• The iPhone OS on a 24in Multi-Touch Screen [Video] | It is only a question of time.
  The intersection of mobile and laptop is demonstrated as being one step closer. The capability to run mobile apps on your laptop will also give them more utility and present interesting new options.
  (tags: iphone touch apple)

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• Twitter Will Be Obsolete In A Year - Or framed another way… will we move on? Mobile will decide Twitters long term fate.
  Does it really matter if Twitter is obsolete in a year? Not really. What matters more is the direction exploring and understanding its appeal can take the individual or the enterprise in. What bothers me most about Twitter is "it is not!" an end to end delivery service and they are filtering public messages to others by my friends. I still see more opportunities for Twitter, I also see competition and in some cases it will come from the app developers that have been most successful on Twitter.
  (tags: twitter)

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The initial connectivity issues have now long gone away. WWDC for those that might not know is Apple’s world wide developer conference. It has pulled a very global audience and like me, 60% have never attended before. I’ve met some fantastic people here. The Apple staff are outstanding.

Many have asked me why I’m here? I’m not a developer although may now write / create a small app or two. I’m there because I wanted to know first hand how far we can push the boundaries of the mobile social space and how quickly. I also wanted a deeper understanding of how to manage development efforts / expectations and the toolset available to developers.

I’m coming away with both and more.

I talked with an ex Nokia and Windows Mobile game developer tonight. It is currently game over in that regard. Game developers are a key group here.

I’d reflect and do a few things differently. I would have liked more show ‘n tell sessions with real app examples. Eg the stories I’d also like more are around marketing and business nous in the apps / iPhone streams. I also think many lab sessions were over-subscribed. The planning will have to start now for next year and cater to 10000 people or take the show on the road. It may well be both. The demand is clear.

Tweet This Post Tags: apple, iphone, wwdc

Tweet This Post Tags: apple #wwdc

• WWDC Preview good summary post including speculation. | Plus I get to be there all next week live. #wwdc
  I'll be attending WWDC next week. Part of my commitment to continuing to being on the cutting edge of the mobile social revolution. I think I will come away with more than just a couple of new product and business ideas. Plus will meetup with some great people! Let me know if you are going.
  (tags: iphone WWDC apple)

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My thoughts revisited the SmartPhone market this morning when I read in the WSJ about Sony’s new super phone “Satio”coming in about six months. It’s another followup on the impending launch of the Nokia N97 which I’ve been following since it was first announced. We can add the Palm Pre to the mix too. Then next week the launch of the Apple iPhone 3.0 and potential iPod updates too.

How all these new phones will compare? Will they cater better to my changing mobile needs and what I value? I also wonder how they will fare in different countries. My market research in the past in India would provide a very different outcome to my more US centric personal thoughts below.

In launching these products do they understand how my usage behavior has changed in the last year. While they aren’t launching these products just for me I want to know if I’d give up my iPhone for any of them? My guess is I won’t. And that is the biggest challenge any of these have. In this I’m not referring to the price, or the plan, or general availability. My first test is simply is it better for my needs. After that all the other challenges and cost elements come into play.

How my needs have changed.
1. Reading: A year ago I read very little on the iPhone. Yesterday I bought an iPhone developers book using Kindle on the iPhone. It was over $20.00 from Amazon. Why. It was available immediately. I can read it anywhere etc. And based on other books I’ve read on it… likely to meet my needs. I still can’t bend the pages but that will come. I also read many papers today on the iphone. Including the unofficial SFChronicle which provides the local sports. Probably 3 or 4 I access daily. I’ve dropped everything but the WSJ at home.

2. Internet: I have many favorite searches ready for one click perusal. I’ve found this very interesting when tracking things I want. Eg Craigslist housing for lease. Plus if I am watching TV and I happen to hit a commercial… reading and weblinks become more important. Or back to the newspapers. (BTW I am still poorly served by shared weblinks)

3. Communication: Twitter and Twitterfon in particular provide an interesting and effective way to communicate. All DM’s are received by SMS. I often check into twitter when between things or waiting for something. I would not buy a phone today that didn’t provide me with an adequate “open” messaging format like Twitterfon/twitter.

4. Bluetooth: The iPhone 3.0 has bluetooth that connects to my car stereo finally. So I’ve been enjoying that for months. That’s where my iPod function gets the most use. Outside the plane trips where I usually have some video / movies loaded.

