Stritar's chronolog

Force touch is the new multi-touch

Mon, 14 Sep 2015 22:12:37 GMT

When I first saw the video demonstrating Force Touch on one of Huawei’s new phones a few weeks ago, I found the feature pretty much useless. You have this amazing new sensor, and a scale application is the best you can do with it? Supposedly, the Chinese manufacturer has beaten Apple at introducing this new feature, but the fact is, Apple has done something completely different. The ~~Force Touch~~ 3D Touch - iOS integration has the potential to change the way we interact with our phones, in a similar way than multi-touch gestures did years ago.

Surely, there will be subtle modifications in next iterations, but the concept is there and it seems to work. And the results look like a crazy hybrid between a right click, the Spacebar Quick Look preview in Mac OS (which is one operating system's best features in general) and multi-touch gestures on steroids.

Demonstration of the 3D Touch technology with iPhone 6S and iOS 9.

Multi-touch revolutionised user interaction when the iPhone was introduced, but it hasn’t changed much in the past 8 years, even though newer and better gestures have been introduced. But now, a new layer has been added to the equation, and it seems that the flat, layered concept of the new iOS finally received its cherry. App developers, are you ready to play?

Apple's position of controlling both hardware and software has yet again proven itself solid, and Google will surely have quite a hard job to push this component across its platform to such extent.

Why Twitter is so important for the future of the Web

Mon, 05 May 2014 06:53:27 GMT

While working on a project, I visited a website to check out a product. Since then, I've been seeing their ads all over Facebook and various other sites via Google Ads. Can't run away anymore - it's becoming obvious the power of these two online giants is growing by the day, which leaves the decision about what you will see on the Internet in the hands of only a few. This is something that's very alarming; the Web is becoming too monopolized, and this trend needs to be turned around.

Today it seems Google and Facebook own the Internet. If you check out the list of the biggest (English) web companies in the world, we can see that they are way ahead of others in size and market capitalization (on May 2nd, 2014), and respectively, their power. (I haven't counted Amazon and eBay, since they are e-commerce, and not pure "Web" companies). Surely there have been similar cases of technology monopolies in the past as well, but with the Web, it's a bit more important. Whoever controls what information is being broadcast, controls everything.

	Value ($b)	Revenue ($b)	Users (m)	Network	Source
Google	356	50	1000+	YouTube, ...	revenue, users
Facebook	155	7.8	1230	Instagram, WhatsApp	revenue, users
Yahoo	38	4.7	800	Tumblr, Flickr	revenue, users
Twitter	22	0.6	250	Vine	revenue, users
Linkedin	17.8	2	300	SlideShare, Pulse	revenue, users

Chris Dixon wrote a great blogpost about how the mobile ecosystem is becoming too closed (apps over web), which will hurt innovation and progress in the long run. Something similar is happening with the Web as well, where only a few players get to decide what content we will consume. Google, with its presence across multiple channels (search, Android, maps, mail), and Facebook, with its ever-expanding suite of services and apps (Instagram, WhatsApp), trying to reach into every pore of our private lives.

That is why we desperately need alternatives. Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Yahoo come into mind, but they all share a common problem. They are not real platforms. Reddit is great for content discovery, but it hasn't really evolved beyond the original service. LinkedIn is very strong, but it represents a static (connections), rather than dynamic (interactions) ecosystem, which makes it hard to become a distributed platform. Pinterest's only logical evolution seems to be towards e-commerce, probably competing against Amazon and eBay in the long run. While Yahoo seems to be headed in the right direction, but can't seem to be able to find synergies between its services (Yahoo.com, Tumblr, Flickr).

Platforms are important, since platforms are those who rule specific sets of technologies. That is why these four probably won't have that much of a saying about the Web of tomorrow. But there is another one who can perhaps provide an alternative - my darling Twitter.

Not that Twitter is perfect - they've actually been quite bad. In my opinion, they've made a huge mistake by closing down their ecosystem, instead, they should become the ultimate platform for content exchange. Not showing Instagram photos inside their stream probably hurts them more than it hurts Instagram. But they have always been the cool kid, very important for humanity. They have also offered a complete view of the results, unlike those filtered by PageRank and EdgeRank algorithms.

Twitter's growth is stopping, which is bad. Some are already declaring it irrelevant, while others (as well as the stock exchange - its value is way too high for the revenues) believe in its bright future. I believe Twitter still has a chance to become a real player, big enough to matter in the long run. By expanding its portfolio of services (Vine, Gnip), by moving its experience more towards Facebook (I can't believe I'm saying this...), by finally admitting what it was meant to be all along: a public content-oriented social network (=perfect for anyone's public online identity).

Twitter also has the opportunity to directly compete with both Google's and Facebook's core services. The social networking component can offer an alternative to Facebook, while its search function can offer some sort of a substitute to Google search. That is why it has to work. No one else really has a chance.

The Internet desperately needs as many players as possible who will be able to stand against Google and Facebook in the years to come, for the sake of objective information. Twitter currently seems to be the best bet to provide this alternative, since they are the ones who have managed to evolve beyond its core service the most, and it seems they are distinct and innovative enough to matter. Otherwise, there's a chance that in the long run, 90% of the content we consume will be suggested by Google and Facebook.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their res…

Note to self: when writing blog post titles, forget about SEO

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 09:23:23 GMT

A few days ago, I wrote a blog post about innovative blog designs and solutions that are emerging everywhere. I think it's a great post, it offers a very detailed overview of new fascinating concepts and features that are driven by new ways we consume content. But right before publishing, I've decided to change the post's title from "Dissecting the innovative blogs..." to "UX analysis of the innovative blogs...". I did this because I wanted to include "user experience" and "analysis" in the blog's title and url for better SEO performance, but this turned out to be a huge mistake.

This article is the first part of a series, focused on new generation blogs, which will (hopefully) form a complete user experience study of modern online media. But I've chosen the wrong title for it, since the core of every UX analysis are the problems and goals each solution is trying to solve and achieve. By thinking about SEO, I've devalued the content of the story by presenting it as something it is not. Even if the the new bible would be written inside the post, user experience experts would probably think "This guy doesn't know shit about UX" because of the title. It's very easy for something to be stained by a corrupt detail and be perceived in a negative way.

Even though I know most of the traffic on my blog doesn't come from search, but rather from referrals, I always subconsciously think about this tradeoff when I'm writing a post - appealing titles vs. SEO optimized titles with high keyword density. Pressured by the amount of time I've invested in this specific post (>10 hours), I went for the latter, also because it's every blogger's dream his / her work will once be self-sustainable. Traffic without active (social media) involvement. I do the writing, Google does its magic, the readers to the rest.

Search engine rankings are influenced mostly by (social media) backlinks. This means you need social activity first, only then the keywords start to matter. Which makes it much more important for your blog's title to capture attention than to be SEO friendly.

By the way, I've changed the title back to the intended original one, but the URL stayed the same. And I'm never thinking about SEO when writing blog titles again.

I believe Firefox OS may be on to something

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 22:27:50 GMT

A few days ago, during the Mobile World Congress, Firefox announced its mobile OS, which will be available soon. Teaming up with 18 carriers and 4 announced manufacturers (plus Sony), the release was probably bigger than expected. A few high-profile web services, including AirBnb, Disney, Facebook, SoundCloud and Twitter, also joined the hype by including their apps to the new marketplace. Analysts quickly put down their bets, some supporting the effort, while others denying the possibility of its success. One of the most fascinating things about the new OS is that it's going to be entirely web based, the operating system itself, the apps, everything. Unlocking the power of the web, as they put it. And to be honest, I can buy that.

The situation

Currently, the mobile OS market is dominated by two players, Apple and Google. They both have their own strategies, Apple being the control-freak offering exclusivity, and Google being the easy-going dude appealing to the masses. Windows is trying to find its place somewhere in-between, but it's still struggling to gain its market share (currently at around few percent) - we will see how their partnership with Nokia turns out in the long run. We mustn't also forget about Blackberry and their potential comeback with their new operating system and the newly introduced Z10 smartphone. But that's about it.

Until Firefox OS was introduced.

The history

To begin with, we must take a look at the original Firefox browser, the first-choice browser of the developer a few years ago. That is before Chrome managed to offer a stabler and faster version of it. What made Firefox so useful, were the Javascript console and Firebug, an add-on that all web developers need once they try out. But Firebug supposedly makes Firefox work much slower. Chrome built such a tool for client-side debugging inside its browsers and boom - millions of developers switched to Chrome. I don't know why Firefox hasn't offered a similar tool, they should, especially now, when they have a chance not only to gain mobile OS market share, but also to regain their position in the browser wars. They should fully unlock the power of the web, with their potential mobile OS and browser marketing synergies. Firefox = the internet.

The web is wonderful, and Firefox has always been one of its strongest advocates. And now they are doing it again, by offering an operating system that is fully based on the web. Besides, for many reasons, they are probably in a much better position to do it then WebOS was. Or as they put it:

With Firefox OS, you can simply enter any search term and instantly create a one-time use or downloadable app.

The community

Developers are an important part of every mobile ecosystem, and developing for different platforms is a big pain in the ass. Of course, everybody has the possibility to decide for HTML app instead of a native app, but if the platform prefers native apps, it's a no brainer that those will have more capabilities and better performance. But it's hard to make native apps. I am a web developer, been doing it for years, tried to develop something for iOS one day. I lost interest in a few days, because you need to get used to a totally new environment, and the thought of going through the same with Android and Windows just made me depressed. But here's what Firefox says:

Every Web developer can easily create and distribute HTML5 apps so you can find an app for whatever you want.

Holy crap, the web as the platform! Which means I will be able to make Firefox OS apps already from the start. And when I have that HTML5 app, will I perhaps be willing to easily turn it into a hybrid native / HTML5 app for all other platforms? The thought is appealing. And since HTML5 is powerful enough to access the phone's hardware (camera, GPS, etc.), this makes it much more interesting. Not to mention I would be improving my basic web developer skills if I would start developing for Firefox OS.

The recipe

Firefox OS has the carriers, manufacturers and supporters aboard, and if developing and deploying apps will be as easy peasy as they brag about it, it will all come down to a single thing: the interface and user experience that the rendering engine will be able to provide. Firefox has its own rendering engine Gecko, contrary to WebKit, which powers Chrome, Safari and Opera. Based on the first videos of the Firefox OS, it seems the interface isn't as smooth as the one you can get from the iPhone, Android or Windows Phone, and not as innovative as Ubuntu Touch. Which can be a big, big problem. Manufacturers may need and support alternatives, but it's the users who will decide, and their expectations are very high.

