Jeremy Toeman – Page 3 – LIVEdigitally

Are we actually in a tech bubble? (nope)

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Jeremy Toeman

Just read a piece by someone anonymous (which I don’t actually have a problem with) about how we are in a bubble. The money quote from my perspective is:

We’re in a bubble and the market is overheated. That’s not disputable. That doesn’t mean we don’t have a few good years left before lean times set in. Fools tend to call peaks early and often.

I’m sorry, but this is a poor argument for “we’re in a bubble”. Regardless of your belief of the statement, having rationales of “I’m older than you”, “markets have downturns”, and “capital mgmt is heavily investing in tech” is insufficient to support a bubble (or not) theory.

For us to be in a bubble means there’s some underlying fundamental that’s incorrect. For example, in dot-com it was “anyone can IPO – wheee this is fun!” and in ’08 it was “houses will soon be worth infinite money, buy now!”. I’m paraphrasing of course. But I have yet to hear a single convincing argument of “the thing” that the bubble is built on.

Today, I can look at signs of VC investment into, say the sharing economy, or drones, or VR, or some sector I’m not personally a believer in and conclude: “VCs are overly banking on XXX.” If I’m correct, many VCs will lose money on those investments – but that’s actually part of the model there, so not a bubble. Further, a specific sector, ex Sharing Economy, could turn out to be bogus – which will cause a boatload of fail, but not a collapsing bubble.

Or I can say “the tech sector of the public market is overvalued” and therefore there’s a bubble. Well, there could be a correction, and tech companies may lose value – or the entire market – but this still has nothing to do with bubbles.

I could point to all sorts of other “signals”, like bloggers becoming VCs, or theories about robot world domination, or millions of dollars poured into building a SmartCup. But what are they signal of? That a smart individual is changing careers, or that a prominent technologist has a theory about something, or that someone really wants to know if they are drinking apple juice or… not apple juice? Not bubbles (unless it’s sparkling apple juice, that is).

Fundamentally, as another guy who was here through the entire dot-com cycle through to today, the current state of the tech industry seems to be full of companies that, gasp, actually make a bunch of money. And it’s full of many many companies who will fail, taking smart people and smart money down with them. Such is life. But this too, does not a bubble make.

On a related note – I do want my Kozmo back.

Let’s Start Fixing Twitter – For Real

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Jeremy Toeman

It’s fair to say that for many mainstream users, the Twitter experience is pretty broken for anything other than celebrity stalking. It’s way too easy to make mistakes with serious consequences (DM for the fail), @replies are wonky, and #hashtags #really #OMG #canwekilltheseobnoxiousthings #JimmyFallon #JustinTimberlake #FTW. Real-time translation is nice, but it’s the sprinkles, not the cake. Here are my simple fixes to the Twitter experience that I’d love to see happen:

Fix media tweets.

Here’s a recent tweet with an image link:

Why on earth is there a link, highly visible, to the exact page the user is on? This makes, literally, no sense and contributes to a cluttered interface. Fix this: removing all awkward links.

Eliminate character use for @mentions

Personally I’d question the 140-character limit at this point – it’s arbitrary and while limits are a good thing, maybe 200 is better? Maybe 250? Who knows? Frcing txtspk on nrml ppl is rlly annoying if u want their attn in the long run. Kthxbye. Either way, using characters in communications means the system discourages people with longer twitter names from conversations, and further discourages users from having engagements with multiple people simultaneously. So @ESPN is rewarded, @BleacherReport is punished. And those poor @Kardashians. Fix this: each @reply only counts as a single character each.

So now I could write a tweet that could include @all @three @kardashians but those 22 characters would be reduced to 3, and I’d still have tons of space for telling them how amazing they are and make the world a better place. I mean, I don’t actually know what they do, but they wouldn’t be so popular if they weren’t somehow contributing to the greater good, I assume.

Ditto for hashtags and URLs

Before I go into whether or not I think #hashtags #make #sense, again if we want to see more engagements with more people on more topics, Twitter should encourage their use (and links), as opposed to discourage it. Even with a URL shortener (next topic), linking out takes up far too much of my precious character space. Fix this: each #hashtag and link only count as a single character each.

Auto-fix ALL link URLs with sensical content

I don’t want to see a bit.ly or an ow.ly or a t.co – ever again.