5. Camera: I see the Sony is likely to have a 12 megapixel camera. Cool but so what. While I want a better camera what’s interesting to me is I snap many photo’s just off the screen. I often share these in one way or another. The camera is must less important to me than reading and web browsing. I need it and want a good one. It no longer inflences my overall decision. That’s also true of music.

6. Apps (for some it may be games) definitely make a difference. The number that I use everyday is actually increasing (skewed to journalism and communication - twitter / skype). I use maps more than ever. Weather updates are also always on the phone. I can’t wait for turn by turn directions! I expect soon. I actually like being asked. Can this app use your location. That means it is likely to serve me better.

7. Games: I don’t find much time for games. I’ve played and bought a few. There’s two dozen on the phone currently.  Perhaps I just haven’t found the one’s I’d like.

So what about these new phones?
Will I like them? I might if they are more tactile than the iPhone. Although touch technology continues to improve and “feel” is coming. Yet most importantly to me is it’s no longer about making calls. I carry my iPhone for completely different reasons. It’s part of a being in touch, real-time world of updates and broader connectivity.

Add to that the plan and competitive position that ATT / Apple have seem to struck as a bargain between them and it’s unlikely that these phones will find a place with ATT. They will remain too expensive to compete or appear only in very limited quantities.

Still, with past passion for Nokia not quite forgotten I’d love to put my hands on a Nokia N97 and find that I don’t miss my iPhone.

Tweet This Post Tags: iphone, n97, nokia, palm, sony

• Buzzmachine post on Google Wave and perspective of newspapers. New ways to create context live.
  Nice summary from the newspaper perspective on how the Wave format makes content. Jeff Jarvis says he sees it as a new way to make news. I think it is broader than that. Most importantly it provides a view into how we could be working and brings to life many of the "desires" we've had for a long time. I look forward to replacing my wordpress blog with a wave server that I control.
  (tags: googlewave twitter realtime collaboration jeffjarvis)

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• The Ten Ways Twitter Will Permanently Change American Business | (They missed Phweet! but see telecom threat)
  "Twitter may not replace the landline, the cell phone or voice and texting communications but it will certainly supplement them as a way to get around telecom data plans. Tweeting inside a browser does not have the same data cost for the telecom user that texting does which adds another huge non-metered communications opportunity for businesses and consumers. It opens the question of what large cellular services providers will do when conversations move away from their ability to track them. TwitterBerry accounts, used on RIM (RIMM) Blackberry handsets make it nearly impossible for messages to be tracked by data use."
  (tags: phweet twitter business)
• @euan great post- "Social networks are all about finding stuff" | unforutnately changes in Twitter #fixreplies make it less effective today.
  By changing #fixreplies Twitter made it more difficult for me to observe the collective memory in action. An @reply from someone I'm not following to a friend of mine for a info like request will no longer be seen by me. For me that response tells me something about where the interest is and what engages others. It doesn't change Euan's observation it just makes Twitter less effective for finding things.
  (tags: @euan twitter #fixreplies socialnetworks search)
• iPhone, Web Offer Lonely Planet A New Life @gigaom great pointer and example.
  The socialization of content continues. This is the best example yet I've seen of integrating the hard copy with the world of mobility and travel. This opportunity doesn't only apply to travel books rather to almost all books.
  (tags: iphone travel books ebooks)

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Tim O’Reilly’s Google Wave summary is as good as any I’ve seen. I loved his description below for it was exactly how I felt when I saw the demo. Since then I’ve seen more cautionary posts and comments. Yet this demo was as good for me as seeing David Gelertner’s post many many years (2001) ago on the need to manage the flow or timeline.

Most importantly, it left me thinking… as a manager (if I was managing in a large organization) how would we shift from where we are today to this new world. For it was obvious, that gWave or similar services are going to happen and they will provide the organization with perceptible benefits even if we can’t measure them from a prototype today. I think GoogleWave provided something tangible, a view into a world that will likely shift many of us in the way we iterate and work. Should set off a few scenario discussions in more than one organization.

Google Wave: What Might Email Look Like If It Were Invented Today? - O’Reilly Radar

When I saw Wave for the first time on Monday, I realized that we’re at a kind of DOS/Windows divide in the era of cloud applications. Suddenly, familiar applications look as old-fashioned as DOS applications looked as the GUI era took flight. Now that the web is the platform, it’s time to take another look at every application we use today, and ask the same question Lars and Jens asked themselves: “What would this look like if we invented it today instead of twenty-five years ago?”