If Firefox can take care of this, and (stronger) devices are fully adjusted to run it, while developers are able to upgrade the user experience, I don't see a reason why Firefox OS shouldn't gain traction. All the components are there, the brand is strong and the race is long. Go Firefox!

Discover what's happening in Ljubljana in real-time

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:37:29 GMT

I've always been a big fan of the power of the crowds. When a mass of people can achieve much more than a few skilled individuals can. And ever since we've started playing with Twitter's API, I've been think about the possibilities of this magnificent data source. Besides Twenity, we've done a few other Twitter mashups like Twitter walls, but this wasn't enough. We wanted something more - geolocation. Displaying information on a map in real-time. But since there aren't that many tweets equipped with GPS coordinates, we needed to include other services for more diversity as well. Which we did, and Ljubljana Realtime, a social event discovery application, was born.

Launch

Data and services

Ljubljana Realtime currently feeds on four different services: Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram and Flickr. It would be great if we could add other services as well, but Facebook doesn't allow public geo search, Google+ doesn't support geo search at all, and other services either aren't appropriate or don't offer an API which would allow us to get their data.

These four services are visited once a minute, and all posts in a radius of around 5km from Ljubljana city center are found: tweets, Foursquare trending venues, pictures from Instagram and Flickr. A variety of information created with different purposes on different occasions.

The area covered by Ljubljana Realtime. Different services require different searches, based on maximum allowed radius.

The application

These posts are displayed on a map, which was the original idea for the prototype. The last hours of posts on Google Maps, which can be zoomed and filtered at will. But the whole display felt a bit chaotic (still does), since there are many posts in vicinity of one another. That's why we knew we need to group similar posts, and we did this by the post's nearest Foursquare venue. Then a funny thing happened: this simple solution enabled something magnificent, something that could be much bigger than the whole posts-on-a-map application.

Anyways, since geo location is heavily connected with mobile devices, the application is responsive and fully compatible with most smartphones. Perhaps there will be native apps as well at one point.

The stream

Back to the magnificent. Originally, a Twitter bot was intended to come with the application (I love making those), which would tweet all trending foursquare venues to promote the application. But this seemed a bit lame, we needed to add something cooler. Something that would add more value and detect an event before a 4sq trending venue would happen. This is where the mentioned grouping of posts by venue came in handy, and the logic is as follows: if two or more people publish form the same venue in a single hour, this could very well mean something's happening there. And in most occasions, this turned out to be true. Read further for more details.

Discovering an event before a trending venue on Foursquare.

The event discovery stream is available on Twitter and Facebook.

The problems

Besides unstable APIs, the biggest problem we are currently facing is the geolocation itself. GPS chips in mobile phones are often not accurate enough, so people are located tens or hundreds of meters from their actual location. Combine that with the amount of Foursquare venues out there (imagine tall buildings), and you can understand Ljubljana Realtime sometimes has problems with connecting a post to a venue. Not to mention duplicated venues. We've eliminated some of this effect by only using venues with a certain amount of checkins and different users, but this will surely be the greatest challenge the project is facing in the future.

An event which is not.

The results

Problems aside, in most cases, Ljubljana Realtime event discovery works great. In a week or so since it's online, it discovered many events that were happening in Ljubljana (night run to the Castle, an athletic meeting, one of the first iPhones 5 in Slovenia, a public garage sale in park Tabor, etc.), and on many occasions, it discovered these events before a trending venue happened on Foursquare. Which is great. The potential is obviously there, and newer, improved versions and algorithms will surely behave even better.

A few of the great discoveries Ljubljana Realtime made.

The plans

This project is being developed in an agile way, where the application's behavior is constantly being monitored and changes deployed rapidly according to discovered strengths and weaknesses. The MVP (minimum viable product) is there, and with a few minor modifications, Ljubljana Realtime will soon be ready to expand to other cities and regions. Now it's up to you to help us, and it's pretty simple. When something magical is happening on and you are tweeting about it anyways, be a sport and click the arrow to include your geolocation in the tweet. By doing this, you will help others to discover what's going on in our beautiful city.

That's it for now, party on.

p.s. for all the Slovenians out there: the coordinates embedded in a tweet are pretty accurate even though Twitter will say you are in Italy. If you look at the picture of the map below the tweet, there's a polygon around Italy which sadly contains Slovenia as well. Hopefully, Twitter will remove bug someday.

Finally, a reason for bloggers to use Google+

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:20:55 GMT

Despite the traffic, there isn't that much going on on Google+, and the referrals from this social network are still not that numerous. Most of mine come from other sources, but Google has a plan, and this plan is a smart one - using their services to push forward other services. You've probably noticed more and more results in Google search contain the author's picture. They stand out from the rest, and since most bloggers want to get as much traffic to their site as possible, this fact can make a difference between which link is clicked or not. If you ask me, setting this up is a must, and it's really easy to do. But you need to have and pimp your Google+ profile.

There are three steps you need to follow:

have an "Author" page, which links to your Google+ profile with rel="me"
have a link to your "Author" page on your post, which contains rel="author"
have a link from your Google+ profile to your "Author" page (in "Contributor to" section)

Here are the full instructions on how to technically implement this. It should take you about 10 minutes, and I've waited for about a week for Google's search results to actually start displaying my profile picture.

This feature has been available for quite some time, but I still see many bloggers that haven't implemented it yet, also because its availability was mostly unnoticed. Combining search and social is definitely an advantage Google (still) has over Facebook, and they should've made more promotion about this interesting upgrade. Bloggers are content creators, and you want as many content creators inside your social network as possible. They are the ones who provide original thoughts that others are looking for and will eventually follow.

It's hard to estimate if this fact (and different pictures) will have any significant impact on search traffic, I'll keep you posted. But before everyone has it, it's a nice little feature that makes your results look different and much more appealing. Good job, Google, content is king, and you should stay its steward.

Did Apple and Samsung just pull the greatest trick in the mobile universe?

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 08:09:54 GMT

The verdict is finally in. Samsung has lost the lawsuit against Apple, which means the court decided they were copying iPhone's design and user experience. The decisions seems legit, specially if you saw the internal document from Samsung, a case study comparing and improving the Galaxy's user interface based on iOS's. On the other hand, it's hard to say if the decision is morally right and what it means for the mobile industry. Software patents are a problem and some companies like Google have already made a stance agains them (even though they've supposedly acquired Motorola because of them). But could all of this be just a marketing trick? Where Apple and Samsung set out to dominate the mobile industry?

Collectively, these two companies hold 50% of the smartphone market share, and take 90% of the global industry margins. Samsung is the only Android manufacturer that is really profitable. Around 25% of the iPhone is made by Samsung. The corporations publicly don't like each other, and don't have any problems suing each other while making business. A weird situation indeed.

Apple's biggest quarter brought in $13 billion dollars of profit on $46 billion dollars of revenue, most of it from iOS devices. Samsung's revenue is around the same, with lower margin ($5 billion). Yet the whole legal fiasco ended up in Samsung having to pay around $1 billion to Apple. Peanuts, if you ask me. We have been listening to this bullshit for years now, yet the decision doesn't make any significant different to any of the giants. Except the fact that people are taking side with one or the other. Not Nokia, HTC, Motorola, Sony or anyone else. Other manufacturers don't seem to exist anymore. Just Apple and Samsung, abusing the legal system to own the mobile world. Which could easily be one of the most brilliant marketing stunts ever. Two rings to rule them all.

The final destination, part 1: technologies and concepts enterprise IT will have to adopt

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:38:09 GMT

In the past years, we've witnessed a very important transformation: the consumerization of information technologies. Billions of connected users living their life online, overwhelmed by millions of information systems that have been tailored to suit their every need and desire. Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon came a long way with their products and infrastructure, but the enterprise isn't losing any time. Learning from the new paradigms and adopting new funky technologies, that have traditionally been developed in corporate laboratories. Can the Fab 4 also predict where enterprise IT is headed? And what will it become?

A few weeks ago I participated in a panel for PI-PL on Ljubljana's Faculty of Economics, where I was asked this exact question: where do I see corporate IT in 10 years. A very hard question indeed, but the more I thought about the it, the clearer it became. Enterprise data, software and technology will sooner or later integrate everything. Simple as that. But to fully understand how this will happen, we must first try to identify the most important trends that have shaped information technologies as we know them today. Yes, most of them don't have that much to do with the enterprise. But things are changing.

Cloud technologies

While cloud computing may have been present in the enterprise for quite some time, it's still pretty much dominated by web players like Google (mail, docs, etc.) and Amazon (hardware), who are also flirting with the enterprise. Who wouldn't? There are massive benefits for businesses to move their stuff to the cloud, from scalable physical Infrastructure to higher level Platform or Software as a service information systems.

Perhaps the most important thing the Cloud achieved was to render technology infrastructure irrelevant. It doesn't matter any more, what kind of environment you use. What type of security, infrastructure, servers and network you have installed. You can outsource these things to others, and it will be much easier and cheaper, while all your migrating-to-a-bigger-thing problems will be solved with a swipe of a credit card. I was fascinated that Microsoft now offers Linux based servers on their Azure cloud services, which can be changed to Windows with a click of a button. Architecture doesn't matter anymore, and this fact helps IT departments to focus on more important things than system administration.

APIs, mashups, platforms and ecosystems

Heavily connected with the whole Cloud concept, data and information never had it easier to travel from one place to another. System migrations (moving data from one information system to another) and system integrations (connecting multiple information systems into one) have always been one of the biggest challenges of IT. But the web didn't have as much resources as the enterprise, so it had to simplify things. By offering APIs (Application Programming Interface), web applications allowed others applications to work with their data in an easy way. Mashups, hybrid information systems built on top of others, were born.

Pretty much every noteworthy web service has its own API. This helped a lot of them to become a platform. You know, like Facebook and Twitter, who have created an ecosystem, where thousands of other applications live around them? Soon, similar concepts will dominate the enterprise too. There are already players like Salesforce, who not only offer business-oriented Software as a service solutions, but the also a Platform for other developers to build services on top of their services. And since everything is so open, all this data can easily be integrated with other information systems or transferred to a different environment. Modern information systems don't have problems with understanding each other, but IT departments have problems with understanding information systems, since different, more business oriented skills are needed to support these integrations.

Mobile devices and new distribution channels

More than ten years ago, when I was an Information Sciences student, there was still a debate going on about the benefits of web based enterprise information systems over traditional Client - Server architecture. In the end, the Web won, mostly because distribution was so easy, you make the update on the server, and every user gets it instantly. Employees need nothing but a browser. They are acquainted with the environment ever since they started using Hotmail, and took it for their own ever since they started using Facebook.

