first i wanted to name that post "the power of google", but when i made my notes (yes, i do that before i spread my insanity to the web), i thought what makes googles power? is google the only megapower on the web? no, because there are also facebook, twitter, yahoo and others. what makes their power? the answer is: we, their users, we, the people.
throughout the rise of the web 2.0 hype, it was all about user experience, user generated content and collective intelligence. web 2.0 is the new new economy, the phoenix that has risen out of the ashes of the new economy that the dotcom crash had brought down.
google created quite an amazing model. they are indirectly giving the people a voice. indirectly because they are giving away all their services and stuff for free and thus in order, a large and often huge number of people is going to use their offers. this is what google makes so powerful. a recent example is their books project. they are offering thousands of books to be read for free. many people use this, and so they are creating a demand for free book content. and because so many people like that, they are getting powerful. this leads to reactions from the classic book industry, who are seeing a big threat in googles doings (and indeed they should be frightened).
thats the way google is going continuosly. through giving away everything for free to the end-user, they are creating an audience and the target audience is much bigger for free stuff than it is for stuff that costs. through that, they are spreading into every niche of the market to reach audience and often to create audience.
another aspect of their success is their independence. they are currently not dependent on any investors (*cough* yahoo/ms merger + carl icahn *cough*) or shareholders - at least thats the perception. therefore they have the freedom and also the money to simply try things and not worry on any return on investment. the countertrade between a user and google is easy described: you get everything on the service for free, google gets your data. i don't worry about any privacy on the web anymore, because its not-existent. (just read the cover story, 'gone', in the current wired issue).
so why is google so mighty and popular on the web and ms is not? although ms is offering countless free services on the web, most of which are really not bad at all. e.g. windows sky drive offers you 25gb free space, ms virtual earth is really not bad either and not to forget bing. okay none of them was really innovative, all rather reactions on googles stuff.
i think the problem of ms is, that they have grown too big and forgot to really focus on the user resp. the user experience. they are simply stuck in itself. the perception of ms is that of a really conservative and proprietary company (what in my opinion apple is as well, but they are focusing more the end-user market; got it?). i think that ms could move faster, but they are risking a lot when they eventually would. the problem is that their customers don't want to move faster or don't want to move at all.
prime example? windows vista. sure the first release was buggy and crappy, but hey, thats the problem with all software products that have to hit deadlines. how many companies upgraded from xp to vista? not many i guess. how many really large companies did that? probably not one. the problem is that it is nowadays way too much risk and effort for large companies to update all their (ms-)monoculturised it stuff. upgrading was not that kind of a problem back in the days of win95 where there were no real systems for erp, cms, bi and what the hell else. when you now change one screw in your it infrastructure, something, somewhere will go badly wrong.
another example of ms being stuck are their new office guis, which i consider as really good. the problem is, that it was a bit of a radical change, especially people in companies are a bit frightened of that new things, 'cause they wouldn't find the functions on their usual place.
but the power of the people is also not always an innovative force, especially when you have only one service to offer and millions and millions of customers. right, thats the problem in that facebook and twitter ran only recently. every tiny change on the gui causes users to get crazy and boycot the system. they are going that far in claiming that the makers of facebook or twitter are tyrannic dictators. in the modern web 2.0 era you have to be aware of that effect. people spend quite an amount of their spare time on facebook and twitter, many who are not skilled with the internet or computers. and many who don't want to change their habits in using something.
so therefore, be aware of the online democracy. thats the power of the people and changing things easily, replacing stuff and getting rid of legacies is no longer. you have to take the users into account, and you should, as they are the capital (remember, f.e. myspace was only bought because of their user's content, twitter is only hot, because it seems to be (and wants to be) the pulse of the world). web 2.0 might not be user generated content, but it is user generated content and users that count.
to what that might lead, is a personalised internet sooner or later. everybody who uses firefox is customising the browser with specific plugins. thats whats going to happen to services like facebook and twitter as well. you have to offer the users certain services as plugins and not kill olders to be replaced by newers. some users prefer the old way, some want the new. that is an important thing to consider technologically, because it is quite impossible to maintain the whole range, to address all users needs and wants.
the web 2.0 era is creating a voice for the independent internet users, and in order that all our personal data are online, the future will be, that we are not addressed as a mass, but as individuals. that, of course, is as much a threat as it is a blessing, but at least, in a big enough number, the people have power again.