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• "Google Wave Preview" The most impressive revolutionary demo I've seen in ages! Pull so many of my thoughts and desires together and all in real-time.
  GoogleWave looks set to be nothing less than a revolution. You simply have to watch the demo as it integrates email, blogs, chat, community and conversation. I wrote down two items as I watched it. Did gWave just kill MSOffice? Doesn't this make Skype Multi-Chat completely redundant? and then I went to look at Google's stock price.
  (tags: gwave googlewave email collaboration)

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• The Case for Working With Your Hands - NYTimes.com | I certainly can identify with this article.
  This is a great article for sharing the benefits of working a trade. I particularly like how he puts it in terms of knowledge. I'm perhaps also a little envious that he restores old motorcycles. I had a friend once who retired to working on Racing Porsches. That's often appealed to me too.
  (tags: work education nytimes knowledge)
• Twitter Might Start Adding Comments & Location-Based Information to Each Tweet | I was told same thing months ago.
  "Twitter's API lead told Robert Scoble that Twitter might soon add location-based information to every tweet. Currently, users can set a location on their profile, but individual tweets are not geo-coded in any way." GeoCoding each tweet will make geo-location services possible without the tyranny of phone numbers.
  (tags: twitter location geotagging)

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• Useful POV by @DaveWiner "Why there will be many Twitters" I missed it when first published
  Not sure with the coherency of this post or the why each media co will want it's own network or can even have it's own network. The issue is Twitter doesn't have a business model that caters to it. I still think the solution is simple and relates to how Tweets escalate. Then Twitter has to fix some baggage that is now getting in the way.
  (tags: twitter davewiner microblogging journalism)

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What You Missed on Twitter is a little program that answers the #fixreplies problem for all those (according to Twitter less than 3% - although that IMHO is a poor statistic) that liked seeing “all@replies”.  If you are following a large number of users then it can take awhile to load. From my perspective this is the sharing that makes twitter interesting and conversational. Even on this simple test my data stream is now over 1000 tweets down. No wonder I can see it and feel it. It’s a simply loss of ambient intimacy.  I’m not sure any of these examples would have engaged me to follow another and yet they also serve another purpose. They are “live” tweeters in a conversational mode. The tweets that twitter has left in… are more asynchronous in nature. By definition Twitter is less real-time today. That’s going to cost them $’s in the long run.  Here’s an example of the output.

Tweet This Post Tags: #fixreplies, ambientintimacy, real-time, twitter

• RT @Twitter API: @mrblog that's sweet. I just re-followed 2 people because of you "hack". ^DW #fixreplies
  David crafted a neat little hack (see his blog) to see all those conversational tweets you are missing!
  (tags: twitter #fixreplies)
• Second Life generates 15 billion minutes in web voice calls » VentureBeat
  "The company’s Dial an Avatar function assigns residents of Second Life a phone number that enables friends to call from a landline, cell phone, or VOIP application. The service is available as a beta test today and will launch formally by the end of the second quarter.

  In the second half of the year, Linden Lab will also add the ability for residents of Second Life to morph their voices. They can disguise their voices or make them sound comical. Users can make their voices sound like a “French woman” or a “sports announcer” among other voices."

  When will they learn that numbers isn't the way to do this??? Better to use Phweet like approaches.

  (tags: secondlife lindenlabs voip)

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• Doc Searls Weblog · Is tweeting still silo’d? More on the #fixreplies - NEA… could be created in my view
  (tags: dsearls twitter)
• @tdavid writes - Make You Go Hmm blog added to Kindle Store and you can add your blog too | hmm…
  "And unfortunately there is no option to choose what price to charge for the blog as Amazon sets that which is kind of a bummer because I would have chosen the absolute least price (likely free if it was available – which it isn’t - in fact). I marked down the Hmm updates to ‘1-2 updates a week’ "
• VRM West Coast Workshop 2009 - Project VRM | Will be attending - see you there!
  (tags: projectvrm)
• @armano write Is Your Organization An Umbrella or Mixing Bowl? | nice metaphors!
  (tags: knowledgemanagement)

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• This one pretty much sums up why the noise on #fixreplies. Maybe another reversal tomorrow…
  "As I write, this is an ongoing story–and one of interest only to Twitteraddicts, in case you couldn’t tell–but it leaves me thinking that nobody but nobody has truly figured out what makes Twitter Twitter. Including Twitter."
  (tags: twitter)
• Fix Twitter Replies Now! #fixreplies #twitterfail Facinating how responses develop. The new tag should read #reverT
  There was also a comment in the updated RWW that was excellent. "If you don't follow someone, you won't see their @ to other people, which removes the serendipity. If you are follow blocked, you can't see their tweets in your stream, but it also looks as if you will not be able to see their @ now in searching their name in search, which is the workaround. That's deliberate. There's now a serious hobble put in the search that you aren't noticing or writing about……

  Before, if I wasn't following a person, but searched a key word and found them saying something interesting about a topic I was interested in, or in reply to someone else interesting, I could press on the arrow button and instantly reply to them.