Why do we have to see these things? Beyond the possibility for malicious links, it’s just not necessary. Fix this: The twitter “client” (web or mobile app) should replace all these links with either the full destination URL, or better yet, the Title tag of the destination page.

Eliminate “mistakes” in DM or @replies

In every medium but Twitter, mistakes are correctible before sending. Sure you might have meant to BCC your colleague instead of CC’ing them, or you accidentally hit reply-all, but these mistakes are in plain sight prior to hitting send. In Twitter-land, since one can create a DM via the Create Tweet button, it’s far too easy to make a mistake.

Similarly, I’d make a big wager that even highly proficient Twitter users are unaware that tweets starting with an @reply are NOT seen by their followers in their own feed. So when someone wants to go on a “@brandname you destroyed my life” rant with the intent of public visibility, then wonders why there’s no retweets happening, they should be able to figure it out. Fix this: eliminate the ability to craft DMs other than by the “DM” button, and add a pop-up informing the user about their attempts at either manual DMs or @replies so they understand the consequence of the Tweet.

Fix Search & Hashtags

I am not an expert at search, but I accept that trying to search a colossal data feed that’s constantly moving and updating sounds like a big problem. And hashtags are just plain ugly. But either way, it is increasingly true that neither manual search or following hashtags is an effective way to get information out of the Twitter stream beyond a lot of noise. Fix this: you’re kind of on your own here, but you employ a lot of smart people – make this a priority.

Improve the Game Mechanics

Last I read the average Twitter user (who even Tweets, at all) has about a dozen followers, most of whom are likely just bots informing them about deals they could get on new iPads. There’s literally no way to “catch up” to people who started a few years ahead of them, and because follower count is so prominently displayed across all aspects of Twitter, the game mechanics inherently discourage becoming an active user. Fix this: there are tons of ways to improve the find & follow experience, which must become part of onboarding and daily use.

Conclusion

I could go on a lot longer on little tweaks here and there. Twitter still has, in my eyes, a lot of interesting potential in so many different fields – but it just has to focus focus focus on product and user engagement. Trending topics is increasingly annoying, the new user experience is still mostly a disaster, etc. Maybe I’ll write another post, or leave it to you to comment here and add your thoughts. Then we can all tweet about it with hashtags and such!

Solution to Facebook Feed Problem: Trust Your Users

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Jeremy Toeman

Facebook is constantly “tweaking” their news feed algorithm – the thing that determines what you see. The current rules seem to be:

Baby photos
Pictures of food
Pictures of exotic locations
Updates from people you rarely interact with
More baby photos, in case you missed some
The stuff you actually find interesting

I don’t need to visit the neighborhood psychic to make a simple predication: Facebook cannot possibly make all users happy, no matter how much they tweak.

Personally I’ve pretty much abandoned the ‘book, but as I talk to people who use it more than I do, I’ve noticed a simple common theme running across them. Everyone looks at Facebook a little differently. To some it’s a way to stay in touch with anyone they’ve ever met. To others its a vital communications tool. Another friend of mine calls it a digital “locker room”. I can go on at length, but the only thing I’ve learned is there’s literally no way to define Facebook consistently. And if its users can’t do it, neither can the company.

So instead of continuously reworking the magic algorithm (and upsetting the revenue generators while they’re at it), Facebook should switch strategies, and follow the same things that the audio/video industry figured out a long while ago: create some feed profile archetypes, and let the users take control.

What does CATS do???

Most of the time, we leave the TV in the default profile (which, by the way, you should never, ever do), and it works just fine (because you don’t know what you should be seeing). So Facebook could do the same thing:

Of course, includes C.A.T.S.!

The default could be the ever-changing-tweaky-awesome-algorithm-of-magic, which is fine. It would then be easy for the user to change their View of Facebook to reflect what they want to see. It wouldn’t prevent Facebook from running ads, nor neglect the evilness of Boosts, but would probably make everyone’s life in and out of the industry just a wee bit easier.

Even my car stereo from the 90s had an equalizer…

Why Does Anyone Expect More From Apple?

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Jeremy Toeman

Just read Walt Mossberg’s piece on “Apple is Like a Movie Studio” where he (as he typically does) makes excellent points on consumer electronics and Apple’s role in them for the past decade. But then the piece moves into the following statement:

But there have been no new game-changing products, the kind that establish whole new categories, or which finally get product categories right after others had attempted for years to do so. The last of these, the original iPad, was released four years ago this month.

