Bruce MacVarish Notes

Human Behavior as the start of Social Design

Jenn Webb interviewed Paul Adams in prep for Web 2.0 Expo scheduled for later this month.  

The interview is well worth a read. You should also keep an eye out for Paul's forth coming book titled "Social Circles" (I've already pre-ordered).   

One of many interesting quotes from Paul's interview includes: 

"Our (mobile) phone, or whatever we carry around with us, will probably be our primary source and producer of social media data, so it's important that when we use it, we're not burdened by its place in the ecosystem — for example, by seeing constant privacy controls or too many invasive alerts."

Paul Adams, Global Brand Experience Manager, Facebook

For me, it is interesting to think about his reference to "whatever we carry around with us will probably be our primary source of social media data".  

What about you?

 

Dare to Share in the Enterprise

From the Socialcast Blog:

 

True Value to be found in Sensing Relevance

"Context, the weaving together of interrelated conditions that brings meaning to why a person is doing something, is the key to delivering relevance.  

The only thing of true value in a user-controlled medium is relevance." 

@jonathanmendez , Display's Matching Problem

 

I agree with Jonathan and like his vision for integrating the emerging "sensing wave" to deliver on the opportunity of relevance-aware advertising.  

If we distill Jonathan's statement of "weaving together inter-related conditions that brings meaning" down to the key technology or product elements, I think we have something like:

1. Sensors to capture a user's declarative and ambient actions, reactions, environment, intent, attention and sentiment data.
2. A Context Engine to aggregate sensor data
3. An Analytics layer to derive meaning from the Context Engine data stream
4. A Preference & Policy based Filtering Layer to deliver a real-time, relevance-aware stream of content based on a user's rules and context.

So you end up with something like:

 

Sensors + Context + Analytics + Filter => Relevance

 

It seems to me, there's been too much focus on "context" and not enough focus on the source of true value for users to be found in "relevance".

Games @ Work

I wanted to refresh my thinking on the Guiding Principles of Game Design @ Work from my earlier post. 

 

The Guiding Principles for Games @ Work were focused on making it easy for collaboration leaders and business users to:

1. Define clear boundaries, shared problem(s) and a community of collaborative business users

 

2. Assign satisfying tasks or roles that enable business users to excel and be part of something "Bigger"

 

3. Build nonmonetary incentives into a game economy to strongly motivate individuals to accomplish group aims.

 

4. Deliver hyper- transparency of information about users' skills and teams’ real-time performance 

 

5. Create a virtual economic marketplace for information and collaboration

 

6. Open multiple real-time sources of information and communication upon which to make decisions

 

7. Structure as a project-oriented organization that can easily be disbanded and reformed based on tasks and skills

 

8. Recognize individual, group and company achievements in a clear, specific way

 

9. Open visibility into all skills / project / social networks of communication across an organization

 

10. Adapt multiple, purpose-specific communications mediums to improve speed and efficiency of collaboration. 

 

With a little vision, strategy and design, it is not hard to see how game design principles will be shaping the future of communication and collaboration applications.

 

Trust Deficits in Social Networks

"Social networks have something of a trust deficit, which will either limit or make “more expensive” its ability to offer new services.  The product teams at social networks have proven their ability to offer compelling services in exchange for personal information, but our research shows that people place a relatively low value on their social information. 

For social networks to offer products in exchange for higher value information such as health records, physical location, or email/IM history, they will need to offer even more compelling products, services and outcomes to consumers."

Timothy Morey,

Frog Design,

Who do we trust with our personal data

Evolution of the Enterprise Applications Industry

John Mancini, the President of AIIM International, provides his perspective on the evolution of enterprise IT in one slide:

Personally, I like the way John describes the shift from managing "a web page" to managing "a conversation" as we see systems of engagement emerge in the enterprise... but...

While the balance of the slide is specific to Enterprise IT and the companies that define the era include traditional enterprise players like IBM, Digital and Microsoft, it isn't clear to me that Google and Facebook have had the same level of ENTERPRISE impact (yet?).

If you dig a little at this line of thinking, you clearly see that each era was/is defined by a number of different sources of value and competitive advantage.  

With a hat-tip to insights gained from the work of Geoffrey Moore, Umair Haque, John Hagel, Valdis Krebs and others, I like to describe the transition we're seeing in the enterprise applications industry this way:

 

Combining the two models, we have a hint at the opportunity for enterprise application vendors moving forward.   Helping users manage conversations, relationships and transactions with and across the enterprise is a significant source of new value and growth.