  Now I can't…..

  That's a terrible thing when replicated across an entire system that has come to be the chief form of democratic discourse in our society these days. Posted by: Prokofy | May 13, 2009 2:54 PM"

  (tags: twitter #fixreplies)
• @tonzijlstra writes - Next09: Jan Schmidt on Growing Up with the Social Web
  "An interesting starting point of Jan Schmidt's presentations was the reason he thought the social web is a good fit with teenagers. The three practices that social media actively embrace match up with three important developmental aspects teenagers grapple with. Identity management (status updates, profiles, publishing vids) relates to the task of the development of self (who am I?), relationship management (friending online, commenting, following) chimes with the development of socialization (who/where am I in groups?), and information management (searching, tagging, rating) matches up with the developmental task of general orientation (who am I in the world?)"
  (tags: socialmedia networking tonzijlstra)
• @davepollard lists "Ten Important Business Trends" which I can't disagree with. However trends do not make scenarios only help to inform strategy.
  10 business trends that are well and truly on the radar (although I believe they were 10 years ago too). To get beyond trends is what actually matters. Similarly evaluating how they may play out in the context of your business or organization matters. What next only matters in context.
  (tags: scenarios trends futures davepollard)
• @patrickWeb writes on the evolution of social networks. I pariticularly like the we must control our own identity POV.
  I am hopeful that protocols will emerge such as OAuth, OpenID, and OpenSocial that will level the playing field. We will be able to use one single "sign-on" for all our web sites and create *one* profile and have control over which networks and which parts of the profile it appear in. For example, it would be nice to create a comprehensive profile that is encrypted and totally under the user's contro
  (tags: twitter oauth opensocial identity)
• @drew writes - "How NOT to manage a community - Twitter Style." #fixreplies serendipty is removed from Twitter
  I've tuned in to the #fixreplies today and this post caught my attention. Key element here is that Twitter is not community driven and it should be. I've been an advocate of the "all @replies" from the beginning. And no I don't tune into all those conversations. Yet it is the quickest way for me to add the friends of my friends and join the conversation. Engineering is not the right answer for it's elimination. The real shame is… the majority of people didn't know it existed. Result. Faulty intelligence. Heavy users use it along with other tools to make sense of the flow.
  (tags: twitter @ev)

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I’ve been following the Twitter policy changes today on @replies #fixreplies and I’m disappointed on a number of levels.

Developers weren’t consulted - as far as I know. I created Phweet around the idea that helping propagate conversations throughout a network was a good thing. I wanted to make it easy to escalate to new and higher value voice conversations. That seeing who’s talking to who could create an excellent method for creating impromptu conference calls, and connecting people without the need to share more than what they already shared publicly in a TwitterID. This is even more interesting in a Business context and record keeping context. BTW…. I would be happy to be part of a free brains trust. I have a lot of my recent life invested in Twitter.

Marketing Failure: For me this is a research and understanding failure. It was technically driven and there’s no voice internally that represents users. Twitter needs that voice internally. It’s a marketing and “insights” driven voice and I don’t think it is just about community building. Yet what we’ve seen is a failure of “values” internally. Twitter must refocus on the “social” and “conversational” values. These are the core and I suspect the metrics have started to look in the wrong place. The revolt by early adopters and “expert users” today serves to validate my point. I think there are better solutions.

KneeJerk Strategy: This can be a plus and a minus. Facebook has done it too. Although somehow Zuckerberg seems to get away with it while Twitter doesn’t and won’t. This goes ultimately to communications. Twitter is fragile, simple and needs to be simpler and easier to use. It has huge opportunities emerging via search and @identity.  Tweets aren’t really transparent. I personally believe how twitter helps conversations escalate with people that aren’t necessarily on your buddylist is central to it’s future. It’s the social conversation that matters. Add “location” to each tweetURL and this opportunity which can be driven a lot by search become more interesting. Yet if I can’t see the types of conversations that person has or holds or the language they use with their friends then it simply isn’t going to work so well….