But today, it seems the Web is losing its ground as the leading infrastructure, since a new technology came into town. Capable mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, now enable access to information systems from anywhere, anytime in real-time. Besides, they arrived with their own app markets, which enabled a whole potential for software distribution, and perhaps more importantly, for software billing. You give a fair share to the store owner, who also promotes your solution, and you can freely focus on developing and marketing the product. It's true that mobile apps may not be as flexible as web applications, since the users need to install the updates (even though this can also be achieved by combining native mobile and hosted HTML 5), but the trend is clear. Apple already has its Mac store, Microsoft Windows will follow soon. Distribution of mobile and Software as a service information systems is becoming trivial.

Big data and The internet of things

Traditionally, banks, retailers and financial institutions have been the organizations that operated with the most data in the world. Well, things are changing, and we can only wonder who owns the most bytes today: is it Google, Facebook or someone else? Since there are less transactions than there are interactions, we can estimate consumer oriented information systems with billions of users are the biggest in existence. While this data is accessible to the enterprise to some extent, there are also hundreds of other systems the enterprise or its employees use, and they all create massive amounts of data and information, which needs to be integrated into a wider picture.

Not only that. Today, there are already are more connected devices that we have initially anticipated. These devices (cameras, sensors, tools, etc.) create even more data, which the enterprise needs to process. This trend of wired gadgets is called The internet of things, and together with the large amount of interconnectable information systems businesses use, points to one important trend: the typical enterprise was never faced with so much data and information, which somehow needs to be integrated and understood in an interdisciplinary way.

New ways of doing things, on a higher level

In the mean time, these consumer oriented (B2C) web corporation not only became a few of the biggest technology companies in existence, they've also invented new ways of how to get things done. From Google's 20%, to flat organizations without management, more and more companies (not only startups) set out to revolutionize how business is done. In the service oriented society, creativity is important, but so is productivity and the ability to ship fast. Done is better than perfect.

With new types of management concepts, such as lean and agile, modern organizations are becoming more and more flexible. Not only in doing things, but also in switching from one technology to another. These companies have developed their own way of thinking about which software to use. And it probably has a lot to do its price, how fast can you start using it, how scalable and connectable it is, and how fast can you dump if for another. IT requirements are moving to a higher level, and information systems have become just pieces of a puzzle that needs to be completed.

Design and user experience

Design and user experience probably still don't have that much to do with enterprise IT, but they are very much worth mentioning nevertheless. Face it, users are becoming more and more demanding, and software developers need to make better and better software. Even though the above mentioned facts are probably the dominating factor for the choice of which information systems the enterprise will use, design and user experience matter more and more.

Businesses have always had problems with implementing new software, educating the users, going through the whole status quo change. But beautiful and useful software penetrates faster. People perceive beautiful things to be more useful, and it's the whole intuitiveness and usability of software that helps them adopt something without too much resistance and problems. Some software vendors already found out user experience is the new competitive advantage, and in the end it may be the thing that tips the scale. But the whole point behind it is that I can see better, more clever and detailed, information systems force out older ones on an even faster pace. The whole world of information systems need reinvention, and user experience design will be the science behind these upgrades. Benefits are becoming more important than features.

Social, crowdsourcing and gamification

More than 3 years ago, I was very excited to present a concept we have been developing in Neolab on Days of Slovenian IT. I called it IT 2.0, since it meant integrating social services into enterprise software (at that time, Enterprise 2.0 was more widely used for stand-alone social software such as wikis or corporate blogs). The truth is, I didn't get the chance to sell it well, and in the mean time, disruptive social services managed to fully find their way into the enterprise. But business won't stop here; there are many other fascinating things the internet has invented that can fully be applied to corporate environments.

Gamification, the art of using gaming mechanics in non gaming environments, is getting more and more claim beyond the web. Both for motivating employees, as for motivating clients. We all like to play, so why should work be any different? And we all like to participate in something bigger, that is why crowdsourcing, where people coproduce something, can bring such exciting results. Can you see where I'm headed?

We are all human, and in the end, behaving on a very basic level. Sometimes we perform better, sometimes worse, and we all hold hidden potential even ourselves aren't aware of. That is what software in the workplace can sometimes help us discover, and it's something more and more businesses are aware of. Social, gamification and crowdsourcing are only a few approaches that can make us feel better and more motivated, and they are all concepts that enterprise IT will adopt sooner or later. Behind every company, there are only people.

The final destination of enterprise IT

These are the concepts and technologies that will shape enterprise IT of tomorrow. And with it, new challenges will emerge, together with new profiles of people, who will understand and use all of the above. These profiles, such as data scientists and business analysts, will help enterprise IT do what it was destined to do: Integrate life, the universe and everything.

But that's another story. Coming up soon.

Check out the complete The final destination series.

Why I don't believe in these crazy technology company valuations

Mon, 21 May 2012 08:14:15 GMT

The debate about the potential second technology bubble is all over the media. One of the first milestones that will determine the outcome of this story happened on friday, when Facebook went public. As opposed to other (smaller) web IPOs of the past years (LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga, Yandex), the price on the first day stayed on the same level. This was to be expected, since Facebook received the valuation of 100 billion dollars. To put that in perspective, that's around half of Google's value, and about the same value as Amazon has. But Facebook makes 10 times less revenue than Google does, and its revenue growth is slowing down. Was Facebook valued too high? It seems so, and some analysts are already saying that most of the stocks were bought by institutional investors to keep the share price above 38$.

Facebook is not the real problem

But Facebook is not the biggest problem. It is the leading global social service, and an established company with almost 1 billion registered users, besides making quite a hefty amount of revenue ($3.7 billion in 2011). I'm more worried because of others, who make little or no revenue at all. Today, Rovio is valued around the same as Nokia, with yearly revenues of around $100 million. Instagram, with practically no revenue model, was bought for $1 billion, which is 12.000 times what Kodak is worth. A bit silly.

In technology, specially the web, companies come and go. The lifespan of services is short, and people don't hesitate to switch to a new, better alternative, and they switch fast. Remember Excite? Yahoo? MySpace? They were on top of the world not more than a decade ago. Draw Something, which was bought by Zynga for $200 million, already lost millions of users. How long does will it take for people to get bored with Angry Birds? Foursquare, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, even Facebook?

Still looking for a revenue model? Consider this.

Most of these companies have millions of users, and that is probably what fuels their valuations the most. Even though, quite a few of them are still looking for their revenue model. But what if the market simply isn't big enough for everybody? What if that is the real problem behind not being able to find a revenue model? I did some research, and here's what I found out:

the projected global spending on online advertising will be around 97$ billion in 2013 and $113 billion dollars in 2014 (source, source)
around half of that will be spent on search, around half on display (source)
projected revenues of social media ad spending in the US are around $10 billion in 2016 (source)
global mobile ad spending in 2016 will be around 15% of total online spending, or $22 billion (source)
apps and in-app purchases will generate around $46 billion in 2016 (source)
estimated size of the virtual goods market in 2015 is around $5 billion (source)
Google makes around $40 billion a year (source)

Perhaps I'm missing something, but these facts tell me that all of these companies have a market of around $150-$200 billion in 2015. ALL of them, including all the local players. Not really that much when you think about it. Sure, it's a different industry without production, but for comparison, Apple's yearly revenues are about $100 billion.

Trying to understand the math behind valuations

I went even further, and analyzed the performance of these companies; how much they earn, how much they are worth, and how many users they have. Then I tried to compare the price / sales, sales / users and price / users ratios. Since a few of high-valued companies basically have no revenue (Instagram, Foursquare), it seems that they are worth mostly between $20 and $100 dollars per user.

	Sales ($b)	Price ($b)	Users (m)	Price / Sales	Sales / Users	Price / User	Source
Amazon	50	100	/	2.00	/	/
Apple	110	520	/	4.73	/	/
Draw something	0.05	0.2	10	4.00	5.00	20.00	revenue, value, users
Facebook	4	100	900	25.00	4.44	111.11	revenue, value, users
Foursquare	/	0.7	20	/	/	35.00	revenue, value, users
Google	40	200	1000	5.00	40.00	200.00	users
Groupon	2	8	115	4.00	17.39	69.57	users
Instagram	/	1	50	/	/	20.00	revenue, value, users
Kodak	6	0.07	/	0.01	/	/
Linkedin	0.5	14	130	28.00	3.85	107.69	users
Microsoft	70	260	/	3.71	/	/
Nokia	38	11	/	0.29	/	/
Pinterest	0.05*	1	12	20.00	4.17	83.33	revenue, value, users
Rovio	0.1	9	1000**	90.00	0.10	9.00	revenue, value, users
Tumblr	/	1	30	/	/	33.33	revenue, value, users
Twitter	0.14	10	100	71.43	1.40	100.00	revenue, value, users
Yahoo	5	19	170	3.80	29.41	111.76	users
Zynga	1	7	150	7.00	6.67	46.67	users

Data for publicly traded companies are available on MarketWatch.
* - estimate
** - downloads

Google manages to make the most from its users, around $40 per user per year. How much can the others make in the long-run, put together with the estimated $150b market size? How many can even earn anything before their users leave? The equation somehow doesn't add up.

These companies are great, but still…

I'm a big fan of the internet, I truly admire these companies, and use most if their services. But I still think this is madness. Didn't we learn enough from the first dot-com bubble? Today, we're a part of the social / mobile excitement, what can we expect tomorrow, the semantic excitement? The internet is maturer than this, and nobody will take it seriously, if it will behave so manically depressive. Ups and downs every few years surely don't work that well, and another bubble is definitely something the we don't need in these unstable economic times. So, please guys, take it a bit easier. don't be too greedy and enjoy what we have.

Perhaps the best thing that could happen at this point is for Facebook to lose about 30%-50% of its value. That could put some sense into the frenzy, before it goes to far. The situation surely needs more consideration.

You know what's cooler than $100 billion dollars? $50 billion dollars.

The future (of software) is in platforms

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 16:26:11 GMT

I don't know if you've had the chance to read What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. You should, it's a very powerful book, even though it's been written a few years ago. Things have changed a bit since then, when Google was on top of it's game, but that doesn't mean the ideas presented in the book aren't more actual than ever. One of the chapters that made the biggest impact on me was the one about platforms and distributed systems. Google managed to conquer the world of Web 1.0 by being decentralized, allowing others to embed YouTube videos, Google Maps and Ads anywhere on the Web. This orientation provided the fuel for Google's further development and growth. Today, this way of thinking is not a competitive advantage anymore, it's becoming a necessity. As you will see, current online market leaders of various industries are not those who provide the service, they're the ones who provide the platform.