This is true. But really – how off the charts are these expectations? In the last decade Apple “pioneered” (I use the term somewhat loosely since there were actually other players in the space, just none of them building anything on par with what Apple did), and today lead the categories for:

ultrathin laptops – MacBook Air
smartphones – iPhone
tablets – iPad
internet STBS – Apple TV

So if we’re doing the “movie studio” analogy let’s call them Pixar (or Universal or whatever). If the comparison is “invented entire categories” can we name *ANY* other movie studio on a relative basis? I cannot. Sure, Samsung, LG, Microsoft, others “make devices” but what have they actually done on par with Apple? Nothing. I’m not bashing the Galaxy phone or LG TVs or HP laptops in any way disparaging those companies – but they have NOT created new markets out of thin air the way Apple has this past decade.

So perhaps they might not have any more category killers that the world’s never seen. So what? “sequel time is over”? This is the problem with setting such expectations – if they “just” act like their competitors, and make (and sell) lots of devices – is that really such a failure? Mind you I don’t believe this to be their fate, but so what?

If you really, REALLY must compare to movies, then let’s call them James Bond. some years you get The Living Daylights or The World is Not Enough (excuse me while I vomit into my popcorn watching Denise Richards be a “Nucular” Engineer or whatever)… But sometimes you get Dr. No, or Goldfinger, and those are the ones everyone remembers. And along the way a Bourne or Mission Impossible show up, and they’re pretty great too – for a while. And it could even be another decade, but somehow, out of nowhere, you get a Casino Royale, and all is right in the world again.

Thoughts on Amazon Fire TV

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Jeremy Toeman

Let me open by saying: clear win for Amazon. Here’s why:

Internet streamers are still a growing market, only present in less than a quarter of US households – not to mention International opportunities. Bringing *any* product to market under the Amazon brand is sufficient to move units. Amazon has an amazing channel to sell through, and numerous reports cite them as the #1 outlet for both Chromecast and Roku products.
It’s at worst a good-enough product, at best it’s the most thoroughly designed Internet STB available on the market today. Unlike the first gen of Kindle Fire, which had to compete against a mature iPad, there’s nothing utterly amazing in the category to compare against.
Supporting non-Amazon content is brilliant. I think they could’ve pulled off a winner just by supporting Amazon Prime and Amazon Instant Video, but now it opens up to anyone who watches any streaming content. Plus, just as Apple TV helps sell iTunes content, I’d be shocked to discover that FireTV households don’t slowly convert into Amazon content customers.
I’ve heard some naysay (already!) about the price point, and how it should be cheaper than Apple TV to compete. Totally disagree, no reason to do this as there’s no other magic point under $99 other than hitting $49, which I don’t see a reason to do.

Other stuff I like:

Voice search seems nicely done, especially in context with the mess of any 10-foot-UI experience.
Gaming! Very smart to make this a core component of the platform – I actually hope this remains in the cheap, simple, and easy category of gaming. Not that I don’t love trying to push 17 buttons on my Xbox controller simultaneously, but I think “Big Gaming” is just too complex these days and there’s a latent opportunity for simpler stuff.
Gary Busey

My two minor (emphasis on minor) missed opportunities:

HDMI passthrough. The single good aspect of the original Logitech Google TV product was HDMI passthrough – it let the end-user connect the device to the fought-after Input One, and work well. While I know adding passthrough isn’t going to sell any more Fire TV’s, it’s one of those little things I’ve been hoping for.
Not Free With Prime. Okay, this isn’t exactly fair to complain about, but I harbored this suspicion that Amazon would offer the Fire TV free with a 2-year Prime subscription. Now they always can just start a program like this, but I think it’d be a major wow-er out of the gate.

Let me close this this: building products is hard. Building really good products is very very hard. To get a 1.0 product out of the gate in such a strong state is impressive work, and while many might call it a “me-too”, I don’t. I think this is the exact right first step for Amazon in the living room, and will keep an eye on where it goes from here.

Prediction: Amazon Fire TV is the #2 Internet STB on the market (behind Apple) within 2 years.

Also, and again, Gary Busey.

Facebook’s Brand Extortion Perception Problem

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Jeremy Toeman

I originally read Eat24’s “breaking up with Facebook” post via Zite and it echoed so true, I shared it with a lot of folks I know. I wasn’t planning to blog anything, but wrote such a long comment to Mathew Ingram’s piece, I thought, hey, why not – let’s blog this one!