A couple of questions to consider as the enterprise application industry evolves to a "network of information nodes":

1. Will Google or Facebook be "the best known" enterprise vendor as outlined by John in the Social and Cloud era?

2. What comes after the Social and Cloud era?

LoSoPhoMo and Mobile Enterprise Pure-Plays

Steve Rubel believes the next media disruptors are Mobile Pure-Plays.  I agree.  

From Steve's post:

"Now a new era is under way.

The next wave of media disruptors are laser focused on being tailored, rather than retrofitted, for mobile devices. They start out sometimes just as apps, creating a strong beachhead in your pocket. Then they use these platforms to springboard into other ancillary media ventures. This means they're cut from a different cloth than older stalwarts that often need to retrofit themselves for mobile.

With Internet consumption on mobile devices set to surpass the same on PCs next year, according to Morgan Stanley, and US smart phone penetration to hit 50%, Nielsen says, mobile is no longer the tail on the media dog. For the next wave of media upstarts, it's the dog and the rest is the tail.

We're at the very beginning of a new era in media; one where mobile is the primary distribution platform. What's more, we have a perfect storm of technologies coming together that combine local, social, photo and mobile (what we call "LoSoPhoMo") and this is sure to spur even more media companies that are pure-plays at least at the start."

Steve is focused on the next wave of media.  For me, the question is what does a disruptive mobile pure-play strategy look like for the enterprise when it takes advantage of the very same LoSoPhoMo - local, social, photo and mobile technologies Steve identifies as drivers for media disruption.

In many ways, the emergence and evolution of consumer focused Web 2.0 applications and strategy served as a proxy for key elements of Enterprise 2.0.  

So, it is not too far of a stretch that the emergence of Mobile Pure-Plays and their evolution along a new transmedia arc may provide insight into the evolution of the mobile enterprise.

For example, one strategy could be starting as a Mobile Enterprise Pure-Play and evolving to a --->

    - Mobile Enterprise Web App ---> 

    - Mobile Enterprise Cloud --->

    - Mobile Enterprise Device --->

    - Mobile Enterprise ?

The "Future State" of Work - Changes & Skills for next 10 years

GigaOm has an upcoming conference Net:Work that will explore the challenges and opportunities presented by a new culture of work and key tools and technologies for collaboration.

They put forward a report from Gartner that outlines 10 changes over the next 10 years that will impact how we work and collaborate in the future.

It is interesting to consider how Gartner's report compares to a similar report from The IFTF on key workplace skills for the future.

Gartner's view of how work changes includes:

1. “De-routinization” of work.

“Non-routine” activities that cannot be automated, such as innovation, leadership and sales, will dominate employment: By 2015, 40 percent or more of an organization’s work will be “non-routine,” up from 25 percent in 2010.

 

2. Work swarms.

Rather than traditional teams of people familiar with each other, ad-hoc groups or “work swarms,” with no previous experience of working with each other, will become a commonplace team structure. Gartner’s “work swarms” concept sounds similar to the Noded philosophy, which describes how groups of individuals, often but not necessarily geographically distant, come together to form temporary or recurring project teams.

 

3. Weak links.

Weak links are the cues people can pick up from people who know the people they have to work with. Exploiting our own networks will help us to develop the ties that are required for participating in wider “work swarm” opportunities.

 

4. Working with the collective.

Being able to influence the complex ecosystem of suppliers, partners, clients and customers will increasingly become a core competence.

 

5. Work sketch-ups.

Informality will define most “non-routine” work activities; the process models for these activities will be simple “sketch-ups,” created on the fly.

 

6. Spontaneous work.

Seeking new opportunities and creating projects around them is likely to be an opportunistic, rather than strategic, activity.

 

7. Simulation and experimentation.

The culture of Google’s “perpetual beta” is likely to spread to other industries, with rapid prototyping taking place in very public environments.

 

8. Pattern sensitivity.

Extrapolating from history and experience will become less reliable; the ability to detect and parse patterns and trends in society will provide better insights.

 

9. Hyperconnected.

With formal and informal work diffused across organizational boundaries,  the support mechanisms for workers (healthcare, HR, IT) will need to evolve to support fuzzier, ad-hoc relationships between people and departments.

 

10. My place.

The boundaries between home and work life are already blurred. Balancing almost 24/7 availability against burning out will become a critical skill.

Facebook Phone - A Social Filter Device

(Photo by Lucascepeda and modified with permission)

I believe we will see more and more application specific mobile devices over the next 24 months.  