Platforms rule because mashups rule

Platforms, as opposed to products and services, allow others to build on top of them. Not thinking about control and centralization, they provide the basic building blocks other can use to develop even more products and services. In the world of Web 1.0, this meant using an embedded YouTube video instead of having your own video player, but Web 2.0 has been heavily defined by ecosystems of services built around other services. With APIs these platforms provide, developing high-level mashups has never been easier from the technical point of view, and this type of architecture benefits everybody. The platform vendor gets additional developers that extend and market it's service, while the satellite mashup gets the distribution channels, users and data they need to get somewhere faster. A modern synergy packed symbiosis.

Oren Michels, CEO of Mashery, which provides API as a service, talking for Silicon Gardens in Kiberpipa

The technology platforms

Today, pretty much all of the technology market leaders are platforms. Google allows various levels of use of it's services, from embedding things to using different APIs. Facebook's games and other apps ecosystem is huge, with providers such as Zynga already gone public. Twitter and it's massive amounts of tweets generated in real-time produced the Twitterverse - an array of fascinating high-level services. Foursquare, a geo-location network allowed other interesting concepts, such as augmented reality and games, on top of its service. Amazon offers you to build your own store, and Apple's and Android's mobile app stores are hosting hundreds of thousands of apps developers can build, deploy and distribute in short amounts of time. Salesforce offers a platform for enterprise IT, WordPress for writing and blogging tools. I could go on, but you get the picture. Platforms are the future, because they evolve collaboratively, with thousands, if not millions of people co-creating them.

A massive Salesforce conference in San Francisco, which I've visited on my Silicon Valley trip (thanks Davorin!)

The real-life platforms

Not only in software and technology, platforms in real-life are also becoming more widespread. The whole Apple iPad/iPhone gadgets ecosystem is one of the most obvious cases, where various providers offer sound systems, dongles, add-ons and other accessories that upgrade and make the original item even more appealing. Nespresso and Dolce Gusto are another interesting products. Nestlé provides the platform - the small coffee pads, which they are pushing to the market, while different manufacturers make coffee machines and other complementary products. The platform becomes more useful because of its satellites, which make the platform even more successful, turning this relationship into a virtuous circle.

Coffee machines by various vendors for Nestlé Dolce Gusto

So what should I do?

Firstly, you should embrace this way of thinking and understand what's happening. Platforms have been around since the beginning of software, even though you maybe haven't thought about them in such a way. Computer architectures, Operating systems, Programming languages and Development environments are all platforms, on a more basic level - but they provide the foundation which others can build on top of. Other platforms are build atop of these and others atop of those. Platforms are everywhere, and with every new level, they are less technically, and more conceptually oriented. Think about where you fit in.

Next, find a platform that suits what you are trying to do. Personally, against many odds, I believe more in Twitter than I do in Facebook, since Facebook is trying to keep as much as possible inside its service, while Twitter acts distributed. One of our projects is Twenity, a game we've developed around Twitter influence measuring.

If you're feeling lucky, you might want to become a platform on your own. While this may be almost impossible to do, it's something I wish I will have the chance to do someday. Neolab already has its own development framework, and if we do manage to make enough surplus or find an investor that will take us down this road, I'll be the first one in line. That is, if we don't decide to join an established platform and rather build on top of that.

Things have changed. The future (of software) is in platforms. Are you already a part of the show?

The Silicon Valley tour, part 5: Visiting the technology giants

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 05:15:13 GMT

Visiting the global technology bluechips was one of the things I was looking forward to the most on my trip to the Valley. Seeing how things work, the giant campuses they have, the amazing work conditions they offer. But like some other things, this plan didn't turn out as expected. I have to admit I was a bit naive, but a man can have his dreams, right? These corporations have their business to run, so why should they accept visitors like me? The fact is, they do accept them, but you have to have a contact on the inside. No contact, no glory. I was actually lucky enough to have some, and the next time I'll decide on journey like this, I'll make sure I address the situation more strategically.

Apple

I know a person working for Apple, so I was able to visit the famous 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino and eat lunch there. Taking pictures inside was strictly prohibited, but the visit was very worth the while. And since I'm a big fan, this was something that had to be done.

1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino: Apple headquarters

Facebook

Facebook recently moved their headquarters from Palo Alto to Menlo Park. I took a cab there, hoping I could get at least a bit of insight and some pictures, but since the place is still "under construction", I was escorted off the property by security. Trespassing much?

Facebook's new headquarters in Menlo Park

Google

Google turned out to be one of the most welcoming companies on my trip, but this fact had a lot to do with the Seedcamp sessions happening in the Googleplex on which I've participated. Located in Mountain View, this giant campus is very impressive.

Google's Googleplex, Mountain View. For more photos, please visit my post about Google and Seedcamp.

Square

Square managed to become one of the hottest new startups around, set out to revolutionize mobile payments and already employing 200 people. Located in San Francisco, their offices are something you have to see for yourself. I wish I could, but like with others, I couldn't get it. But at least they were very nice about it.

Square headquarters reception, San Franscisco

Twitter

Twitter is one of my favorite online services, so I was really looking forward to talk to a few people there, also because of Twenity. While Nick and I did manage to talk our way past the security desk, our trip ended at the reception. We filed a request, but nothing came out of it. But like on Square, they were very nice. It seems they share a similar corporate culture, since both companies were founded by the same person, Jack Dorsey.

Twitter headquarters reception, San Franscisco

Bottom line

The bottom line is: you are not that welcome as you would like to imagine. Something similar happened to me while I tried to visit the technology blogs located in San Francisco. They also required a contact to get in, so no luck there. So, if you're planning on doing something similar, make sure you do your homework first, try to ping a few people or find a contact form on their website, perhaps you get accepted. Otherwise, you'll end up being just a curious tourist like me.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 3: The magnificent Stanford University

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 03:21:33 GMT

There probably aren't many institutions associated with Silicon Valley the way Stanford University is. Its affiliates and graduates played a major role in the development of the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, which would later on become known as the Silicon Valley. The spirit of entrepreneurship, technology, science and research is felt everywhere, and Stanford University will surely be one of the most fascinating stops on my Silicon Valley trip.

Stanford University can only be described as the American educational dream. At least the way Europeans imagine it, thanks of pop culture and television shows such as Beverly Hills 90210. The perfect mixture of easiness and seriousness is manifested in the campus itself, which is filled with amazing parks and glorious squares and buildings. It's beautiful, but also tempting for a person like me, who is still playing around with the idea of being a student for a few more years.

We managed to spend some time with Jure Leskovec from Slovenia, who is an assistant professor there. His research is focused mostly on data mining and network analysis, very fascinating fields that I'm very interested in too. He gave as a tour of the campus and took us to the Institute of Design, an inspiring place where all sort of crazy things are researched and developed. Later on he proudly presented his lab, which was sponsored by Google. A great-looking place indeed, I hope he didn't notice me drooling all over it.

Stanford University - the mother of all knowledge, located right in the heart of Silicon Valley. Seeing it helps you understand why this region is miles ahead of anyone else in technology, and definitely makes you want to study there. It's simply magnificent.

The Oval: a beautiful park, located in front of the main entrance from Palo Alto

The view on the campus from the Hoover tower

One of the beautiful streets

Arches are practically everywhere

The Institute of design: some students programming robots

The Institute of design: results from a few intense brainstorming sessions

Jure Leskovec's lab, where he and his students do their magic

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 1: Seedcamp America Trip visiting the Googleplex

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 02:05:21 GMT

When I decided to travel to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, I didn't expect things will be happening so fast. But thanks to Andraž from Zemanta, I managed to do two awesome things already on the first day after I've arrived - visit Google's headquarters in Mountain View and talk with the Seedcamp teams, currently on their tour of the United States. They came here to present their projects to potential investors, and Google was nice enough to accommodate one of the mentoring sessions in the Googleplex.

The Googleplex experience

Googleplex is huge, it seems that there's a whole town that exists only because of Google. When you get here, you really get the idea about the size of the corporation - it's a corporation by all of its meaning. Infinite buildings and office for various Google products, hundreds of people going back and forth.

What was said about Google is still true. You do want to work there. The place looks great and there's a feeling of extreme brain power everywhere you look. We got fed for free and even met Žiga, who is one of the few Slovenians working for Google. He's been doing it for a few years now, working on Google search, and he says he loves it. Who wouldn't?

Google's park and restaurant, located in the 1950 Mountain View building

Cafeteria and chill-out zone inside

The slide in the main lobby - sadly out of order. The screen displays Google search queries.

The Seedcamp experience

The mentoring sessions for Seedcamp teams took place in the afternoon in one of the buildings (Mountain View 1950 to be exact), where the companies currently in the Seedcamp program presented their solutions. I was honored to be one of the mentors, trying to help the projects with my experience in enterprise IT, business intelligence and Twitter integrations. Hopefully I was able to give the teams I was associated with some decent feedback. Here is the list of all 19 Seedcamp teams on the tour (including Oust.me from Slovenia), and these are the six I managed to get to know a bit more:

Zingl, a dating service that uses the social, interest and location graphs to match people
24symbols, a solution for e-books based on a subscription model
AppExtras, a plugin for mobile apps that allows publishers to promote other apps
archivme, a service for managing invoices and other business documents in the cloud
Bilbus, which works as a broker between businesses and lenders
blossom, a project management tool for lean companies

Pretty much all of these 19 companies managed to create some very impressive business models and innovative new services.

Alex presenting Oust.me, a location-based conquering game

Mentoring sessions happened in various rooms

A bit of food and drinks after an exhausting day

What now?

So far, so good. The Seedcamp experience in the Googleplex was amazing, and I learned more in one day than I did before in months. I truly hope these teams will be able to get what they came looking for, and I hope I will too. I just need to find out what that is, because I'm not even sure anymore.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

Did Google just admit Apple's Siri is the future of search?

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 15:21:19 GMT

I don't know if you saw The evolution of Google search video, which they've published a few days ago. You should, it's a cool movie, portraying the history of search and Google's vision of its future. But something went wrong. One of the punchlines of the video was a story from one of the engineers, who said that next-generation search engines will be able to answer complex questions such as the following:

"Hey, what is the best time for me to sow seeds in India given that monsoon was early this year?’"

A very legitimate question.

I don't know if you've tried out iPhone's new personal assistant, Siri. It's awesome in every bit. Not only does it have a state-of-the-art voice recognition, it's also packed with super smart artificial intelligence that supposedly allows you to ask crazy things things such as:

"Can you remind me to call my wife when I leave the office?"

Another very legitimate question.