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
the world after google
the world after google is a widely discussed topic. the opinions ranging from "we are already in a past-google world" to "nobody will take down google". my valued opinion to that topic is, in a short sentence: of course there will be a world after google!!
why? because every big company had come to the point where they missed a development (yes, i am talking about ibm and yes i am talking about microsoft. who would have thought 30 years ago that there will be anyone but ibm dominating the it world? and who would have thought 15 years ago that there will be anyone but microsoft dominating the it world?) and google already missed an important development.
of course google will always remain a major player, their product portfolio is too broad and good to crash completely, but they're not that big herd of innovation that they have been a few years ago. with stuff like google earth, street view, maps or books, they started huge projects with enormously high goals, which, i am sure, they are going to reach. but in the last time, i miss the real innovation on googles course.
first they came up with android, which was acutally a good idea, because the mobile os market really needs innovation and consolidation and android is definetley a good platform to switch to. but then, there was their own webbrowser, chrome. who needs that? for what was that really good? not that chrome is a bad browser, its definetley better then the internet explorer and maybe the fastest of all browsers, but who needs another browser, when there's already, safari, opera, firefox, internet explorer,...? and after all, the browser has exactly zero real points of innovation.
then they announced chrome os. to tackle microsoft obviously. but who needs another desktop os? i don't want to be too early to say that that os is useless, because maybe they come up with some really cool features (i am talking about the go-together of web & desktop), but anyway, announcing an os is definatley NOT an innovation and NOT a step forward.
a few years ago, i would not have thought that google is threatened so early because they also put their hands on another big it issue of the future: health. with google health and the aquiration of 23AndMe they made the basis for that future market, earlier than the rest, and probably successfuller than the rest. i don't think that microsoft is going to have a chance with their ms health vault. ms is making good stuff, like ms virtual earth and also bing is not bad, but this is actually less innovation than googles announcement of chrome os...
so, and finally i get to the main point of why google is going to lose some of their internet monopoly position.......yes, you guessed right, social networks, mainly facebook (there is an "if" on facebook...) and twitter. when you are a frequent reader of my blog (what i know you are not, because no one is reading my blog so far..., and i don't count as reader...) you'd already know that twitter has a big and bright future. with the real time search engine (read also wired issue #17/10) they have an enourmously great asset.
and facebook after all has private data of about 300 000 000 million user, hard data after all (i call hard data, things like, birthdate, name, hobbies,...; things that are not going to change or not going to change so fast than soft data, namely thoughts, do). but facebook is now under pressure to come up with something new (after they failed to buy twitter, they really need to come up with something hot and new). with their big number of users, they have not so much more potential to grow much bigger (i know how many people exist on earth, don't worry).
in my opinion i start to dislike facebook a little. the main reason is the huge spam load of applications, i've had enough of going wild with sb in vegas for the 1000000th time and i am bored of any stupid group invitations like "when its going to cost something i quit using facebook" (more spam than i get on my free mail account). in my eyes, that is simply too much, better would be, less but better applications, like real personalisation tools or anything else. but, facebook after all has the potential to become web #1, they simply haven't found yet THE one innovation that is going to secure their place.
in their earlier days google came up with new projects all the time (news, maps, reader, books,....) or made good aquirations like blogger (i really like blogger, thank you evan williams). but facebook had no real innovation after the start of facebook. in my eyes they need to come up with something in the next 1 - 2 years or they maybe meet the same destiny as myspace (what or who is myspace???, hehe, no good move rupert...), because there will be another cool social platform, that might be a facebook clone, but one, that has some more hot stuff to offer. and in my eyes they are orienting themselves too much on twitter, hey, mark, come up with an own idea!!!
twitter has a little more time, because they're still hyping like hell (i'd say on the web 2.0 chasm bell, they're still at the early majority, whereas facebook is at the last third of the late majority, (if you don't know what i am talking about read geoffrey moore's "crossing the chasm")) and they have are sitting on a hot asset, our thoughts (read my post "thoughts on twitter"). i am really curious with what they will come up with, because right now, i love twitter. twittering is fun after all and there are a few twitterers that make it, to really post information (i know what i said in my post "thoughts on twitter"). so guys think about your next step, 'cause you have the best cards at hand at the moment.