As both consumers and business users deal with "social exhaustion" and look for help filtering the streams of information coming their way, some will seek purpose built, integrated application + mobile device solutions as their filter.

With all the chatter on the potential of a Facebook Phone, I thought I'd dig around for earlier thinking on the concept and reasoning.  

I found posts by Arrington, Rubel and Sanford helpful.   Some of their key points:

Michael Arrington on Facebook secretly building a Phone:

 

"Facebook is building a mobile phone, says a source who has knowledge of the project. Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware. Which is exactly what Apple and everyone else does, too.

Specifically, Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone. It can only do that if it controls the operating system.

Two high level Facebook employees – Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos – are said to be secretly working on the project, which is unknown even to most Facebook staff.

Both have deep operating system experience.

Hewitt helped create the Firefox browser and was working on Parakey before it was acquired by Facebook in 2007. Parakey, which never launched, was described as a “Web-based operating system.” Hewitt also created all of Facebook’s iPhone web apps and then native apps, but finally quit building for the iPhone in disgust late last year. But he knows operating systems and he knows mobile.

Papakipos also has a perfect background for this project. He was leading the Google Chrome OS project until June. He then quit and went to Facebook. Papakipos is considered a rockstar developer, and there are any number of jobs he’d be able to do at Facebook.

But that doesn’t answer the question of why he’d leave the Chrome OS project before it was finished. It would have taken something really interesting to lure him away. Something like a Facebook Phone, for example.

So what might this phone look and feel like? We don’t know yet. When will it be announced? Don’t know. But I’d speculate that it would be a lower end phone, something very affordable, that lets people fully integrate into their Facebook world. You call your friend’s name, not some ancient seven digit code, for example. I’d imagine Facebook wanting these things to get into as many hands as possible, so I’d expect a model at a less than $50 price. Pay your bill with Facebook Credits. Etc.

As for timing, the holiday season is always a good time to launch new products. But that may be too soon.

All we know for sure is that Hewitt and Papakipos are working on something very stealthy together. And we have a source that tells us that stealthy thing is a Facebook phone.

We’re also not discounting possible partnerships around this. Spotify was said to be working on a phone with INQ last year based on a shared investor, Li Ka-Shing. It turns out Li Ka-Shing is also a sizeable investor in Facebook. So an INQ/Facebook partnership on a phone certainly wouldn’t be a surprise."

 

and Steve Rubel speculated about how Facebook will need to pursue a Facebook Phone:

"...if the desktop was the battleground in the 1990s and the web was in the 2000s then mobile is where the battle for dominance will take place next. 

Consider these three data points, all of which are fresh...

• According to Mary Meeker, more people will connect to the Internet via mobile devices than PCs in five years
• Forrester reports that 17% of US consumers have smartphones. (That means that 83% don't.)
• And Pew says that 55% of Americans connect wirelessly (And 45% therefore don't)

And that's just the US. Combine these three trends on a global level and it's obvious that mobile is the future. Mobile is a far far larger market than mainframes, PCs or even the web. It will have lots and lots of winners in hardware, software and services. This is why I believe Facebook can't sit on the sidelines anymore.

They will be on every device, but they eventually will try to launch their own hardware too.

... and Jamie Sanford outlines why he sees a Facebook Pad / Phone on the horizon:

 

Let’s face it – Facebook is almost a complete OS in and of itself.  With a little development of a Lnux kernel to get a device booted and loading the Facebook environment, you’d be able to simply turn on the phone and be “in” Facebook.  Think about what you use your phone/pad device for now:

Contacts

You already have contacts in Facebook.  They may have phone numbers in profiles (they may have them hidden to you via privacy settings).  So, how hard would it be to simply build off of that for dialing?  Now all of your contact management becomes embedded in Facebook.  It becomes the hub of your human interactions and that is simply used as part of the FacePad.

Location-Based Services

Facebook announced last month that it was going to start integrating more of its location-based services into the platform.  Share your location and now you are leveraging a network of people to find information that is relative to where you are right now.  Did a Facebook friend of yours 'like' a certain restaurant you’re near?  Suddenly, that restaurant review has relevance because it’s not a stranger reviewing it – it’s a Facebook friend who you have some trust with already.  The value of location-based services with friendship affinity tied to it is tremendous in creating weight of a review.

Mapping/Navigation

Remember in June of 2009 when Facebook announced that it would start showing Bing search results in Facebook?  How far off do you think that Bing Maps are from being integrated into Facebook as well?  And what if these maps integrated the results of the location-based services mentioned above?  Yikes. 