And there's a strong resemblance there. Both requests are really abstract and probably require quite a bit of computational power to be understood by a program. They have nothing to do with mathematical or social ranking currently used by Google (search), they are all about Artificial Intelligence and semantic interpretation. And while Google currently doesn't provide (or at least market) services that would be able to understand such sentences, Apple does.

I've noticed quite a few articles saying concepts such as Siri are the future of search. It's obvious artificial intelligence will play a big role in this segment. Apple's already in. Even if their technology is not superior to Google's, who is also working on embedding AI into search, it's fully available today, and everybody knows it. Google should really be careful with such statements concerning their core business, Web search. Specially if they are competing against the marketing wizards of Apple, who know how to sell things even if they don't fully work.

Promoting a technology you don't have and your competition does? Stupid consumers such as myself might do something stupid.

UPDATE (5.12.2011): You can join the discussion on HackerNews.

Is Dexter and its social game Slice of Life the future of TV shows (but no one noticed)?

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 15:46:35 GMT

I don't know if you've noticed, but a few months ago the hit television show Dexter got it's own social game you can play on Facebook, named Slice of Life. Similar kinds of branded social games have been done before, but it's something else that's interesting this time. This game changes according to the plot of the television series each week. That's right, the show and the game are coexisting and evolving together to bring users a totally new type of experience. And while most technology blogs, obsessed with social, said Slice of Life is a revolutionary new type of a social game, I asked myself: is it rather a new revolutionary type of consuming television?

Television is static - not interactive the way the Web is. You can't do much. More or less, liking and commenting shows, besides tele voting, are the most interactive things you can do. But Slice of Life changes everything. A television show that you can watch, consume and play on multiple mediums, multiple channels, multiple platforms, online and offline. You're actually playing a game inside the show. Or watching a show inside the game. Pretty awesome stuff that didn't get as nearly much attention as it should, attention for bringing a new type of interactivity to television shows.

If the future of television as a medium will be defined by new types of business models (Netflix), physical architecture (Google?) and user experience (Apple?), the future of television content will definitely be defined by the level of interactivity it offers, imitating the Web. And until now, interactivity hasn't been solved in such a smart way than our favorite serial killer's social game. You must watch, you must play, you must do everything to be the biggest of the 10 million+ fans Dexter has on Facebook.

It looks like television is becoming more than just a medium. It's rather evolving into a cross-platform interactive content serving entertainment system. Some have already managed to successfully understand that fact, more will follow soon. I don't know about you, but I can't wait to see more.

The art of internal hyperlinking

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 21:00:02 GMT

Everybody wants traffic on their blog or website. Direct traffic. Referring traffic. Search traffic. All good in their own way. Direct traffic means having a strong brand. Referring traffic means having a strong network. Search traffic means having a strong team. The first two are hard to influence, but search - that's the one you can influence the most. And even if search technology has changed a lot in the past few years, with mathematical algorithms slowly getting replaced by social ones, old school search engine optimization can still make a difference.

Let's say you already have good content. And you have it technically optimized and search engine friendly. Like, Tweet and +1 buttons implemented where applicable, since they are more and more important for search result rankings. All good, but you might have missed something. Since it's very hard to persuade other people to link to your site giving you a higher PageRank, you just have to do it yourself. I'm talking about internal hyperlinking, where you cross-reference the content you already have. Google loves it so much that their official blog, besides influential blogs such as Mashable and ReadWriteWeb, have main headings referencing itself.

I approached this issue from two different angles. Sometime in October 2010 I took the time to systematically cross reference all my blog posts. It took me a lot of time, but I think it was worth it. Besides, I developed a "similar content" module, which additionally does it for me. The results on the diagram below, which display search-based traffic on my blog, are not real proof of that fact, since the experiment was not fully scientific; there are many other SEO factors, additional content and optimizations that were put into the equation. But still, most energy was put into content cross referencing and the trend looks pretty good.

Traffic to http://stritar.net via search engines

Since internal hyperlinking is an ongoing process, you have to have a good overview about the content you own, something that provides you with the complete picture. I used a plain Excel file, grouping my posts into general categories and started drawing arrows representing hyperlinks. At this point, it's already become a bit of a mess, so I'm thinking about moving to a stronger diagram-oriented software, but I think you get the picture.

http://stritar.net internal hyperlink structure

Internal hyperlinking can help, and it's something you can do even if you don't have a lot of technical skills. Just a lot of time, but we're in a recession anyways. Now go for it and let me know about the results.

You know what Google should include in Google+? A social Gmail client.

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 08:05:05 GMT

Social is a funny thing. Some get it, some don't, it's been around since ever (remember forums?) and it keeps evolving with a maddening pace. While there used to be a giant barrier between social and not social, this barrier is slowly disappearing, and the last of the old boys finally admitted it's competing against Facebook and not Microsoft. Google has had problems with providing a social service. But wasn't social potential always there to conquer, only not really noticed? Not inside their failed social projects like Buzz and Wave (and Google Me?), but there, in the core of their services?

Social?

What's "social"? In my opinion, it's not really a thing, it's more of a something that you put on top of things. Facebook put social on top of photos and education. Twitter did it on publishing. Foursquare on moving, Groupon on buying. Can you see where I'm headed? It's hard to make social out of nothing, you have to have something, and then you can make that something (even more) social. And Google will have to do the same thing (and Neolab too). Don't make social, make things social instead.

Introducing Google+

Since Larry Page became CEO of Google, things have been moving ahead. The +1 button is one thing. Showing activity of your social vicinity inside Google search is another. Both upgrading Google's core service with social. It's also smart they've (finally) made a Google "dashboard", the social Google+, where you can socialize with your Google account. It looks promising, even though it resembles Facebook. But it's the services that count.

Circles (grouping people) seem cool, since Facebook's relationship model is flat and they will have problems to persuade people to make groups / lists. I would arrange my Gmail contacts and put them into groups in needed, since I would be doing it as I go along, and it's easy to do. Sparks seem nice, providing content based on your preferences. Again, (probably) powered by search and complex mathematical algorithms, where Google dominates. I won't comment on photos and chat for now, but this time, Google's social attempt went from improvisation to consolidation of their existing services (search and accounts). Use what you got, especially if that works.

What about email?

I said I would consider arranging my contacts. Yes, we finally come to Gmail. Once I was writing about how I would love a "social" smartphone, since smartphone is a social device in its essence. But isn't email also social in its essence? The first online social service to be exact? Forgotten somewhere, forever not classified as social?

It is very much social, and it might as well be what Google's desperately looking for. I would love to have a social inbox. Not by including profile pictures from Facebook, but really social, in a new innovative way. Grouping emails by Circles, reading email correspondence on someone's profile, suggesting Circles on email recipients. Commenting, liking emails. Not having separate email contacts and social friends, but just people. Enterprise 2.0 shit included even. (And fully integrated with Android, of course.)

A mobile social inbox

That would really be neat. Google, you obviously understand that future lies in platforms, and you should stop trying to put useless things like Buzz and business cards inside Gmail. Gmail is fine. Now it's time you use it somewhere else, use it as a platform. With all your Gmail users, they just might provide the critical mass you need to pull this off, while differentiating yourself from Facebook at the same time. That's it. Search and Mail. Make that fully social inside Google+, these are the segments you're a market leader in! And mobile! And you'll win the next round. But you probably already know that?

Adding share buttons to your blog or website - a comprehensive guide

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:05:14 GMT

A lot has happened in the field of share buttons in the past year: Google +1 button for web pages was introduced, Facebook started to migrate the Share and Like buttons, TweetMeme button is slowly getting replaced by the offical Tweet button, etc. Enough to make maintenance of these buttons a pain in the ass. But since social activity is getting more and more important for SEO, this needs to be done, one way or another. To make it easier, I've put together a comprehensive list of different share widgets, together with some explanation, sample code and direct links to full documentation.

Keep it simple: Use basic links

Most social services support direct linking to share forms, which can be populated using a proper request. This means the URL of the target content (and sometimes title) must be passed in the query string (e.g. "?url=http://stritar.net"). In case you require a simple solution that doesn't require a lot of space, or you would like to style your share buttons on your own, this could be what you're looking for.

Facebook: http://facebook.com/sharer.php?u=<%=contentUrl%>
Twitter: http://twitter.com/?status=<%=contentTitle%> <%=contentUrl%>
Reddit: http://reddit.com/submit?url=<%=contentUrl%>&title=<%=contentTitle%>
Digg: http://digg.com/submit?url=<%=contentUrl%>
Delicious: http://delicious.com/post?url=<%=contentUrl%>&title=<%=contentTitle%>
StumbleUpon: http://stumbleupon.com/submit?url=<%=contentUrl%>&title=<%=contentTitle%>

Keep it simpler: Use AddThis

If you're not a demanding users and you're OK with a plain solution, the service AddThis may be just what you need. Set the parameters and you're good to go, and the number of supported services is really huge (and you also get the Print button).

Result:

Possible modifications: too many to mention

More info: http://www.addthis.com/

Facebook

So, you'll rather go for the real thing? Let's begin with Facebook. If you're trying to get the code for the Like button and it says you have to be a registered developer, don't worry, just logout and everything will be great. After that you will be offered with two sets of code, both of them work. I used the second one, which also support "Send to".

<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script>
<fb:like href="<%=contentUrl%>" send="false" layout="button_count" width="130" show_faces="false" action="like" font=""></fb:like>

Result:

Possible modifications: layout (standard, button_count, box_count), colorscheme (light, dark), action (like, recommend), show_faces, font, width, send (add send button), etc.

More info: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/

Twitter

Since Twitter introduced the new Tweet button, the original TweetMeme button started to behave strangely (sometimes it doesn't count tweets correctly). On the other hand, the official Tweet button doesn't count the tweets for older posts, so all your viral posts from the past will show 0 tweets (and I was so proud one of my posts got more than 100 retweets!). Your choice, I've decided to go for the new one.

<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-url="<%=contentUrl%>" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

Result:

TweetMeme:

Possible modifications: data-count (vertical, horizontal, none), which modifies the layout. You can also set the default text and specify @via, etc.

More info: http://twitter.com/goodies/tweetbutton

Reddit is a great community that can get you quite a bit of traffic if your topic is more on the geeky side.

Result:

Possible modifications: tens of different layouts

More info: http://www.reddit.com/buttons/

Digg

Since Digg's last upgrade, I haven't been seeing any traffic from it, but it's nice to dream about the old times. Not working properly on FF2.

Result:

Possible modifications: class (DiggWide, DiggMedium, DiggCompact, DiggIcon), which modifies the layout.