This is the latest RWW post. Twitter Reverses Policy Change, For Now. This is Nuts But Here’s How It Works - ReadWriteWeb. I left this comment there.

Marshall, this doesn’t work effectively either. If I understand it there is nothing to stop an API developer from putting in an option in TweetDeck or another program to post @replies in the traditional way without hitting the reply key. That will annoy some users and not others. The control should always be with the receiver. That’s one of the key advantages of Twitter. In my view “all@replies” (my default) wasn’t well understood and yet we quickly learnt how to scan for connections and conversations that may be of value. 

Separately, you really want to do the settings person by person? Try using it even for SMS messages on @replies. Once you get into the 100’s even finding and managing becomes a problem. I can’t imagine trying to set it up to work one by one.

One element that would help discovery is to get feedback on conversations that friends are participating in. Eg #fixreplies Right now where those are @replies you would no longer see them. For the most part those #hashtags are more interesting to me than the #twittersearch one.

Lastly, having created Phweet http://phweet.com where part of the execution was the power of voice conversations that could propagate through the network and rapidly escalate to conference calls… Who’s talking to who goes out the window based on the way Twitter is developing their strategy. To my knowledge they never talked to developers.

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• Forget Apple, Amazon Should Buy Twitter. Why Not? — Good payments insights. iTunes is a better payment model IMHO
  I had to look for some why buy twitter posts after writing my latest little mini scenario. The payment relationship insights in this post are useful for thinking forward. Not so sure about the advertising suggestionst
  (tags: twitter amazon apple)
• @stoweboyd write "From Email Culture To Stream Culture". Confirms again "info wants to be free".
  It's useful to see this being promoted although the benefits of public sharing won't be understood by many. It has real benefits in the organization / enterprise.
  (tags: flow sharing community blogging email)
• @omfut provides data from Gartner on Mobile VoIP. Projection mumbo jumbo. My view. The analysts are looking at the wrong problem.
  "According to Gartner, More Than 50 Percent of Mobile Voice Traffic Will Be Carried Using End-to-End VoIP by 2019. " I always wonder where companies like Gartner get these numbers. While it could be right I'd more likely ask you to consider how it could be wrong and why. I'd insert a scenario that would show it will all be over before 2012 and I can write that one easily today.
  (tags: voip telecom statistics scenarios)
• Annals of Innovation: How David Beats Goliath: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker - Malcolm Gladwell
  Thanks to @dina for the link. Gladwell continues to delight with his stories and this is another good one. Effectively good strategy doesn't play by the rules!
  (tags: gladwell strategy basketball)

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I keep reading Apple + Twitter stories and no-one seems to have a clue why it might be a good idea… or a very bad idea… or simply unnecessary. What almost no one does… is tell me a story of why it might be a good idea. This is a crude little thought experiment. An example of where it might lead you is… Could the app/itunes store become the billing engine for Twitter services? Are the Telecom operators financial models the likely casualty? Is iTunes the next bank?

Steve Jobs 2015 WWDC… reflecting on the 3.0 iPhone launch.

I wasn’t there at the 3.0 launch, Phil did the talk. In retrospect we still seemed so unlikely to make the iPhone the ubiquitous communication device. The carriers remained difficult although we had no real competition. The launch of iPhone3.0 was the turning point. Till then the iPhone had been somewhat crippled and we’d made a decision to hold to one app at a time. That was problematic as we had no way to cope with the real-time world that was emerging. For the first two years we had no way to wake an app and it took us time to work out the details.

The integration of the notification services structure changed all of that. It was MobileMe then. When 3.0 launched we had games that kept people synced in real-time. As messenger and twitter clients moved to this same format we found that those running iPod touches could run their fun and communications off the same device. With location based notification services emerging, and new “friend in the vicinity” notifiers people really began looking at their iPhones in a new way.

It seems so strange now. Yet when notifications were read out and played via bluetooth headsets we really began feel real-time updates in a new way. We no longer had to look to a screen for notification. It solved the old desktop / laptop  popup window problem; many of you won’t even remember that. Of course you couldn’t screen the flow then for much. An individuals flow was not finely tuned to them; the messaging still crude.

