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How Google Can Beat Facebook: No, Its Not on the Web

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, FaceBook, google, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Technology, Web 2.0, Wireless 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

“A few years ago, Jeff Jarvis, a good friend of mine, published a book called What Would Google Do? When he wrote that book, Google had an aura of invincibility. Fast forward to today: Thanks to Facebook, it doesn’t seem so invincible. The new social web has passed it by. So, the question today is: What should Google do?

I’ve always maintained Google has to play to its strengths – that is, tap into its DNA of being an engineering-driven culture that can leverage its immense infrastructure. It also needs to leverage its existing assets even more, instead of chasing rainbows. In other words, it needs to look at Android and see if it can build a layer of services that get to the very essence of social experience: communication.

However, instead of getting bogged down by the old-fashioned notion of communication – phone calls, emails, instant messages and text messages – it needs to think about interactions. In other words, Google needs to think of a world beyond Google Talk, Google Chat and Google Voice.

To me, interactions are synchronous, are highly personal, are location-aware and allow the sharing of experiences, whether it’s photographs, video streams or simply smiley faces. Interactions are supposed to mimic the feeling of actually being there. Interactions are about enmeshing the virtual with the physical.

In a post earlier, I outlined that with the introduction of its unified Inbox, the constantly changing Facebook had shifted its core value proposition from being a plain vanilla social network to a communication company. Here’s a relevant bit from that post.

Facebook imagined email only as a subset of what is in reality communication. SMS, Chat, Facebook messages, status updates and email is how Zuckerberg sees the world. With the address book under its control, Facebook is now looking to become the “interaction hub” of our post-broadband, always-on lives. Having trained nearly 350 million people to use its stream-based, simple inbox, Facebook has reinvented the “communication” experience. …. Facebook as a service is amazingly effective when it focuses all its attention on what is the second order of friends – people you would like to stay in touch with, but just don’t have enough bandwidth (time) to stay in touch with. Those who matter to you the most are infinitely intimate, and as a result you communicate with them via SMS, IM Chat and voice. So far, this intimate communication has eluded Facebook. The launch of the new social inbox is a first step by Facebook to get a grip on this real world intimacy.

In 2007, I had argued that the real social network in our lives was the address book on our mobile phone. Google has access to real-world intimacy – the mobile phone address book – thanks to Android OS. All it has to do is use that as a lever to facilitate interactions.

In order to understand Google’s interaction-driven social future, one doesn’t have to look far: no further than Apple’s iTunes app store.  As you know, I have switched from BlackBerry to the iPhone, and as a result, I’ve been looking for a BBM replacement, and have been playing around with a score of apps.

In the process of searching for this app, I came across an app called Beluga, which essentially allows me to connect to my friends. And then I can create Pods (essentially Groups) with one or more of my friends. Sort of like what I did on BBM. Except, there’s more to Beluga.

It taps into my social graph (Facebook); it leverages my location, and it allows me to share photos as part of the messaging process. It’s a beautifully designed application that’s very inviting – and the experience is less communication, more interaction.

What’s beautiful about Beluga is it’s as personal and private as you want it to be. It’s just ironic that Beluga was co-founded by three Google engineers — Ben Davenport, Lucy Zhang and Jonathan Perlow — and if you see their bios, it is hardly a surprise that they ended up with an interaction-centric product like Beluga.

Yesterday, I was introduced to a new app called Yobongo, and it comes from a San Francisco startup co-founded by alumni of Justin.tv. It’s a good-looking application that leverages your location, allowing you to find people around you and to chat with them. It is at the extreme opposite of Beluga: It’s open, and you can chat with anyone. It is very real-time in nature. Of course, there are other apps like Yobongo: MessageParty, for example!

What’s common between these two apps is their ability for synchronous messaging. This messaging can, in turn, become the under-pinning of what I earlier called interactions.

Ability to interact on an ongoing basis anywhere, any time and sharing everything, from moments to emotions – is what social is all about. From my vantage point, this is what Google should focus on. If not — you know it very well — Facebook will.”

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RSA conference looks at online vulnerability

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , on February 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from SFGate.

“The hottest trends in technology also represent some of the gravest threats to corporate data security.

Mobile devices, social networking and cloud computing are opening up new avenues for both cyber criminals and competitors to access critical business information, according to speakers at this week’s RSA Conference 2011 at San Francisco‘s Moscone Center and a survey set for release this morning.