More info: http://about.digg.com/downloads/button/smart

Delicious

We'll probably be seing a new version of Delicious button soon, but for now, you can either put a simple link without the count to your blog or some hacking is required. You practically have to make your own button that retrieves the data from Delicious and puts it into correct HTML tags. For advanced users only.

<span id="deliciouscount" style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold;"></span>
<a id="deliciouslink" style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="View details"></a>
<script type='text/javascript'>
function displayURL(data) {
var urlinfo = data[0];
if (urlinfo == null) {
document.getElementById('deliciouscount').innerHTML = "Bookmarks: 0";
return;
}
else {
document.getElementById('deliciouslink').innerHTML = "Bookmarks: " + urlinfo.total_posts;
document.getElementById('deliciouslink').href = 'http://delicious.com/url/' + urlinfo.hash;
}
}
</script>
<script src="http://badges.del.icio.us/feeds/json/url/data?url=<%=contentUrl%>&callback=displayURL" ></script>

Result:

Possible modifications: the world is not enough

More info: contact me

StumbleUpon

I'm not sure if I'm using StumbleUpon properly, but I haven't managed to get a single stumble since I started blogging, so I temporarily removed it from my blog (due to lack of space).

Result:

Possible modifications: many different layouts

More info: http://www.stumbleupon.com/badges/

Google +1

It's too soon to say if +1 button will be a game changer, or it's just too lame, too late, like other Google's social services. We'll see. Not working properly on FF2, FF3.5 and IE7.

Result:

Possible modifications: size (small, standard, medium, tall)

More info: http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/index.html

LinkedIn (Update 28.11.2011)

LinkedIn may not be your dynamic social platform, but perhaps you may still find use for it.

Result:

Possible modifications: layour (vertical, horizontal, nocount)

More info: https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins/share-button

Special: Like Facebook page and follow on Twitter

If you have a Facebook page, all you need to do is point the Like button to the URL of the page, and people will automatically become "fans". Similarly, you can implement the new Twitter Follow button and hopefully get new followers.

<a href="http://twitter.com/gstritar" class="twitter-follow-button" data-show-count="false" >Follow @gstritar</a>
<script src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Follow @gstritar

Other platforms

All of these buttons can be modified to some extent, and most of them will work without the specified URL. But you'll probably need to set it anyways so they will also work on your homepage with many posts.

The cases presented were made for asp.net, but they can be modified for other platforms such as WordPress or Blogger by replacing the <%=contentUrl%> with something like <?php the_permalink() ?> or data:post.url (sorry, no experience). But if you managed to get the Facebook Like button to work, you will surely be able to modify others too.

There you go, time to share.

Reinventing SEO: The social media effect

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:00:38 GMT

Looks like the time for classic search and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is slowly running out, waiting to be replaced by more advanced and efficient algorithms than mathematical - human powered. The Facebook Like button, the Twitter retweet button and other social share widgets are on the uprise, and Google is fighting back with all its might. For now, their business model relies heavily on search (other project like Android and Chrome too), but their future social success was named the number one priority by the new old CEO Larry Page.

Google still has a problem with providing a solid social alternative to the newly crowned social players, and for now (we'll have to see what happens with the new +1 button), all they can do is to somehow play along. In the mean time, a lot of people have been noticing the impact of Facebook likes and Tweets on their Google results ranking, and guess what – I've noticed the same thing. Welcome to the age of social curation, where rating content is slowly getting as important as generating content. I guess there's about a billion times too much of it online, and who else knows it better than Google and Bing.

While we knew Google is very good at adapting its services to new trends, we are quite happy they actually went this far, embracing social virality into their search results. But what happened to the world's most powerful mathematic algorithm, Google's PageRank? Is it becoming obsolete to the Facebook Like's search algorithm, which will surely come around soon in its full glory? Actually, it's getting clear it became obsolete together with the static Web 1.0, but only to get reborn for the social world of Web 2.0. Slowly, almost underground, while we were being fed with news about how loading speeds make a significant difference on Google ranking.

I've written a few blog posts that have been generating some social buzz. A few Tweets, Likes and Reddit upvotes, and you have a winner (thank you!). "Jeopardy Slovenia" may not be a power search, but it became the first result on Google the same day I've published the post. With PageRank 0! And "Apple Slovenia", a keyword much more interesting, is also displaying my post on the first page. Not bad. And that's something we will probably be seeing even more of in the future, and that's why blogging is still (if not more than ever) very important.

It's time to start monetizing your social capital. And of course, upgrade SEO marketing strategies with more efficient SMO (Social Media Optimization) strategies. Before you'll get your page on top of Google the old school way, you'll grow old. So be cool and remember, sharing is caring. Yes, that means you should click the button.

Why an actual Facebook phone could kick ass (with mockups)

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 19:28:34 GMT

The question if Facebook will start producing it's own mobile OS on top of Android made a huge buzz a few months ago. Technology authorities such as TechCrunch and Mashable gave us diametrical coverage about it, the first claiming the rumor is true, and the second denying it. Needless to say the mobile market is one of the fastest evolving. Since 2007, when Apple supposedly revolutionized the mobile telephone by introducing the first popular tablet smartphone without a keyboard with an app market, things didn't change much, but in 2011, Facebook has a great chance to reinvent the phone again.

Today, the world is "going social". The transition to 2.0 has touched most aspects of our lives and heavily influenced software development, some companies are introducing social browsers, and others such as Neolab are trying to put social into enterprise IT. But the most social device of them all, the mobile telephone, despite high competition and increasing hardware and software capabilities, was left behind. Sure, the social potential in mobile contacts was noticed, but we haven't seen it happen yet. So, if Facebook actually gives this thing a try, could we finally see a real social phone?

One of the biggest problems with today's mobile operating systems and their user experience is that they are still built around services rather than around people (contacts). You have your app for calling, your app for messages, your app for mails, apps for different social networks. Different channels with enclosed streams rather than one giant stream that would display all the communication and interactions with a specific person. Android and Windows 7 Phone did enable Facebook contacts syncing with direct links to profiles and some integration, and there are third-party apps that are trying to achieve this (SocialPhone, Phonebook 2.0). Nevertheless, I still made some mockups of my own about how I envision the social phone OS of the future (since I'm more aquainted with the iOS, I worked on that), something that is destined to happen one way or another.

User stream

The most important feature I miss about the current generation of smartphone operating systems is the complete stream of activity and interactions from a single person. All classic mobile services (call, message, mail, calendar, ...), combined with social services (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, ...) in a single feed. Here's a mockup of how this could look, the icon represents the service, the arrow represents the direction (in case of public posts, which are not between two people, there is no arrow, since it's an action without target instead of a reaction). All services are intended for communication, so why are they kept separated and treated differently?

Single user stream, displaying information from different sources and services. Similar features already exist in some apps.

The contacts

Now that we have an integrated repository of all our social interactions with a single user, we could reinvent the address book. Each action could have it's weight (e.g. a Call would be much stronger than a Twitter reply), and the occurrence of social interactions with a user in recent time period could determine the probability of needing that specific contact (an upgrade to "recently contacted", available today). To make things even more useful, users could set the preferred time period using a slider. Those who have seen how sexy iPhone icons behave while being rearranged, can probably imagine the fancy shuffle of profile pictures upon this activity.

Contact grid, where people are recommended based on the number of social interactions in a specific time period.

The activity log

To top it off, I've made a mockup of the complete activity log, which could combine all owner's social activities together with the interactions on a mobile device and other services. Again, the icons represent the public actions (shown with a service logo) and the interactions (shown with a profile picture), together with the direction of the reaction. This blog does something similar, combining different social activities into an unified stream, but it's still mostly one way - my posts on different social services. But combining one way posts with two way actions/reactions/interactions could provide the component that could actually make the phone capable of portraying the most perfect social stream of its owner. Specially since regular phone activities, such as calls and messages are as social as you can go, but they exists only on the device and the carrier.

Log of all user's activities on the phone and on different Web 2.0 networks.

These are just a few ideas, I've been thinking about trying to pack them in an app, but I really don't have the time to go for it, and similar ones are already available. I also think that this concept of a social phone should be built into the core of the OS, because the phone would need to be completely integrated with and authenticated into different Web 2.0 services (not only single apps). This would make these features available inside other apps, and setup and synchronization would require less hassle.

Facebook, the king of social, is currently the most perfect candidate (and perhaps the only one capable) to make something like this work, so I would really love to see it come alive. It's questionable if they would allow competition like Twitter or Foursquare inside it, but other software giants would surely need to follow the concept and in the end, make it right. I want a social phone!

Trends of 2010, according to Facebook, Google and Twitter

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 07:42:29 GMT

The year is coming to an end, and our favorite big brothers all published reports about trends inside their ecosystems (Facebook, Google, Twitter). Even though the services are not perfectly comparable (information gets pulled and pushed: while you search, you pull data; on social networks the data gets pushed to you), I think they can provide a clear picture about the general state of the Web in 2010. Three obvious winners emerged, coming strong in all the charts. Apple made the iPad the most wanted gadget around, FIFA World Cup mania took over the whole planet, and Justin Bieber topped the celebrity world. I was curious about the comparison, so I've joined all three lists, gave all topics a score, and put the results into pictures. Sadly, I'm not a designer to make a really cool infographic about it, so this will have to do.

#	Google (points)	Facebook (points)	Twitter (points)	Total (points)
1	HMU (10)	Chatroulette (10)	Gulf Oil Spill (10)	iPad (21)
2	World Cup (9)	iPad (9)	FIFA World Cup (9)	World Cup (18)
3	Movies (8)	Justin Bieber (8)	Inception (8)	Justin Bieber (16)
4	iPad and iPhone 4 (7)	Nicki Minaj (7)	Haiti Earthquake (7)	Haiti (13)
5	Haiti (6)	Friv (6)	Vuvuzela (6)	Oil Spill (10)
6	Justin Bieber (5)	Myxer (5)	Apple iPad (5)	Chatroulette (10)
7	Games on Facebook (4)	Katy Perry (4)	Google Android (4)	Inception (8)
8	Mineros / Miners (3)	Twitter (3)	Justin Bieber (3)	Nicki Minaj (7)
9	Airplanes (2)	GameZer (2)	Harry Potter (2)	Friv (6)
10	2011 (1)	Facebook (1)	Pulpo Paul (1)	Vuvuzela (6)

I've only left out "HMU" (Hit me up) and "Movies", because the first is an expression, and the second is a generic term. Hope you like it, see you around in 2011.

Windows-branded computers on TV. Entering a new market or product placement fail?