Yet that’s where our perspective started to change. By the launch of 3.0 we had already seen over a billion apps downloaded. While the phone had been limited to just over 100 we announced then that the iPhone would support 1000 apps without a problem. It would be another two years until we launched “background” services which were effectively invisible background apps. The real money in the apps was to come in the value they brought to notifications. Sure we all had ideas then about shopping and finding a date…. the solutions turned out to be obvious. We also knew we needed real access to this emerging flow. Twitter volumes were exploding. News broke on twitter. It was the future.

We bought Twitter just before Christmas 2009. It coincided with my own new lease on life. Twitter had two key things that were of real importance to us. Yet we said nothing for another year…. We added in the “location” GPS details to every Tweet. We made it even easier to integrate with mapping and we built a telephony contacts API that began to leverage the Twitter profile. We also put in a free SMS messaging service for Twitter users for all @replies. The markets thought we were nuts.

Yet it’s like getting someone hooked on crack and we needed leverage. The combination of app notifications and Twitter notifications started to present our next big challenge. Still at the time it was manageable. Of course now we have the full contract / exchange infrastructure. So the following year at WWDC we realized we had the momentum and the moment.  We used the iTunes store, Twitter and MobileMe to launch a free global phone service. Yep, just like that. still sounds like it comes out of left field. We gave the users more control without taking anything away.

In that year we’d learnt you can set up Phone calls on any iPod Touch. You do it via a message or signal. “Hi Phil, I’d like to talk to you about!”. In fact it was the guys at Phweet that originally set the strategy in motion. In a world of real-time messaging there was no need to use a dial-tone to set up a call. Even then many of us were at the point where we sent a text message first. The mobile operators didn’t see it coming. We enabled Twitter apps to “forward” all tradtional calls (calls without notifications first) to the MobileMe service. Signals for calling would now travel via URL’s. In the iPhone world it was just another screen gesture and any URL could offer the ability to escalate to voice and video.

Over the next couple of years we effectively turned off the dialtone and the keypad. URL’s URI’s became the points you wanted to escalate a conversation around. In the background it really didn’t matter any longer whether it as an old PSTN call, a VoIP call or in which direction the connection to the exchange was made. We almost slipped before we realized that each Tweet and URL could have highly complex services attached to them. We shipped that with the 6.0SDK.

What mattered was we’d put access and response control in the users hand. We’d also shown the developers a market where despite the increasing negotatiated complexity behind the scenes the user experience was easier than ever. Merging the Twitter and iPhone Developer communities accelerated notification service developments. Dropping MobileMe - making it free enable the notification ecostructure to thrive.

Today we face a new opportunities and we think we are ready for it. I spoke before about when the apps effectively went invisible…. iMem 1.0 represents the next generation human OS.

So ask yourself.
Is this scenario even a little possible? What’s your Twitter strategy? What’s your notification strategy? Could Apple pull this off?
These are points of intersection that make could make it interesting.

• iPhone users use Twitter.
• iPhone users don’t use MobileMe much.
• Apple is about to turn on a notification service with iPhone 3.0
• Apple doesn’t have a “profile” or simple directory listing other than what is in the “contacts” and no way to share same.
• More importantly the Twitter profile relates to a URL not a number

What is similar about Apple’s notification service and Twitter?

• Notifications directed at a user (Twitter DM or @, Apple’s SMS popup format) may be public or private.
• The flow of this information is designed to “escalate” / launch new programs and activity.
• Apple can monetize this notification activity.
• Apple is also the gateway to real-time updates.
• The only notifications outside this model are ringing calls, SMS and MMS. (You could perhaps count email too). Twitter supports SMS and email.

So….

• Could Twitter be the world’s independent notification service?
• Will Apple simply usurp the “notification” world by riding on top of the “app” mania?
• Can this combination refine notifications to such a point that the “power and economic structures” around the phone / mobile change dramatically?
• Does this change who should be interested in Twitter?

I read a wonderful piece by Malcom Gladwell today about David and Golaith. Apple has learned the fullcourt press.

Tweet This Post Tags: apple, phweet, scenarios, strategy, twitter

I’ve been quiet here for a little while. My few tweets and odd links will suggest I’m still connected. I’m busy doing something I enjoy that’s not online. I’m building, painting, landscaping, gardening, cleaning etc. We’re doing an all walls, all wood floors refinish, all garden makeover around the house and that requires all of the above and someone as “contractor”. I don’t want to make it sound like more than it is yet we’ve emptied every cupboard, and by the end of three weeks will have moved furniture I don’t know how many times. Flip My House really defines what’s going on.