The poll of 10,000 security professionals, by Mountain View market research firm Frost & Sullivan, also concluded that corporate technology staffs are frequently ill prepared to deal with many of the new threats presented by these emerging technologies.

“The professionals are really struggling to keep up,” said Rob Ayoub, global program director for information security research at Frost & Sullivan.

Mobile: Mobile devices ranked near the top of their security concerns, coming in second behind applications, such as internally developed software and Internet browsers.

Businesses face a number of threats from the increasingly common use of smart phones and tablets by their workers, including malicious software that attacks the operating systems, or the simple loss or theft of devices often laden with corporate information.

Juniper Networks, a sponsor of the RSA conference, presented some eye-catching – if also self-serving – statistics during a session titled “Defend Your Mobile Life.”

Mark Bauhaus, an executive vice president at Juniper, said that 98 percent of mobile devices like smart phones and tablets aren’t protected with any security software, and that few users set up a password. That’s troublesome, he said, given that:

— 2 million people in the United States either lost or had their phones stolen last year;

— 40 percent of people use their smart phone for both personal and business use;

— 72 percent access sensitive information, including banking, credit card and medical records;

— 80 percent access their employer’s network over these devices without permission.

Bauhaus stressed the need to adopt mobile applications and online services – which Juniper not coincidentally provides – that remotely turn off and wipe gadgets, blacklist spammers, detect and remove viruses, and ensure that devices are safe before connecting to corporate networks.

Hackers have already tried to exploit the popularity of mobile applications by writing Trojan Horses, malicious programs that appear to be helpful apps in online markets, said two researchers from Lookout Mobile Security of San Francisco in a separate session.

Once users install the app, however, it can disable the phone, force it to execute commands or snatch information.

Since late December, two Trojans have been identified on Android phones that represented significant leaps in technological sophistication, said Kevin Mahaffey, chief technology officer of Lookout, which also develops mobile security services.

Known as Geinimi and HongTouTou, both are examples of malicious software inserted into otherwise familiar and legitimate apps.

“We’re nowhere near the level of sophistication you see in desktop malware, but it’s definitely a step up from what we’ve seen to date,” Mahaffey said.

Cloud: A Wednesday morning session titled “Cloud Computing: A Brave New World for Security and Privacy,” highlighted the considerations that businesses should bear in mind before using such a system, in which data are stored on remote server farms rather than ensconced behind a company’s own walls.

Placing corporate e-mails, human resource information or credit card numbers outside the company’s physical domain raises a number of legal, privacy and security issues, according to the panel.

Hackers go after cloud providers for the same reason that criminals rob banks, said Eran Freigenbaum, director of security for Google Apps.

“Cloud providers are going to get attacked and get attacked, because that’s where the data is,” he said.

The measure of a cloud service, like those provided by Google, Amazon.com or Salesforce.com, are how they hold up against such assaults and respond to exposed vulnerabilities, he said.”

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Android soars to 53% of U.S. smartphone sales in Q4

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from Fierce Mobile.

“Devices running Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android mobile operating system encompassed more than half of all U.S. smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2010 according to market research firm NPD Group. Android increased its U.S. market share lead to 53 percent as 2010 closed, up 9 percentage points over Q3–Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS slipped 4 percentage points to account for 19 percent of sales, tied with Research In Motion’s (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry (down 2 percentage points). NPD notes that Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) legacy Windows Mobile OS dropped 3 points to 4 percent of the U.S. market, while its new Windows Phone 7 debuted at 2 percent, deadlocked with Palm’s webOS. The firm adds that Windows Phone 7 claimed a smaller market share at launch than either Android or webOS during their respective debuts.
Apple’s iPhone 4 was the best-selling mobile phone in the U.S. during the fourth quarter, followed in descending order by Motorola’s Droid X, HTC’s Evo 4G, the iPhone 3GS and Motorola’s Droid 2. For the first time ever, NPD’s quarterly Top Five sales chart did not include a feature phone device.
Android is now the top-selling smartphone OS worldwide as well–Android unit shipments surpassed Symbian device shipments for the first time in the fourth quarter according to data issued technology analysis firm Canalys. Android shipments topped 33.3 million in Q4, translating to a 32.9 percent share of the global smartphone market, Canalys reports; a year earlier, Android shipments represented just 8.7 percent of the worldwide market, a 615.1 percent leap. Symbian shipments grew from 23.9 million in Q4 2009 to 31.0 million in the most recent quarter–however, its worldwide market share plummeted from 44.4 percent to 30.6 percent during that time.
iPhone shipments increased from 8.7 million in Q4 2009 to 16.2 million a year later–its smartphone market share slipped from 16.3 percent to 16.0 percent. BlackBerry fell from 20.0 percent market share to 14.4 percent as device shipments increased from 10.7 million to 14.6 million–Windows Phone also stumbled, with its market share falling from 7.2 percent to 3.1 percent as smartphone shipments decreased from 3.9 million in Q4 2009 to 3.1 million a year later. Total worldwide smartphone shipments surpassed 101.2 million in the fourth quarter, up 89 percent year-over-year.