Voice Chat

Last year, Facebook announced the Vivox voice chat functionality that was coming to the site.  Think of how this could now integrate into the FacePad.  It would be akin to having Skype built in and could leverage your network connection vs. airtime with the cellular provider.

Once again, why is this important?

I believe we will see more and more application specific mobile devices over the next 24 months.  

As both consumers and business users look for help filtering the streams of information coming their way, some will seek purpose built, integrated application + mobile device solutions as their filter.

Can a Salesforce Phone built in cooperation with RIMM be far behind?

 

UPDATE 9/24 - Om summarizes what he believes will be the user experience on the Facebook (INQ) Phone:

The Facebook layer, as Zuckerberg describes, will run on a thin, stripped-down version of Android. Though, if I’m Nokia, I would be making a beeline to Zuckerberg’s office right about now.

What Facebook has to do is not build the OS, but instead build a user experience based on HTML5. WebOS did a good job of building a mobile experience based on web technologies.

A consumer’s Facebook ID becomes more important than the phone number itself. Login with Facebook ID, and your social network auto-magically syncs up with the phone. (Android users have seen their Google phones do this since day one. Stacey finds it annoying.)

Facebook becomes the address book or the contact list for the phone, giving Facebook users an option to call, IM, SMS, or mail their network via the data connection. Since Facebook already has our phone numbers, it can make it easy to call other cell phones or landlines. (Again, not a big deal for Android users who have this feature at their disposal.)

As Clearspring CEO and one of our readers, Hooman Radfar, so aptly said, “Facebook is effectively a set of applications with an underlying common messaging and authentication infrastructure. So, by definition, Facebook also is a set of disparate applications (photos, inbox, chat) that is connected by a social layer.” That is why you will see Facebook apps will be separated into individual apps and subsumed into the phone experience.

For instance, Facebook photos will communicate directly with the camera and become the repository for photos, with almost no difference in the cloud and the local photo storage. Take a picture and save it to Facebook.

As Liz pointed out, Facebook can give phones presence-based intelligence based on location, scheduled events and meetings, and of course, the time of the day. You’ll see some of that in the new phone.

The news feed, too, will become part of the mobile experience. I’d say it would be a more evolved experience compared to Moto BLUR and other such efforts.

Using GPS chips, the phone will give you the ability to locate your friends. It can help get you discount coupons for local eateries and bars for example.  That is why I think Facebook Places is an important initiative for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, and why it ended up acquiring the Hot Potato team.

 

Relevance-Aware Activity Streams

 

Liz Gannes of GigaOm does a nice job summarizing a recent interview of Twitter CEO Ev Williams. Williams provided a few significant insight into how he thinks Twitter (and by extension real-time activity stream apps)  is different from email and search.

 

"Blogging (Williams was previously the founder of Blogger) and Tweeting can be different (and better) than email, he said, because people who have something to say can find their audience. That’s a much better situation for both the publisher of the information and the consumer of it. So recipient-based media can scale better “in a world of infinite information,” he said.

That’s also a contrast to Google, said Williams, which serves more purpose-driven needs versus Twitter’s focus on “an interest-based world.”

“Google is very good at ‘I need to solve a problem, I need to buy something, I need an answer,” he said. “Twitter is more ‘I’m interested in many things, I don’t know what I need to know.’” Where Google is more likely to be gamed by a company like Demand Media, Twitter is a different beast.

However, there’s still the problem of filtering information on Twitter. “What we need to get much better at is scaling that system so you don’t have to pay attention to everything, but you don’t miss the stuff you care about,” Williams said. He said more such products were on the way.

Williams cited Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who said recently that more information is now produced in two days than was in all of time before 2003. Williams said automated streams of information from services like Fitbit and Blippy —  in addition to the proliferation of media — will only add to that problem.

Williams also said to expect forthcoming products that would help filter relevant tweets around events, similar to what it’s doing with location. This would go beyond the user-developed convention of hashtags, he said, though he didn’t elaborate.

Developing relevance-aware activity streams will require a flexible filtering experience that enables users to filter across a number of different topics or variables.  It seems that Ev hints at developing certain types of filters - for example filtering based on events.  

Does that mean we'll see a slow roll out of category based filtering tools versus a broader, user-driven filtering tool capable of coarse and/or fine filtering?  Will it be an open-friendly approach or closed?

Developing relevance-aware activity streams is an important step in the evolution of the real-time web.  

If, as Ev points out, recipient-based media can scale better in a world of infinite information, then the relevance aware filtering model must be able to scale as well.

(image from johnhaydon.com)