I don’t think anyone’s complaining about signal-to-noise, or even paying to have reach. I’ve never heard a brand complain about running Facebook ads. I think they are complaining about the following:

Facebook users are instructed to Like brands to get updates from them. There is no mention to users as to how to control frequency of said updates, nor any disclosure about brands *having to pay* to reach them.

This is at best unfortunately disingenuous. At worst its deliberately misleading.

What makes it all much, much worse, IS the tweaking of algorithm. If you were managing a brand’s Facebook page, you’ve noticed a steady drop in every single stat/category – unless, of course, you pay. This too is not disclosed to brands. As a result, it certainly appears that Facebook initially made it free & easy for brands to get “hooked” on posting to Facebook, and then, without warning, came along and said brands would then need to pay for the same reach they previously enjoyed.

Now we can certainly remain positively-minded and call this “evolution of a model” – but it sure comes across a lot like extortion. And when Facebook replies with callous comments, it does nothing but reinforce that perception.

Personally, if I were running a brand, I’d make every effort possible to create a funnel FROM my Facebook page to *anything else*. Email newsletters, Twitter accounts, etc – all services where the expectation/understanding of how brands are positioned *to consumers* is clear. The problem I see for Facebook is I’m not the only one thinking this way – it’s an increasing sentiment and one they should stem the tide of.

I’d suggest they start by fixing 3 things:

Inform Users that Liking a brand on Facebook is not the same as subscribing to a newsletter. It’s an indication of taste, and occasionally that brand may appear in a Wall feed.
Guarantee Something to brands so they can make meaningful long term plans. I think a lot of brand managers would feel better about betting on Facebook if they could provide guaranteed plans of any kind – I wonder how many people have had to tell their boss that their reach dropped 90% without anyone knowing how/why.
Enable Subscribing to Brands for end-users. I understand Facebook controls the overall algorithm, but how about letting a user take control of some components? This could be a paid service to the brand – whatever – but if I *want* to get every update from a Reebok, Nike, NextGuide, Eat24 – shouldn’t I be able to?

Why it’s (almost) 2014 and you still need a set top box

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Jeremy Toeman

I actually had one of these!

I stumbled onto a discussion on Quora entitled “Why do we still have television set top boxes?” and as I often see, it’s full of conjecture and suspicion about the evil empire that is the pay TV industry. While I am not specifically trying to support or vilify anyone from that industry, I thought it worthy a response that has less conspiracy theory than others. So let’s start with some important facts:

1) Set Top Boxes (STB’s) take, on average, from day of deployment 30+ months to “break even” for a cable company2) Any tech support, home maintenance (“truck roll”), etc is costly to a cable company
3) Software updates, QA, etc are slow and costly to a cable company
4) Most north american pay TV providers now enable some form of “TV everywhere” service available by App or Browser
5) Many pay TV providers now offer same apps on Roku, Apple TV, and several smart TVs
6) Smart TV software platform updates happen 1+/year – which could easily result in incompatibility with pay TV services. Only very recently have any of the manufacturers begun to standardize their own platforms.
7) The technology in homes is moving at an *extreme* pace, so even if a pay TV operator is moving “fast” they will still appear, relatively speaking, to be moving slowly.
7a) thinking point – Until about 5 years ago, this just wasn’t the case at at all, the pay TV providers didn’t really even need to innovate whatsoever. So here we are 5 years later and they have APIs, multiple apps, etc – not too many industries one could point to and make a similar statement about incumbents…

I think if you add the above together, the answer should be something like this:

The pay TV industry would be happy to rid itself of STBs, but only *very recently* have viable alternatives hit the market. Pay TV companies are very rapidly adopting these platforms, but your definition of “rapid” is radically out of whack with how an established industry moves. Over the next few years you should expect most North American Pay TV providers to give you as a consumer multiple options for using their services in the platform of your choosing.

As a bonus:
8) CableCards *could have been* a good solution, but were way too soon to market to make the industry comfortable with them. Ask yourself this question: if you were the person in charge of P&L on the hardware deployment business, and you knew full well that consumers will call you with any problems whatsoever, would you support some “standard” by which *other company’s hardware* was causing YOU customer service issues? Me neither.

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