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Generating wealth from the web. Is “follow” the new economic model poised to take on “search”?

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, tagged , , , , , , , on December 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

By: Tony Fish – Principal at AMF Ventures and member of Board of Intellectual Capital.

I wrote that Social filtering is deeply human at the beginning of November and I knew that there was more to the topic/ theme/ thought then but I could not articulate it.  Since then I have been juggling with various ideas, these have often been driven by my necessity to justify Twitter.  Twitter, get it or not, provides a function called “follow” – you can follow who you like, and you get updates/ insight/ information/ attention from them. However, can you turn “follow” into value and is following your social filter based on those you trust.

Follow has an obvious value to the person who follows the leader.  You gain free insights/ selection/ value/ updates/.  This social filter is based on trust and it is different from curators and editors who have specific agenda’s and income/ profit requirements. In the original post I quoted David Armano  “Often times the quality of links and information I get on Twitter is better than what I would have gotten from Google because the knowledge of the human feed is deep, niche, and fickle.”

Scenarios
Here are several scenarios to consider when thinking how we could turn follow into value and comparing outcomes from search and social networking, they are not exhaustive but should provide a good place to start a train of thought.

1, I am looking for a great Thai restaurant

  1. Search.   Type in “Great Thai restaurant” into Google, my mobile sends my location and Google takes a guess I want food tonight and near to where I am search, reasonable assumptions driven from our need for context and personalisation.  From the “unknown algorithm based results” that favours Google, I then read some third party reviews which I cannot judge if they are paid, biased or just vocal. Is the selection any better than walking past and seeing how many people are sitting in the restaurant?
  2. Post to Facebook and ask my friends and my network where a “Great Thai restaurant is” – there is more work to this one and I am wholly dependent on someone helping.  Size of network helps at this point.
  3. Twitter/ follow. I love Thai and I am already following others who love Thai.  I Tweet to my network of same minded followers who can deliver a recommendation.

In option 1 – Google wins.  In option 2 – Facebook wins.  In option 3 – the community wins and the person who helped me may get a discount on their next meal.

2.  I want to invest some money

  1. Search.   Type in “Great Investment fund” into Google. From the “unknown algorithm based results” that favours Google I will click on some links and read, subject to many legal notices, about the performance of various funds.  If I invest I will have watch and wait for the results.
  2. Post to Facebook and ask my friends and my network about their experiences with “Investment funds.” Not sure I would really be that happy with this for many reasons including telling the world about my desire to invest.
  3. Twitter/follow.  I love to invest and I am already following others who love investment.  I follow a service that allows me to manage my own money (never give up control) and I invest based on what the best in class is doing (www.covestor.com) To follow the best investor I share some of the upside.  No management fees, no overheads, risk on my terms, stop and start when I like.  Worth noting that J.P Morgan funds investment advice is now on iTunes

In option 1 – Google wins.  In option 2 – no-one wins.  In option 3 – the person who I follow gets a share of my upside, assuming that they want to create value over time and not destroy it once.

3.  What is hot in tech/ service/ my industry

  1. Search.   Type in “what is hot in tech” into Google. From the “unknown algorithm based results” that favours Google I will click on some links and read.  The top tech web sites are there with breaking news.  I can use various tools to determine what is hot and trending or I can use my “reader” to filter from my own favourites.
  2. Post to Facebook and ask my friends and my network about what they think is hot.  Day 1; I will get a few views. Day 10; I will get a less help and probably a polite note telling me not to ask again.
  3. Twitter/ follow. I look at what is trending and select a few “trusted” people to follow and follow updates as and when they occur.  I add value to my network by adding my own opinion, or pay to sit there and listen.