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:02:11 GMT

Lately I've been noticing a lot of television shows that used computers with a Windows logo on their back. Classic product placement, where advertising blends with an event, movie or a TV show. The master of product placement in the mentioned segment is currently Apple, who also has suitable products for most occasions – beautiful and recognizable laptop and desktop computers. But Microsoft doesn't make computers at all. It does make some hardware (Xbox, Zune), but its focus is mostly on software (and lately on consumer electronics), so why the hell would they want to advertise something that doesn't even exist? Have they lost their mind or are they entering yet another market?

The past years have been hell for Microsoft. Bill Gates left, and current CEO Steve Ballmer sold a huge pile of shares a few weeks ago. Apple even managed to become more valuable than Microsoft, and Microsoft is obviously looking for different opportunities to stay in the game. Because I don't really believe they will start producing computers (tablets perhaps?), I can imagine these product placement efforts were created to gain lost ground on the OS market and targeted against Apple, but I think they could have come up with something more appropriate. In my opinion, Microsoft's greatest opportunity still lies in business environments (Office, SQL, asp.net, …), but while they're trying to focus on other segments, they are loosing that enterprise software market to other players such as Google.

Product placement in general makes sense for Microsoft, with Xbox, Windows 7, Windows Mobile 7, even Kinect and Surface as perfect candidates, because they look cool and Microsoft actually produces (or will produce) them. But advertising Windows computers, that's a bit ridiculous. Perhaps this type of marketing actually works on other target groups, but for more tech-savvy consumers such as myself, it looks desperate and fake, because we all know Microsoft doesn't even make computers. Worse, it looks like Microsoft is trying to position itself close to Apple (even the logo imitates Apple's), but doesn't stand a chance against the design perfection of a Mac. In the end, all this money spent perhaps made Apple look cooler and might have even helped them more than it helped Microsoft.

Microsoft should focus on the fields it masters and does best (or at least try to expose their know-how and advantages), because they have little chance to succeed competing on the markets that are dominated by other players (Apple in design, Google in search). And they should stop marketing fake branded computers, because they simply look silly. Perhaps this October campaign was a short experiment or even some sort of the ultimate innovative marketing strategy made by the greatest advertising agency in the world which I don't understand and appreciate, but I think it's actually quite ineffective and wrong. Or am I wrong?

How I Met Your Mother: Season 6, Episode 4. Aired October 11th, 2010 on CBS.

Lie To Me: Season 3, Episode 2. Aired October 11th, 2010 on FOX.

The Mentalist: Season 3, Episode 5 (also other episodes). Aired October 21st, 2010 on CBS.

UPDATE (26.2.2011): Here are a few more shows doing it. It looks like it's a CBS and FOX thing.

The Good Guys: Season 1, Episode 15 (also other episodes). Aired October 29th, 2010 on FOX.

Bones: Season 6, Episode 14. Aired February 17th, 2011 on FOX.

Web 2.5: Looking for the missing link between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:39:56 GMT

The great revolution of Web 2.0 is still here and well – it looks like it's not going anywhere. Actually, its name did change, making "social media" more widely used today, but I'm still sticking to the original Tim O'Reilly's term. It's been more than five years since that happened, and a few years ago Web 3.0 was also starting to get mentioned. Web 3.0 mainly stands for the semantic web, using mathematical algorithms and meta data for trying to understand the meaning of content. But the whole thing is getting kinda old, because we still didn't see any real great results or services online – or perhaps they just did not make it to the mainstream. So while we wait for that to unveil, we could discuss something in between.

Client: Smartphone

In my opinion, there are a few quite significant changes in the Web we're used to using today, compared to the widely spread classic social Web 2.0 that already became fully mainstream. And the thing that's mostly responsible for this transition, surely has to be the smartphone. The wide spread of smartphones brought us new kinds of services, solutions, interactions and user experience, all powered by a powerful hand-held device supporting web connectivity. And as I will try to explain below, these services go way beyond Web 2.0, which is traditionally still powered by a personal computer. If you ask me, the mobile web is not just a new way to access the World Wide Web, it might as well be the new generation of it.

New capabilities

Modern smartphones come equipped with a wide arrange of additional hardware capabilities, such as high-resolution cameras, various sensors, compasses, gyroscopes and probably the most important – GPS. This fact created an array of new online services, where the ones worth mentioning would definitely be location (geo) based networking and augmented reality. Most of us can probably still remember when first phones with their 300x200 pixel cameras came out, and look at what happened now. Not to mention the giant tablet army that's heading our way.

Real-time web

Real-time web is the driving force behind Twitter, a thing so cool Google adopted it too, while Facebook is having problems to get its information out of privacy. It represents giving information when it happens, not hours (days) later, like the traditional (online) media does. While real-time web might be one of the biggest favorites for the next generation of Web beyond Web 2.0, it's still pretty useless if real time is only on the publisher's side. Mobile devices bring real-time to consumer's side too, enabling real time interactions between millions of users, which creates even more publishers and information – more than a group of professional journalists is ever capable of creating, making this world truly global.

Location-based networking

Location-based networking enables socializing based on where you and your friends physically are. Original players, such as Gowalla and Foursquare (who aleady has more than 3 million users) are already being copied by the mainstream, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google (all three naming them Places). While these services are rapidly spreading, they also introduced another interesting thing into networking, the gaming component, which uses badges and achievements to create real-life role playing games.

Augmented reality

Combining a compass and a GPS allowed another new type of software, called augmented reality, mostly in the form of solutions that use the camera image and draw things on top of it. There are already a few interesting applications of it available, and the marketing potential of this concept is probably huge. Augmented reality also managed to turn the smartphone into a deadly gadget, and where governments probably spent billions researching similar weapons, a soldier equipped with a €500 smartphone and a proper piece of software could lead a team of warriors who can see each other through walls.

Mobile apps

The previous shift in IT was for corporate software solutions to go from desktop to the web (and beyond to the cloud). Funny the trend, as today software is going back from web to mobile "desktop" applications, called apps. This happened because mobile apps enable a much better user experience (they can access the above mentioned capabilities) and at the same time provide less data consumption (making them cheaper and faster). Besides being a billion dollar industry, apps might also create the next step in the evolution of (business oriented) software and IT.

Is the mobile web actually Web 2.5?

These are a few examples of features we haven't seen before, and I think they should be considered when thinking about significant generations of the World Wide Web. The transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 was from static to dynamic, from publishing to sharing and interaction, and the next big step worth mentioning could really be the one presented.

I admit the title of this post is a bit misleading, since this new concept has almost nothing to do with semantic Web 3.0. But I hope my thoughts are not that way off, since I haven't noticed any real authority write about the mobile web as a next big step in the Web's evolution. Right or wrong, from my point of view as a software architect and developer, the mobile era brought us much more than just online access everywhere, it brought a new generation of software and the Web. Besides, we have to be aware that this trend of mobile domination will surely evolve even further and continue to grow in the future. And since the name Web 3.0 is already taken, it might as well be called Web 2.5. What do you think?

The chronolog now understands connections between content

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 21:20:56 GMT

I once made a promise that I will try to incorporate as many interesting features as possible into my blog. My previous development sessions were based mostly on interactions of readers with the posts, the peak of it being the Hot on the chronolog algorithm. But now, as the chronolog finally reached critical mass in the amount of content it operates with, the time has come to do something new. The next step is focused on a different functionality, and a few days ago, the chronolog received an algorithm for recognizing relationships between different blog posts.

The connections

The whole concept is based on the occurrences of categories (which are actually tags) on different blog posts, the most obvious being the number of the same tags two different posts share. We did something similar on a web portal we launched a few months ago, and it works pretty well. Sure, the proper way to do it would be using real text mining, where the strength of the relationships would be based on meaning and occurrences of words and external hyperlinks in a specific post. But in this stage, I'm keeping it simple: if two posts share a lot of tags, they appear more related.

The weight

Since some categories (tags) are used more often, they appear in many posts, making these posts too heavily related with each other. The number of categories attached to a single post also varies, giving a post with many tags a much stronger chance to appear as related to another. Therefore the general equation contains two modifiers, which are giving weight to each shared tag between two posts.

Categories that appear only a few times globally, have more weight, because they represent a more scarce and therefore a more interesting and stronger connection. This takes care of the tags which are used very often, making them not too dominant. On the other hand, the weight of each tag on a post drops with the total number of tags the post has, so those posts, which have a lot of tags, don't become every other's related post. It may sound confusing, but it's probably a bit simpler to develop than to explain.

The results

I was actually quite surprised about the result the algorithm makes (which you can now see on the bottom of every post). As I was playing around a bit, observing how the calculation behaves and playing with constants, I actually found some interesting connections between posts which I didn't notice before. The engine finds quite a strong relationship between the post about using Web 2.0 logos in TV commercials and the one about Round browser icons, both of them being design clichés. The case of Microsoft and Google going social also made it strong, as the two posts are describing the struggle of two technology giants trying to adapt to the new situation. I could go on and on, but than you would probably just say I was doing SEO too hard.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is actually another hidden benefit of the feature, something that occurred to me after I've already finished working on it. Google likes it if you have your content internally cross linked, so what better way to do it than to have automation take care of it. So until SEO dies, this new functionality is actually a double win, because the chronolog became more optimized for crawlers and hopefully more useful for the readers. Even though most of you probably won't even notice.

Google 2.0, take infinity: Google Me

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:17:35 GMT

The past few months have been loaded with expectations and speculations about the new social service from Google that will be introduced soon: Google Me. Facebook is currently dominating the social market, with 500 million registered users and an expected 2 billion dollars of revenue in 2010. It's satellites, mostly in the form of social gaming providers, are also gaining momentum, e.g. Zynga, the most successful of the pack, could generate $500 million in revenue this year. Even though Google's revenue is still much much greater, more than $20 billion a year to be exact, this does not change the fact the future of the World Wide Web lies in social – and Google obviously wants to be a part of that.

SEO is out

We can see for ourselves that the Web has been shifting to a new shape, where you don't look for information anymore, information finds you (push vs. pull). Another interesting fact - The Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference was not about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) this year, it was about possibilities of new social strategies. Modern viral campaigns that use social media, such as the one for Old Spice, make traditional web strategies seem plain, ineffective and a thing of the past. And Google, once the ultimate company and employer, the coolest place to work in, is facing a leakage of its employees towards Facebook, currently valued at 33+ billion. Middle aged Google, slowly loosing its coolness against the new kid on the block.

Facebook is in

A few days ago, Facebook was granted with a patent concerning social search, an algorithm build on the number of clicks made by your social vicinity. A really interesting idea, and potentially a great threat to probably the world's greatest (most valuable) mathematical algorithm – Google PageRank. This is not some service of a new type anymore, this one competes directly with Google's core business and the thing that made the corporation what it is today. And Google desperately needs to strike back.