why i also think that google will lose a little of their absolute #1 position on the search engine market, is, that there's a real renaissance going on at the moment. leave bing away, because that is not what i call innovation (hey steve you threw 100 000 000$ for marketing out of your window for bing???? what the hell man????). what i am talking about is, again, the real time search potential thats within twitter and facebook (yes they have that potential as well) and stephen wolframs newest project wolframalpha. this is cool stuff, as it really answers questions, at the time its mostly answering mathematical questions (hey stephen built mathematica after all), but it really has the potential to explode in popularity, because it answers all questions on the same side, using the same look-and-feel, so no more#right-click + open in new tab# on 167 384 736 search results.
another absolutely cool search engine is eyeplorer.com, they're building a chain of association with your search input. e.g. you enter "apple" and you get a circle full of associations, first, the fruit, apple, than the computer company apple (i love my iphone!!, thank you steve), than isaac newton (for that symbolic apple that fell on his head), and new york, the big apple, and so on and on. the second level of the associations are then associations of the first level, so on new york that might be 9/11 or the statue of freedom, on isaac newton that would be the royal society or cambridge, and on it goes again.
so concluding, there's a lot going on at the moment, google is threatened from more sides and has to move, also facebooks now top position in the social networking world is not safe, they have to move as well, twitter is, in my eyes, on the jumpseat upward and maybe one of the new search engines is starting to hype...we'll see
why? because every big company had come to the point where they missed a development (yes, i am talking about ibm and yes i am talking about microsoft. who would have thought 30 years ago that there will be anyone but ibm dominating the it world? and who would have thought 15 years ago that there will be anyone but microsoft dominating the it world?) and google already missed an important development.
of course google will always remain a major player, their product portfolio is too broad and good to crash completely, but they're not that big herd of innovation that they have been a few years ago. with stuff like google earth, street view, maps or books, they started huge projects with enormously high goals, which, i am sure, they are going to reach. but in the last time, i miss the real innovation on googles course.
first they came up with android, which was acutally a good idea, because the mobile os market really needs innovation and consolidation and android is definetley a good platform to switch to. but then, there was their own webbrowser, chrome. who needs that? for what was that really good? not that chrome is a bad browser, its definetley better then the internet explorer and maybe the fastest of all browsers, but who needs another browser, when there's already, safari, opera, firefox, internet explorer,...? and after all, the browser has exactly zero real points of innovation.
then they announced chrome os. to tackle microsoft obviously. but who needs another desktop os? i don't want to be too early to say that that os is useless, because maybe they come up with some really cool features (i am talking about the go-together of web & desktop), but anyway, announcing an os is definatley NOT an innovation and NOT a step forward.
a few years ago, i would not have thought that google is threatened so early because they also put their hands on another big it issue of the future: health. with google health and the aquiration of 23AndMe they made the basis for that future market, earlier than the rest, and probably successfuller than the rest. i don't think that microsoft is going to have a chance with their ms health vault. ms is making good stuff, like ms virtual earth and also bing is not bad, but this is actually less innovation than googles announcement of chrome os...
so, and finally i get to the main point of why google is going to lose some of their internet monopoly position.......yes, you guessed right, social networks, mainly facebook (there is an "if" on facebook...) and twitter. when you are a frequent reader of my blog (what i know you are not, because no one is reading my blog so far..., and i don't count as reader...) you'd already know that twitter has a big and bright future. with the real time search engine (read also wired issue #17/10) they have an enourmously great asset.
and facebook after all has private data of about 300 000 000 million user, hard data after all (i call hard data, things like, birthdate, name, hobbies,...; things that are not going to change or not going to change so fast than soft data, namely thoughts, do). but facebook is now under pressure to come up with something new (after they failed to buy twitter, they really need to come up with something hot and new). with their big number of users, they have not so much more potential to grow much bigger (i know how many people exist on earth, don't worry).
in my opinion i start to dislike facebook a little. the main reason is the huge spam load of applications, i've had enough of going wild with sb in vegas for the 1000000th time and i am bored of any stupid group invitations like "when its going to cost something i quit using facebook" (more spam than i get on my free mail account). in my eyes, that is simply too much, better would be, less but better applications, like real personalisation tools or anything else. but, facebook after all has the potential to become web #1, they simply haven't found yet THE one innovation that is going to secure their place.