In option 1 – Google wins.  In option 2 – no-one wins.  In option 3 – the community/ cluster wins.

Logical response
The obvious contention to these three and very simple scenarios is; to Quote Paul Rodriguez who commented,  “lemmings, pied piper, following somebody the wrong way up a one way street, jump off a cliff if I told you, following the falling domino in front and having the falling domino behind follow you, following somebody you trust, who is following somebody they trust who is following somebody they trust who is following somebody stupid, the list is endless…the risk is that instead of having the madness of crowds, maybe the 21st century equivalent is the madness of tweets? Laws such as the snowball effect and the law of unintended consequences become far more amplified in an interconnected world. In which case market (and wealth) fluctuations become more volatile, but then you only *truly* make money on the gradient.”

I expect that there is a lot of empathy for the logic of this response, however, is follow (Twitter or other tech based follow services) any different from what we have today with editors/ press/ celebrity and broadcast as we all believe everything from the red top tabloids and sky/fox news!

Context
However, putting follow into context Researchers at HP Labs discovered that Twitter can predict, with astonishing accuracy, how well a movie will sell. The researches at HP started by monitoring movie mentions in 2.9 million tweets from 1.2 million users over three months. These included 24 movies in all, ranging from Avatar to Twilight: New Moon.  Then they took two different approaches, dealing with two very different performance metrics: the first weekend performance, which is largely built on buzz and the second weekend performance, which is largely built whether people actually like the movie. To predict first weekend performance, they built a computer model, which factored in two variables: the rate of tweets around the release date and the number of theatres its released in. Lo and behold, that model was 97.3% accurate in predicting opening weekend box office. By contrast, the Hollywood Stock Exchange, which has been the gold standard for opening box-office predictions, had a 96.5% accuracy. “

What should be even more alluring to business strategists and CEO’s; as Tech Review points out, Twitter might be more than just a mirror of mass sentiment – the service might also influence it. In other words, could you actually make a product launch far more successful with a really smart Twitter/ Follow strategy?   However are we measuring or observing the results of a system in motion and in the process influencing those results? For anyone with a science background this will bring up Werner Heisenberg and The Uncertainty Principle Heisenberg determined that “both the position and momentum of a particle cannot be known simultaneously.”   The dichotomy raises the mind-boggling prospect that unless we observe an event or thing, it hasn’t really happened, that all possible futures are quantum probability functions waiting for someone to notice them – trees falling unheard in a forest. Maybe this blog never existed until you searched for it and Google created it as you wanted it!

(Yes for those who have mastered QM I am confusing the observer effect of with the uncertainty principle. Technically the uncertainty principle has nothing to do with “observing”, it has to do with measuring. The observer effect is a supposed effect of observing an event and the influence of your observations on the event. No one would ever have to actually observe a particle’s position to obfuscate its momentum, the mere act of using the photons to measure its position, even if nobody ever observed it, would suffice. It’s the act of measuring, not actually observing that causes the uncertainty principle, but when observation requires something that may cause change the problems occur).

Anyway, how does this relate to the analysis and feedback within my framework of thinking about Follow?  Think about it this way:  The mere act of observing a social change, changes the behaviour of that social object.  In “reality TV” they put cameras in front of “real” people for the viewer to watch how “real” people behave, date, compete, etc.  But this in fact makes those on camera less and less real.   They’re not actors, nor are they behaving like normal people.  They are somewhere in between the two.

In the case of Twitter predicting a movie success, could an editor or critic have the same effect, if they could do it in real time and not on paper? How does Google real time search affect your searching habits and techniques.  You no longer have freedom in the web, as the recommendation is based on what the crowd says is important and therefore we are actually just lemmings.

Restating the Problem
Therefore the problem (Generating wealth from the web) is far more complex, multifaceted and inter-twangled, as there is unlikely to be a single source.

  • Do I want to be directed by people I trust but I may not be able to determine their source – Follow
  • Do I want to be directed by an unknown algorithm that can change at any time and could be biased to their own needs – Search
  • Do I want to be directed by Brands – Marketing/Ads
  • Do I want to be directed by the media/ editors/ critics where I may be able to determine their bias – Broadcast/ News
  • Do I want to be directed by the fashion/ celebrity – Sales

This complex dependency is an issue that editors and bloggers have faced time over.  Do I post based on what people want to read, based on clicks and response data or what I find interesting – are we (am I) adaptive or reactive, do we want to be individual or loved or make money or provide democracy or lead?

