The secret sauce of Social Media

I recently read the inaugural blog of a good friend, Marco Cuttin. He makes a very nice walk on memory lane going through all the communications systems and how they evolved.

However, while Marco shows the similarity and how they evolved, fails to point out the one thing that makes Social Networks, Social Networks.

The one thing that is different is that the connections ARE PERSISTENT. What I mean with this, is that once you have connected with someone, and exchanged information, the network remembers that path and it can be traveled again by others. It is like a telephone system that grows branches according to your calls. This concept is also very well illustrated by a speech by Sebastian Seung on TED, "I am my connectome".

The App Reigns

I should have known. I dared to mention the iPhone and I just got a gazillion hate mails.

The conversation went south quickly, falling into the this vs. that and the "I was here before" conversation.

What this made me realize that -personally- I care less and less about the device, about any device, and more about the apps. Functionality and content are king in my reign. TiVo and the DVR have done more for TV in my case than color, HD or any other improvement.

In the case of a computing or a Smartphone device, the reality is that very specific tasks are attributed to the Application and not the device. Nobody "Macs" or "PCs" something. But you do Photoshop an image, and you "throw it into an Exel" and on a bad day, it is your Outlook that is "acting up". In one concept: The App is the verb.

On the device, I have some killer apps that I just need to have. My preferred ones are:

Pandora. My music, randomized and with new stuff! Love it on the computer, even better on the handheld when it can go everywhere and has XG access.
Evernote. This is a powerhouse application. If you haven't tried it, you should. I just loved the first version because of the concept of ubiquity. The idea is a Notebook that can be accessed by a variety of ways, web, PC or Mac client, and Mobile client. In addition to this, the first version allowed for hand-written notes, email-to-notebook entry, and note emailing as well as a neat web-clipping functionality. On the mobile, it gets even better when you add the camera and the geo-tagging functionality.

GMail Sync. I mean Contacts and Calendar too.

Google Voice. If you read "The Mobility I Want", you know why. This is the closest thing to unified communications Nirvana.

It is not broken, it is a feature...

If you are in the tech industry, you have probably heard this one, usually said as a joke.

If I have to explain any further, this refers to when the developer or Marketing finds an unexpected bug or defect and -BAM- (please draw starburst around it...) turns it into a new feature.

What is interesting is that the opposite is also true. New features that are misinterpreted can often be taken as a defect. I am an example of this with my newly-found learning curve on touchscreen phones, while I am still trying to make use of that muscle memory, now with almost no other tactile feedback besides haptics.

This also happens at any level of human life. One example is the controversial ADHD. Most people that I have known with this syndrome tend to be extremely creative and intelligent. So maybe it IS a feature!

I am trying to convince my wife on some of my "features"....

You are like Einstein

Yep. Much like Albert Einstein. Not because you can come up with the Special Relativity theory and also play the violin, but because your ideas come in the oddest moments.

Einstein once said: "Why do I have my best ideas in the shower?"

This is true for most of us and it is ironic that most of the time your best ideas come to you in waves and in places where it is so hard to document them.

I am currently inmersed reading "The Artist's Way", which is what you can consider a "classic", written in by . The concepts exposed there are not easily proven, but they are still very valid. One of the key concepts, at the core of the author's thesis, is that repetitive tasks "feed" the creative mind and we can then tap it. This is the author's explanation on why these ideas come to us in places that we are sometimes even embarrassed to confess.

This is the reason why Evernote is probably my all-time favorite app on my phone and the new version on Android is capable of doing off-line creation and editing.

Now we just have to make it work under the shower.

What's its name? Facemail?

It was in the news, but honestly, nobody is paying a lot of attention.

Facebook has announced that this Monday, they will make available their email services. At the time of this writing, it is not clear what enhancements are they incorporating into their Inbox feature, other than a dedicated email address.

I have been watching social media for a while (click here to see my 2008 rant) and I never saw Facebook as an email killer, but more like an Outlook killer. Think about it, What does Outlook do for you in a typical office environment? Integrates your contacts, communications, and takes care of your appointments and resource booking. There is not a lot that Facebook is missing out of these.

There are four things that I would point out with Facebook's announcement:

1.- Facebook does stand a chance. Email is becoming more and more just a transport layer and a notification mechanism. If I look at how my two daughters use their online resources, it is easy to come to this conclusion. They do have email addresses, to be able to "communicate with the dead", but they rarely check them. They communicate through Facebook and SMS, and email's function is reduced to make the vibrating device go off on their smartphones. If the notification piece is solved, Why send an email? You already have that message in FB's Inbox. It seems that something in these lines is coming with the announced Office Online integration.

2.- We need more. Some said this will be a GMail killer. Well, not until we get the gazillion storage capacity, the external email address, the capacity to SEND emails to people that are not on Facebook, Offline and mobile client access, resource management, iCal and VCard translation, multiple addresses to be able to manage your online personas, distribution lists, better threaded conversations, and -Oh Yeah!- better search. This is without even factoring in Google Buzz (or Wave?), which is a truly revolutionary way of communicating.

3.- What about voice? Nobody cares anymore? I do. Google has a nice foothold here, both with the Android operating system running on phones, Google Voice, and Google Talk's capacity to do VoIP. And it is not just a telephone, it looks more like your personal switchboard and unified communications platform. Facebook has a shy attempt at something like this with their partnership with Vonage, but again, no way to call anybody outside of Facebook, and what is even worse, no way to call anybody ON Facebook that does not have the Vonage app on their mobile.