in their earlier days google came up with new projects all the time (news, maps, reader, books,....) or made good aquirations like blogger (i really like blogger, thank you evan williams). but facebook had no real innovation after the start of facebook. in my eyes they need to come up with something in the next 1 - 2 years or they maybe meet the same destiny as myspace (what or who is myspace???, hehe, no good move rupert...), because there will be another cool social platform, that might be a facebook clone, but one, that has some more hot stuff to offer. and in my eyes they are orienting themselves too much on twitter, hey, mark, come up with an own idea!!!
twitter has a little more time, because they're still hyping like hell (i'd say on the web 2.0 chasm bell, they're still at the early majority, whereas facebook is at the last third of the late majority, (if you don't know what i am talking about read geoffrey moore's "crossing the chasm")) and they have are sitting on a hot asset, our thoughts (read my post "thoughts on twitter"). i am really curious with what they will come up with, because right now, i love twitter. twittering is fun after all and there are a few twitterers that make it, to really post information (i know what i said in my post "thoughts on twitter"). so guys think about your next step, 'cause you have the best cards at hand at the moment.
why i also think that google will lose a little of their absolute #1 position on the search engine market, is, that there's a real renaissance going on at the moment. leave bing away, because that is not what i call innovation (hey steve you threw 100 000 000$ for marketing out of your window for bing???? what the hell man????). what i am talking about is, again, the real time search potential thats within twitter and facebook (yes they have that potential as well) and stephen wolframs newest project wolframalpha. this is cool stuff, as it really answers questions, at the time its mostly answering mathematical questions (hey stephen built mathematica after all), but it really has the potential to explode in popularity, because it answers all questions on the same side, using the same look-and-feel, so no more
another absolutely cool search engine is eyeplorer.com, they're building a chain of association with your search input. e.g. you enter "apple" and you get a circle full of associations, first, the fruit, apple, than the computer company apple (i love my iphone!!, thank you steve), than isaac newton (for that symbolic apple that fell on his head), and new york, the big apple, and so on and on. the second level of the associations are then associations of the first level, so on new york that might be 9/11 or the statue of freedom, on isaac newton that would be the royal society or cambridge, and on it goes again.
so concluding, there's a lot going on at the moment, google is threatened from more sides and has to move, also facebooks now top position in the social networking world is not safe, they have to move as well, twitter is, in my eyes, on the jumpseat upward and maybe one of the new search engines is starting to hype...we'll see
Saturday, August 15, 2009
thoughts on twitter
i'll give you a short introduction, because probably that post might get a little longer.
but before there's a warning: if my conclusions or arguments are wrong or if you think, all i'm writing about is either thrash or already known for decades, then simply tell me :-)
this post is going to be all about twitter, why i think its useless but also rocks.
are you considering twitter as "real hot stuff"? well actually i do and i don't. afaik they don't even have a real business plan. i think the final product, so the application itself that allows us to tweet 140 char blogs and allows us to follow celebs and find out how long they've been on the toilet today and other crap that is considered to be essential knowledge that the whole world should know about, is a nice wrap around for the actual asset that twitter has: their real time search engine. the technology thats under the hood is most interesting. and as always the more users aka twitteres there are the mightier twitter will become.
i always thought most of those 140 char blogs are just idiotic. everyday you have a whole bunch of tweets, no is absolutely interested like, "just got up and made a coffee" or "waiting for my plane/train/taxi/friend/whatever". tweets are also useless when cnn or bbc are posting the news of the day, because sometimes you don't even get the essence of it, "obama meets merkel to discuss bla bla bla". so this might be interesting 'cause you know they've met and discussed some stuff but is this really everything that happened??
but now back to the live search engine which really rocks. what twitter can do is statistically evaluating all those posts and then what? well if they really can evaluate all posts, then they may foresee new hypes. it's about the same as google did with its flu recognition, only much, much hotter.
you want an example? you have a few twitterers that are always posting stuff like "sitting at the airport", "waiting for my plane", "just landed in XXX and its raining heavily". is this useful information? not for mankind actually. for twitter yes. why? ads, ads, ads and ads. at least some refinancing for them. that's nice but what about hypes? that's the clue, most standard twitterers post what is on their mind. "only 2 days until the neil young concert", "just visited vienna, and it rocked!!!". so with posts like that you may find out which city is in and which is out. you find out which new movie rocks and which sucks. you know what are people looking forward to. thats potentially more personal information than those people have on facebook (ahhh that's way they just bought friendfeed...).
