge act of terrorism on highly visible people entirely tied to something that was Facebook’s fault.
Unknown – This would be the deux ex machina of today’s post – something otherwise unpredictable comes along and clobbers them over the head.

It’s hard to predict the end of giants or eras. But that they will fall and whither away is predictable. Curious to hear any other people’s thoughts on the topic in the comments below!

No, Microsoft, this will not do. Not at all.

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

Microsoft introduced Windows 8 for developers today, with a specific focus on their take on the tablet. Now some are fawning over this, but they clearly don’t recall a summer day in 2005 when Microsoft showed off Vista for the first time. I was there. It was, in a word awesome. The early demos of Vista blew us all away, it was as if we were at the Windows 95 launch all over again. Then Windows Vista came out, it was *nothing* like the demos, the train blew through the station, and the company’s been in a bit of a quagmire ever since, losing market share as well as credibility and prestige in virtually every category (other than Xbox).

roughly as on target as Vista was...

So today, when they show us a decently cool looking version of a tablet that isn’t going to ship for another year, after series of missteps, I’m sorry if I don’t really get particularly excited. Particularly when I see it’s got a fan inside. This entire move, yet again, makes me wonder: who on Earth are they building this for? What is the real market opportunity here? Even if the Windows 8 tablet *is* as good as the current generation iPad 2, that’s chasing a product that’s already 6 months old, and will be 18 months old by the time they are in the market. Didn’t these guys watch the movie called “HP and the Wacky Adventures of the TouchPad”? We’ve seen how it ends!

works like nothing... else...

There really is a great market for non-iPad tablet devices, there are a few in fact. And Microsoft is perfectly poised to build a really great tablet. But I don’t think that perfect Microsoft tablet is about consumers, nor is it about Windows. These markets are, at present and for the foreseeable future, mostly closed to Microsoft, and they’ll have little luck there. So empty your heads, don’t think of anything – they’ve only got one shot at this. Microsoft needs to focus on the other key product they have, the one software package Apple can’t really touch, the one where they make a boatload of cash. Yup, it’s Office.

yes, that WAS a Ghostbusters quote, well played!

I can write another 1000 or words on the topic, but I’m going to keep this one short and sweet. There is unquestionably a great business opportunity in a tablet device with a great Office productivity software suite. If the iPad is a consumption/entertainment device, then for jebus’ sake, Microsoft, learn how to cross-program, and offer a completely different thing. And do it really well, with no big committees, and nobody who’s worked for the company for more than say 4 years. And then go let Dell build it. Oh, and don’t standardize (read: compromise) – make one product that works one way, no drivers, fragmentation, or anything else.

ah, that's how they get so much done!

And please, don’t tell me about it until it’s ready to ship.

Smart TV: Not Dead Yet!

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

I'm Not Dead Yet!

There’s a post on Wired entitled “Smart-TV Space May Never Take Off as Predicted” in which the author quotes a comment from ViewSonic:

“’Smart TV’ has not achieved the consumer acceptance or market expectation… that was forecasted over the last couple years. In addition, consumer spending for Smart TV’s in general has experienced a significant slow down as the economy has slowed. Our current strategy is to stay involved with the various technology developments and consider them in the future as they become available.”

Now with all due respect to ViewSonic, the last time I checked they didn’t rank in the top 5 TV manufacturers, and based on looking at prior years reports, my hunch is they represent somewhere between 0-3% of TVs sold (they do well in monitors, not as much in TVs). So when they predict Smart TV to have a problem, perhaps they aren’t the voice we should be using, as compared to companies such as Samsung, who has over 2 million Smart TVs in homes already.

Source: DisplaySearch Quarterly Advanced Global TV Shipment and Forecast Report

As Michael Wolf, of GigaOM, tweeted: “Folks, Viewsonic is not the bellweather company by which to judge success of embryonic sector on #smarttv.” Now that said, I completely agree with James McQuivey (Forrester analyst who is hitting Smart TV issues squarely on the head):

“What’s happening in the connected TV space is it’s not really about what consumers want, it’s about what manufacturers are making,” Forrester principal analyst James McQuivey says. “Simply having a connected TV doesn’t mean you’ll actually use it.”

According to all the analysts and manufacturers I’ve spoken with personally, and that’s virtually all of them, the industry is pretty well agreed that somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of all Smart TVs actually get connected. Further, the vast majority of them are just using them for Netflix, and just about everything else is getting pretty well ignored (stats show the #1 Smart TV app is Netflix, #2 is YouTube, and #3 is “other”).

The Wired author goes on to cite failures of the Google TV Revue box as more evidence to why the market is stuttering. The truth is, the Revue box is failing because it’s a lousy product with a poor customer value proposition, and Kevin Bacon commercials aren’t enough to pull the wool over it. But this would be like saying there’s no SmartPhone market because the BlackBerry Storm wasn’t so hot.

Wait a sec, that's not a touch screen!

Last January I wrote a piece for Mashable called “5 Reasons Connected TV Could Flop in 2011” and in my opinion, all 5 of those problems are happening. And I don’t see anybody really emerging out of the pack to do it any better – yet. In fact, I’d wager we’re going to go a full calendar year from now before seeing signs of change. And here’s why:

The TV UI (aka “ten foot user interface” aka “lean back UI” aka “onscreen display”) is simply unable to scale to meet the demands of convergence. I’ll write more on this topic in the next couple of weeks, but mark my words: we have utterly reached the apex of functionality of all forms of TV-based user interfaces/experiences.

I believe TiVo pushed the concept to the breaking point with their original UX back in 1999, and I’ve seen nothing push it further since. Yes, there are some prettier looking things out there, with beautiful icons/etc, but from a UX standpoint, we’re well past the zenith of what you can do with a remote. And no, I don’t believe gestures are going to cut it either, and I’ll go into depth on that topic in an upcoming post as well.

I'd change the channel, but honestly my arms are just too tired.

The last point on Smart TV I have is this – the biggest “thing” that’s going to slow down all forms of growth is replacement cycle consideration. If you buy a device once every 7-8 years, yet know intrinsically that the technology inside that device will be outdated long before that, you are less likely to buy it. The only way manufacturers can solve this problem, as far as I can see it, is through a modular component that will enable future-proofing of the set. Hm, yup, time for a blog post on that.

So is the Smart TV world fragmented? Yes. Confounded? Yes. Faced with turbulence? Yes. Full of shoddy products that are causing backlash and poor word of mouth due to radically complicated living room experiences when all we want to do is kick back, turn on Bear Grylls, and have a beer? Absolutely. Dying? Nope, not even a tiny bit.

List of SmartTV Events for Fall 2011

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Jeremy Toeman

Budapest Parliament Hall. This would be an awesome place for a smart TV conference!

Just like my Future of TV Newsletter (thanks to all the subscribers – wow!), I thought it would be helpful for all my peers to create a list of all the events I’m tracking this Fall that have anything to do with Smart, Social, or Connected TV. That said, I’m sure I’m missing some (please email, tweet, or comment if you know of any!). The list below also includes some of the speakers that are presenting, though is incomplete (I only had so much room on the page, sorry to anyone I cut – it wasn’t personal. Well, mostly.).

The Future of #SocialTV – Sept 14 – New York City

Speakers include:

Brian Stelter, TV & Digital Media Reporter at The New York Times ( @BrianStelter)
Mark Ghuneim, CEO of Wiredset/Trendrr, @MarkGhuneim
Valerie Streit, Strategist at YouTube/NextNew, @ValStreit
Ryan Osborn, Director of Social Media at NBC News, @Rozzy
Alex Iskold, Founder & CEO of Get Glue, @AlexIskold