I like managing projects with fast results like this. Once early in my career I created “The Genuine Brick Transformation” for a brick company that could quickly make your house a brick house. Much later I ran the marketing for a 30 store chain of garden centers and so became used to weekly promotions, and seasonal variations. (Weekly isn’t frequent enough anymore although the retailers don’t know it yet!) Concurrently, (at the time) I worked with my first landscape gardeners and worked on planting plans. Landscaping out my own garden (complete with using the bulldozer myself) was one of those things. It may be no surprise to some that even today I plant many New Zealand plants in my Lafayette CA garden and put in the well driven irrigation system.

I also like doing tangible things where there are real outputs. I will quickly see the results of this renovation. It also provides me with some time to reflect. I like moving things forward at an accelerated pace. That requires resources or redirection of resources. For six months I’ve lacked the resources to drive Phweet ahead.

It may be my Achilles Heel, but  I always want to build, deploy, gain share, grow a market etc. As a former VP/General Manager of multi-million dollar companies there are always resources or decisions that can be made strategically to redirect resources.  There are ways to prototype and quickly research and test things with customers. Although few companies really know how to do this well. From my perspective the task is building sales, growing revenue and profits. It’s also about learning faster and making the company listen better.

It’s quite a different task to raise revenue to resource a new team. It’s not a portion of the business that is being risked. It is the whole business, in fact the business idea itself. I’ve found myself simply tiring of the “get money” pitch. Phweet for example was fun to build, an experiment, and was built with the idea of finding an investor. However getting investor dollars is not the same as making money for investors.

Just like they say you can’t flip a house without money, I know you can’t build a company without resources. I’m used to delivering results. I’m also a ready, fire, aim kind of guy on the basis that rapid action and better questions gets you to a better place faster. Today Phweet is the type of thing that should be built inside some Mobile Carrier / Telco. It’s the perfect way to help them also test their own API’s and rapidly gather new learnings.

For a few years I’ve done too much work without resources. It means I have taught myself to do things myself - literally. Did I say I was a good mechanic? (I’m good with a spanner or wrench on Porsches and more). Many will know I’ve created “blogography” environments and tested almost every social networking, VoIP and iPhone apps. I’ve done ethnographies and investigated globally the mobile social world. However, my iPhone apps won’t be in the store! There are people better at writing them than me. However creating new marketspace does motivate me and many markets because of mobile social are at that turning point.

My key strength is taking insights into action with teams in innovative ways. So if I now spend another moment just looking for an investor I’m going to go crazy. What I want is partners and colleagues that want to work with me, challenge me, and do fantastic things. I know a good leader when I see one. And I’m wasted when I have to look for capital constantly and can’t restructure efficiencies to get it (Must come from my time with helping an EY receiver!). However if you want a team, you want people, and a collective story to emerge then I’m great at that.

Ideas retained by a single person really don’t matter. It only matters when collective changes take place. I put one year into Phweet with very little consulting work outside and around it. It was informed by work and efforts that came before. In the consumer VoIP space, via Skype, via i-names and identity work. It was informed by views on “presence”, callerID’s etc. Basically that knowledge and a whole lot more is available to be applied to some other context, challenge or direction. Still I’d prefer to be either working for clients or in a company now that needs 4 or 6 of these types of efforts happening in a year, even concurrently.

I believe I have two problems. Many think I have it all buttoned up and don’t need help. I do. The second is few really seem to understand the “exactly” what is it you do? Fundamentally I take insights and turn them into new sources of value. I am a natural assessor-developer / creator-promoter. I like bringing innovative world first products to market. It’s what I’ve delivered as an entrepreneur, for my clients and as an employee over and over.

AND right now I need to rebuild my research and innovation practice or take secure a position with a firm that wants my talents.  Where’s the most interesting things? Well these are as I perceive things. In no particular order.

• Twitter vs Blogs vs Presence vs Identity and Communications
• GoogleTalk/GrandCentral vs Skype or vice versa.
• Nokia vs Android vs iPhone in any order and their markets / retailing
• Netbooks, MID’s, PC strategy - Dell | HP | Lenovo | Acer
• Mobile - Carrier API’s - Strategy
• Emerging Market Mobile Solutions
• Knowledge Sharing / Work Practices - Human Capital
• Innovation Consultancies specializing globally in the mobile social space.
• Do it Yourself! Retail
• Consumer Product Co’s - Needing Mobile Social Media strategies.