maybe this is just obvious (which i think it is, thats why i posted it and thats also why i am actually not a high paid analyst at fortune 500 company...). and analytic tools are going to have a really big future, so the war is going to be about who's got the hottest analytics tool. actually that's no news as hal varian just said so recently in the ny times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/technology/06stats.html?_r=2&ref=technology.
the web is full of personal data, and evaluating them is not just for advertising purposes. will there be the possibility that maybe some insurance companies evaluate tweets to find out who's a strong smoker? possible. is there the possibilty that maybe banks are trying to evaluate if there is much risk of giving any client a credit after their client posted "just lost 1000$ at the casino again". i am a software developer which implies that i am a nerd in one or the other way which also implies that i am paranoid...yes i believe all that is possible.
so concluding, twitter is sitting on a big treasure (all our thoughts) and they probably are smart enough to know that. and their treasure is probably bigger and worthier than googles and maybe also facebooks treasure. i think they know about that as well.
the good for twitter is they are absolutely hyping at the moment and can build and improve their real time search engine through that. even if, maybe tomorrow, no one is interested in twitter any more, they still have their analytics stuff which is their hottest asset.
but before there's a warning: if my conclusions or arguments are wrong or if you think, all i'm writing about is either thrash or already known for decades, then simply tell me :-)
this post is going to be all about twitter, why i think its useless but also rocks.
are you considering twitter as "real hot stuff"? well actually i do and i don't. afaik they don't even have a real business plan. i think the final product, so the application itself that allows us to tweet 140 char blogs and allows us to follow celebs and find out how long they've been on the toilet today and other crap that is considered to be essential knowledge that the whole world should know about, is a nice wrap around for the actual asset that twitter has: their real time search engine. the technology thats under the hood is most interesting. and as always the more users aka twitteres there are the mightier twitter will become.
i always thought most of those 140 char blogs are just idiotic. everyday you have a whole bunch of tweets, no is absolutely interested like, "just got up and made a coffee" or "waiting for my plane/train/taxi/friend/whatever". tweets are also useless when cnn or bbc are posting the news of the day, because sometimes you don't even get the essence of it, "obama meets merkel to discuss bla bla bla". so this might be interesting 'cause you know they've met and discussed some stuff but is this really everything that happened??
but now back to the live search engine which really rocks. what twitter can do is statistically evaluating all those posts and then what? well if they really can evaluate all posts, then they may foresee new hypes. it's about the same as google did with its flu recognition, only much, much hotter.
you want an example? you have a few twitterers that are always posting stuff like "sitting at the airport", "waiting for my plane", "just landed in XXX and its raining heavily". is this useful information? not for mankind actually. for twitter yes. why? ads, ads, ads and ads. at least some refinancing for them. that's nice but what about hypes? that's the clue, most standard twitterers post what is on their mind. "only 2 days until the neil young concert", "just visited vienna, and it rocked!!!". so with posts like that you may find out which city is in and which is out. you find out which new movie rocks and which sucks. you know what are people looking forward to. thats potentially more personal information than those people have on facebook (ahhh that's way they just bought friendfeed...).
maybe this is just obvious (which i think it is, thats why i posted it and thats also why i am actually not a high paid analyst at fortune 500 company...). and analytic tools are going to have a really big future, so the war is going to be about who's got the hottest analytics tool. actually that's no news as hal varian just said so recently in the ny times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/technology/06stats.html?_r=2&ref=technology.
the web is full of personal data, and evaluating them is not just for advertising purposes. will there be the possibility that maybe some insurance companies evaluate tweets to find out who's a strong smoker? possible. is there the possibilty that maybe banks are trying to evaluate if there is much risk of giving any client a credit after their client posted "just lost 1000$ at the casino again". i am a software developer which implies that i am a nerd in one or the other way which also implies that i am paranoid...yes i believe all that is possible.
so concluding, twitter is sitting on a big treasure (all our thoughts) and they probably are smart enough to know that. and their treasure is probably bigger and worthier than googles and maybe also facebooks treasure. i think they know about that as well.
the good for twitter is they are absolutely hyping at the moment and can build and improve their real time search engine through that. even if, maybe tomorrow, no one is interested in twitter any more, they still have their analytics stuff which is their hottest asset.
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