I really don’t need to know what you had for lunch and I don’t have to follow you.  Follow would put me in control and can seek out value from the community and not some bland algorithm that controls what part of the web I can see. However the issue facing follow is how will I pay the platform that underpins the service?

Wrapping up
This long Viewpoint started with the idea that “follow” is the new economic model poised to take on “search” and I believe that there is value in “follow.” Reading that Google offered $3bn for Twitter makes be believe that there are other strategists who are struggling with the same issues and the value!

If you would like to chat about the opportunities that digital footprint data brings, especially from the perspective of mobile and real time feedback, please contact me at tony.fish@amfventures.com.  The book is free on line at http://www.mydigitalfootprint.com/ or you can buy it direct from the publisher at the web site. There is also a summary and a eReader/ Kindle version.

We hope that our Viewpoint improves awareness, raises questions and promotes deliberation over coffee. We will respond to e-mail, text, twitter (@tonyfish)  or blog comments. http://blog.mydigitalfootprint.com
Kind regards,
Tony Fish

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Microsoft, Facebook strengthen partnership

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, tagged , , , , , , on November 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from SFGate.

“Microsoft Corp. and Facebook Inc., the onetime technology king and the claimant to the throne, are forming an increasingly unified front in the battle for industry supremacy against Google Inc.

The software and social-networking giants have announced a series of partnerships in recent months, including the integration of Facebook user data into Microsoft’s Bing search engine results and the use of its Office applications in the Palo Alto company’s planned communications service.

No single initiative announced so far represents a clear game changer, analysts say. But the Redmond, Wash., software company lends some hefty industry support to a Facebook vision of the Internet that’s far different from the one that fostered Google’s rise, some argue.

‘Substantial threat’

“When you add all of these (collaborations) up – and there seem to be more of them every week – then it really is a very substantial threat to Google,” said Ray Valdes, an analyst with Gartner Inc.

He and others believe that cues in social networks, like a friend’s links and “likes,” are becoming increasingly important guides to the Internet experience, which could over time undermine the importance of the online searches that Google has long dominated. If so, it might become increasingly difficult for Google to sustain the growth in its core business and it could give Bing a powerful advantage, because its search results now incorporate friends’ preferences.

But, of course, those are all big ifs, mights and coulds.

For one, it assumes that Google won’t develop its own social capabilities – an effort it’s known to be pouring resources into after several whiffs – or strike a similar deal with Facebook. It’s unclear whether Google would want a partnership that would grant its competitor so much credence, or whether the Bing relationship is an exclusive one. Microsoft referred the question to Facebook, which didn’t respond to an inquiry from The Chronicle.

It’s also notable that even with the spectacular rise of Facebook, marked by a six-year sprint to more than 500 million users, Google’s advertising revenue from keyword searches continues to swell. Meanwhile, the Mountain View search behemoth is demonstrating an ability to generate money outside its core business, saying during a third-quarter conference call that display advertising and mobile revenue reached $2.5 billion and $1 billion, respectively, on an annualized basis.

“As the Web evolves – from mobile to video to display ads to cloud computing – our business grows with it, and the results speak for themselves,” a Google spokesman said.

Different philosophy

Google has stressed that its philosophical approach to technology differs fundamentally from those of key competitors, dubbing theirs an open system that allows users to control their information and other companies to adapt the software as they see fit. By extension, it has suggested or stated that companies like Facebook, Microsoft and Apple Inc. generally operate closed systems that tightly control user data and experiences.

“I worry … that the business structures are causing (companies) to keep too much private information,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said during an interview at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week. “We’ve taken the position that user data is the user’s, and it should be possible for them to move it back and forth.”

Open, closed systems

There’s ample debate, however, over the appropriate definitions of open and closed systems, and whether Google sometimes acts like the latter when it fits its interests. Moreover, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last month, when discussing the highly popular and tightly integrated iPhone, closed systems sometimes win.

“The link between (Facebook and Microsoft), especially across applications and communications, can be a very powerful partnership,” said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies Inc. in Campbell.”

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