Role. Let’s either get something started or get something turned around.

Where? Anywhere in the world. US, EU, India, Australia, NZ all are possible.

How’s that for planting seeds?

(Note I wrote this post on April 7th. I was not sure I wanted to post it. I’d had a quiet reflective moment and realized it was a transition point. Today my house is “pending” and I expect it will go through. I have so many stories I could tell as a result of the experience. Eg “staging your house”. Maybe I’ll get around to them. Yet that uncertainty remains. What next?)

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• Why we don't need to reinvent the book for the web age | Net Effect
  Great commentary on Tim O"Reilly's recent writing on the book.
  (tags: books ebooks timoreilly)

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• SF: Future of the Enterprize - Tuesday 5-May-09 6:30 PM at CBS Interactive. Great chance to catch up with @RossDawson
  Signed up to go and catch up with a few old friends. Even if I believe that Enterprize2.0 has or will be quickly superceded by user3.0.
  (tags: rossdawson enterprise2.0)

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• Repeat loyalty and how many Twitter users return a month later.
  Good point made about retention. With Twitter there is more to master. The eco-system for support is outside Twitter rather than within and shared across the pages. Most early users miss "updated by Tweetdeck" etc. Mastery is steeper and more demanding. With simplicity Twitter retention will go up. Escalation all takes people off Twitter.
  (tags: twitter facebook retention statistics)

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Not had much time or quiet to complete posts recently. Of course I downloaded Skype for iPhone on the first day! It works with 3.0 installed and I’ve had the time since to play with it. It is very very good. All the reviews have been written so I won’t review them or refer to them further. I have just a couple of points and observations.

Skype for iPhone:

1. Frees me even more from my PC. The key communication service I use on my PC/Mac is now on my Mobile. So no matter how it is integrated or works in the background or not it means I have it. I had a Skype call sitting by my pool today without having to carry the laptop out. I walked around the garden! While there were solutions before that allowed this (eg dualphone, some bluetooth or wireless headsets) there’s nothing quite like using the mobile you are comfortable with. What I’m beginning to need is better battery life. I’m now charging my phone twice per day. NOT good.

2. With the exception of gTalk all my other chat / apps on the iPhone (Nimbuzz, Fring, etc.) are redundent. I also still think of Facebook as merely a directory. The people I call most often are on Skype or I have a number (often in network unlimited minutes). I don’t go to Facebook to make that call in the first place. The killer solution remains at the intersection of identity (the directory), the voice video channel, presence or status, and chat. Skype doesn’t have an effective status system. Twitter does and Facebook sort of. gTalk on the iPhone is web-based and can only be used for chat. It also has no multi-chat. Skype Video on the iPhone would be revolutionary. I still see “context” (reason you want to talk) before the call as a great next step. The problem is signaling when the client is offline. email and SMS can help with that as Phweet has proven. This is even more important when you don’t want breaches of privacy. I must admit I’m itching to build that client.

3. Location will matter. I don’t know what numbers Skype can expect on the iPhone. It’s already in the millions+. I know both my wife and daughter now have it on theirs naturally. Right now they will use it occasionally. They may use SkypeOut more. As it won’t run in the background. The iPhone already means that if Skype wants to compete with the future of communication it must manage location updates. This will make their iPhone and notification service central to where and how Skype and the iPhone develops. Additionally, connecting on the move with people outside your general buddylist without ongoing breaches of privacy is the new challenge. Integrating Skype with Twitter functionality would be an effective step forward.

4. Mobile means more intimacy. I do remember when the stories emerged of people taking their laptops to bed and then yacking away. I’m sure it is still going on. Taking the mobile to bed… so to speak and now Skype with it means chats and connections seemlessly moving to Skype are now even more likely. Skype’s “international” profile makes that even more likely. When more people can make international calls from anywhere at anytime those personal conversations will increase.

5. Telecom operators are in for interesting times. As I am running iPhone 3.0 beta it seems I can make Skype calls over 3G connections.

In the meantime I love having Skype on the iPhone. Although my battery life appears way down when I leave it running. That could also be the 3.0 software I’m running. Not sure at the moment.

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• eBay Inc. Announces Plan for 2010 Initial Public Offering of Skype
  An IPO will be interesting. Will eBay sell out before the IPO? How would you value Skype? Certainly will keep it in the news.
  (tags: skype voip)

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