4.- We still need more. There has been some comparisons with GMail's priority Inbox -which I think is the best thing after email search-. Facebook has insight into what is important for you, and what is not. So -in theory- they may be able to classify email according to this. The question here is, Can they do it better? Right now, honestly, they are not there yet. Facebook filters out stuff that I am interested in and stuff that is new to me and I would have never given a chance other way.

And let's face it, we do have "circles of friends", we have the "A" list, the "B" list, the acquaintances; people from work, and family. On top of this, our interests change. When I am looking to move to another city, or just go there for a short trip, I focus on friends that live there. If I am having parenting issues, I turn to friends that have same age kids as mine. These are all things that are not necessarily reflected in my status updates. Facebook makes it -in the best case- laborious to track these changes.

One thing is true. They got us to write about them, not on email but on a blog, and announce it on Facebook.

The inverted business model

How many times have you checked out that latest piece of equipment at the store, just to go back home and research for the best price online and buy it?

It happens all the time, specially with high ticket items and stuff that you have to try on (shoes, clothes, etc.). The physical part of testing the unit and trying it on works better in a brick-and-mortar setting. At the same time, the we is made for price comparison. This is usually the biggest challenge for the online retailers. There is almost no difference between one and the other if they use the same software platforms and the same logistics solutions. So the only factor available to differentiate is price.

So is the Brick-and-Mortar and the neighborhood store extinct? Not really, and just the other day I had an epiphany. I had reversed the model myself. I have been contemplating to purchase a certain book that I have researched online. I even had the book in my Amazon wishlist. But I just happened to be in Milwaukee, and passing in front of Downtown Books. And I couldn't resist to go in.

I found it! Used and inexpensive. I bought it immediately out of impulse!

So what's next? MP3 sharing club at a local joint?

It happens to be that the dust hasn't yet settled under the Internet sun.

A reflection on product innovation or how to buy a present for your significant other

When it comes to product development, innovation is a lot like planning a gift for your significant other.

You can always go on the safe side and conduct your "market survey" and start your quest for the perfect gift, responding to every single desire of your other half.

Yes, you will end up with a gift that is very much appreciated and that will fill a void long open. You -yes, YOU- will be in the ranks of the "reliable provider".

On the other hand, you can go the other way, the risky way. You can observe your partner for months, maybe for years, and try to translate into a model HOW do they think and feel. Once you are confident enough that you have a fairly good idea, then -and just then- set out to look for the perfect gift, without even asking a single question.

The difference here is that you will not only fulfill a desire, but you will surprise. And if you are successful, you will be LOVED. You will touch that fiber that will make her (or him) resonate.

In product development, something similar happens. Those companies that surprise us with a design that we never even thought about, earn our love, and we become advocates for them. There are many examples of this. The iPod wheel, the Segway (for the few that can afford one), the Dyson hand dryer, etc.

I am not suggesting that you blindly develop your products, after all, you need a market for them, and this means that they have to be priced correctly and that they address a real need so that there is a desire to purchase them from you. In contrast, in the gift metaphor there is no price involved from the receiving end.

What I am saying is that you cannot base your design ONLY on market research coming from surveys and direct questions.

Now, surprise me.

The Cartel of Doral

Here is my friend Artie. He's on fire, ready to take on corporate America. The reason? His TiVo is down. No digital channels, apparently he needs a card or something to make it work. Which is kinda weird as we can now receive a good number of digital channels over the air.

We heard stories like this before, the public services company that has horrendous customer service and after voicing "Scotty, Shields On!" protects itself behind the "voicejail".

We all like competition, but public services is a tricky one. There is infrastructure to lay down, and nobody is willing to do the investment if they don't have guaranteed returns. This is why government issues "rights of way" and gives the cable company an area to develop. A Cartel, a monopoly of a function in a given geographical area.

The problem with this is what we all know, and this is how the telecommunications industry used to be, until the Telecommunications Act of the eighties (oh, the eighties!), separated the ownership of the copper from the service. Oddly enough this is a case where free competition is spurred as a product of more regulation!

The question here is: Has cable the same ranks as Telecom as far as a strategic public service now that a lot of people run their Internets and phones through them?

iAccept

I am amazed at how many things can Apple get us to accept as normal, and -sometimes- even as better.

First, it was the brilliant move from Apple's side to force every customer to attach an unlimited data plan to the iPhone. This single clause in the contract had more influence on user experience than any of the technical aspects of the iPhone, so this one was -as bold as it was- an unusual one. But we accepted it.

This was accompanied by its huge size. Yes, the screen is great, and it is more or less thin, but let's be honest, it is almost the size of my 1999 Palm Pilot. Granted, it had a little apple on the back. Accepted.

Then the dubious reception and voice quality (at least on the first versions). There they went, the happy iPhone users predicating that it was just "a minor nuisance" on a super-innovative phone.

The last one, -and one that we live with every day- the on-screen keyboard.

I swear. The one app that iPhones should come with, and that no user should be able to uninstall, is a spell checker. Spelling errors and typos must have gone through the roof since the adoption of this device. Oddly enough, I just read that iPhones have surpassed Blackberries in the domestic market. This means that the trusted little keyboard that so many users swore by, has been traded for the unreliable, jittery touchscreen.

So we not only accept this, we embrace it.

I am wondering if the Apple effect could be translated to other concepts and make us accept those things that are "the right thing to do" even if they mean increased costs or moving away from our comfort zone. How about an iBus that would make us take public transport instead of our own car? or An iBulb that will finally convince us that turning off the light bulb when we have left the room IS a good idea? iMortgage, a product that gets banks to assume their share of the Real Estate bust? Anybody iBurger, made of organic stuff that costs $20?

For now, let me try to convince my teenage daughter that an Oldsmobile is a great car. I hope this little Apple sticker works...