Google's past attempts with Web 2.0 weren't that successful. From the decline of Orkut, to canceled Wave and useless Buzz, these services didn't quite make it to wider use, leaving aside YouTube. The following infographic beautifully shows all Google's (mostly failed) attempts at social, but they will still give it another go - this time in the form of Google Me.

Google wants in

Aimed to be a Facebook clone, some people say it has great potential, some are reserved, while others think it will be a failure. Besides, an open alternative called Diaspora is set to launch September 15th with huge social buzz, so this game might turn out really interesting. But Google, once the web's innovation leader, is slowly turning into an old school player, finding it hard to cope with new concepts. Something similar is happening to Nokia, who has problems with fully penetrating the smart phone market, and is loosing ground towards new players, such as Apple and the whole Android movement.

But a few strategic takeovers (check out the complete history) and strong partnerships and acquisitions of social gaming providers may just enable Google the brain power it needs to provide a successful Facebook alternative. Facebook is currently loosing some hype and if Google is able to provide a fresh service for what the core functionality of Facebook is – connecting with people you know – this just might work. But this time, it will have to be something smart and creative (but not too creative like Wave), similar, but different (not a total clone like Twitter's clone Buzz), and Google could get a chance to get on top of things again. The only question is if Google still has enough out of the box thinking left to pull it off and finally become a real Web 2.0 player.

I'm really eager to see what they'll do and like many curious people, I will surely give it a try. The only question is if it will be just a try, or will it be interesting enough (for others) to persuade me to stay. For Google's sake, I hope it will, otherwise they may face an even bigger problem on a strategic scale: the lost domination of the World Wide Web.

The Web is going rogue. The Web is going mainstream.

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:16:40 GMT

Times are changing, and the World Wide Web isn't any different. You've probably already noticed your mother on Facebook and it's not too hard to understand that interests of specific generations can be a bit different. The same goes for young people, who are obviously growing up in a world of their own, a confusing world overwhelmed with infinite amounts of information.

In the USA, already 93% of people under 18 are online. A massive group, which is probably the main driving force behind changing how the Web looks, and they are actually doing quite a good job in making it mainstream and pop. The Web used to be a part of the geeky subculture, but lately it's becoming just one of the mass media, another television on steroids.

YouTube

A great example of this pop transformation are top videos on YouTube. Star Wars Kid, David After Dentist and other classic home-made videos are starting to look unimpressive compared to Lady Gaga's and Justin Bieber's music videos. If you check the current list of most viewed videos, you can see that YouTube is really becoming more of a PopTube, where record labels are dominating the chart with high budget music videos. Lady Gaga managed to be the first pop artist with the most viewed YouTube video, but was quickly dethroned by Bieber. A sad fate for the biggest online video sharing tool.

Twitter

When people who actually have something smart to say are getting less followers on Twitter than pop princesses, you know something's gone wrong. Ashton Kutcher, the king of Twitter and the guy who beat CNN to one million followers, was overtaken by Britney Spears in the number of followers just a few moths ago. This is just the beginning - the following list provides information about top Twitter users, where you can see more and more pop stars whose accounts are emerging and taking the lead. Perhaps I'm not the correct target group, but Britney's Twitter account with her 423 tweets pretty much sucks!

Google

Google is kind enough to allow us insight into it's most popular searches of every year, which offers great overview of the culture of a specific era (Google Zeitgeist: 2007, 2008, 2009). This is The spirit of the times, as seen by world's biggest search engine:

In 2007, there were no people or other pop brands on the top 10 list of searches.
In 2008, Sarah Palin became 1st and Obama took 6th place, but that was mostly because of the US presidential elections, which can't really be considered pop. Pop star searches included Heath Ledger on 5th (because of his death) and the band Jonas Brothers on 10th place.
In 2009, the trend of pop searches continued. Michael Jackson became 1st (due to this death), New Moon (Twilight movie) finished 6th and Lady Gaga 7th. Creepy enough, but wait until Justin gets on the list in 2010.

These are some of the cases showing the evolution of the World Wide Web, currently ruled by it's undisputed queen, Lady Gaga. The scary part is that all of this is probably just a virtual portrait of the real world of today, where Pop Stars and Supermodel reality shows are helping to create new values and a wannabe society. And the Web is not just a victim of this trend anymore, it became an active player helping to promote this new and strange culture.

All of this saddens me a bit, and this is my puny effort to change this trend. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

The awesomeness of the Facebook Like button

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:46:07 GMT

Usually I'm quite critical towards Facebook and their policy for dominating the World Wide Web, but in this case I have to give them credit and respect. I finally took the time to add advanced share buttons / badges to my blog (and actually made a whole science out of it, but more on that some other time), one of them being the infamous Facebook Like button. Needless to say it's probably the most advanced available share widget from the technical point of view, but I never imagined it's that advanced. Looks like Facebook isn't loosing any time to index the web, and their architecture for achieving this goal is set up very well. The Like button is fully connected with all other social activities on Facebook, which obviously means Facebook is building a giant man powered map of the World Wide Web.

After the Facebook Like button was released 21.4.2010 on the f8 conference as a part of the new Open Graph protocol, it was quickly adopted by a lot of sites and portals, many of them mainstream. It didn't take long for the button to produce criticism, because it turned out it can be used to exploit user profiles by installing applications and gathering user data. Today, this debacle is slowly turning into history, and more than 100,001 sites already use the Facebook Like button, producing probably unimaginable amounts of likes and driving massive traffic to their sites.

I use Facebook (and other social sites) to promote my blog by sharing links, and actually get quite a few referrers from it. Many of my previous posts have been liked and commented, making it a very useful tool for generating visits. But I haven't imagined these interactions would also reflect on the Facebook Like button I finally adopted on my blog. I apologize if this is a well-known fact, but I haven't heard about it from anyone and still have trouble finding any mention of it.

When I first tested how the Facebook Like button behaves, I noticed it displayed a few likes even though I've clicked on it around 2 AM. This made me wonder if something is wrong with it. Is Facebook trying to fake likes to make the button more appealing for publishers? Surely they have to be smarter than that. After I dug in a little deeper I noticed it displays a different number of likes on different posts I've made and published to Facebook. Hm... Could this mean...?

I was intrigued by what I found out. Besides the actual clicks, the Like button also displays all the likes and comments on the links you or anybody else shared on Facebook, making it a global Facebook social interactions counter with a specific URL (link). I manually went through the statistics and concluded that all shares, likes and comments of posted links are also converted into likes on the button. I have tested it with 10 different posts and the numbers are pretty much correct, and I even found some proof of this fact. The people behind these likes and comments aren't mentioned with their names on the Like button, but they are there in the number. A pretty awesome feature for making your content look cooler and getting the most out of social interactions on Facebook.

Here are some results from my testing, which provide almost a perfect match between likes on the freshly published (and unclicked) Like button and shares, likes and comments inside Facebook.

The influence of new generation information systems on modern organizations: 5 likes on the button vs. 1 share (me), 2 likes (A, B) and 2 comments (me, B) - 5:5
Facebook vs. Twitter - Part 2: Privacy and real-time web: 6 likes on the button vs. 1 share (me) and 5 likes (A, B, C, D, E) - 6:6
Why are all browser logos and icons round (and blue)?: 8 likes on the button vs. 3 shares (me, A, unknown), 4 likes (A, B, C, D) on my share, 1 like on A's share - 8:8
Arthur C. Clarke envisioning the World Wide Web in 1968: 19 likes on the button vs. 8 shares (me, 7 unknown), 4 likes (A, B, C, D) and 2 comments (C, me) on my share, other interactions unknown - 19: 14 + x
Neolab in 2009: 19 likes on the button vs. 1 share (me), 9 likes (A - I), 8 comments (A, 2 x me, J - M) - 19:18

Even though there are some differences, I still think the explanation is more than satisfactory and if I'm right, this fact alone probably makes it worth implementing anywhere. Besides, the Like button supposedly produces more traffic on sites and blogs using it, which will definitely be an interesting statistic to monitor. The only sad thing about is that I had to like (and unlike) all my previous blog posts to activate the count (taking some time and producing an empty Facebook profile), and it turns out sometimes the numbers don't load correctly because of unknown reasons.

My fascination with the little widget doesn't mean Facebook is off the hook from my side. As useful as the Like button may be for companies, publishers and bloggers, it probably isn't that good for the users and their privacy. Facebook should build a fair and transparent strategy covering these issues, because it becoming Big Brother surely isn't that promising for the people and the future of the World Wide Web, and more and more of us are aware of that. But taking a look from the other perspective and comparing it to similar sharing solutions, the Facebook Like button is pure awesomeness.

UPDATE (27.5.2011): Ever since Facebook started with the unification of the Like and Share buttons, this behavior seems to have vanished. But it was fun while it lasted.

UPDATE (1.11.2011): Silly me. The behavior is still there, but I've started posting to Facebook using an url shortener, which messes up the global like count. I guess it's a trade-off between better measurement and more likes displayed on your post.

Facebook vs. Twitter - Part 2: Privacy and real-time web

Thu, 13 May 2010 17:11:14 GMT

After my previous post comparing Facebook and Twitter I received a few comments about how Facebook and Twitter are two totally different services which can't really be compared. I admit they are not perfectly analog, but my thoughts originate mainly from the fact that these two players will probably be those who'll define how the social web of tomorrow will look, from the point of user experience as well as an organizational and marketing tool. Where Google dominates Web 1.0, Facebook and Twitter are obviously becoming the leaders of Web 2.0, and the fact is any of them (including Google) has a good chance to define Web 3.0.

What's new

The past few weeks have been pretty intense for Facebook and Twitter. The two Web 2.0 rivals both held conferences about how their companies are doing and revealing plans for the future. Facebook's (f8) main presented functionality was the universal Like button, which was already adopted by more than 50.000 websites in its first week, even though with a bit of problems. Twitter (Chirp) announced its service has more users than expected (105m registered, 180m unique users a month) and their main focus in the future will be Twitter Annotations, used for making Tweets embedded with meta-data used for better indexing and search. These two features imply that one of the main battlefields of the future of web will surely be the semantic web, for which experts say at this point Facebook has the advantage.

Real-time web

Leaving aside speculations about where this whole story is headed and how the semantic web will turn out, and concentrate on another thing hot right now: real-time web. Real-time web has so much potential even Google wanted a part of it. Sadly, Buzz came out a bit of a failure, and most of it's traffic is non-generated. The giant probably doesn't really care because it can display Tweets and other streams in it's search results, finding a symbiosis with real-time web services, similar as it has with Wikipedia. But still, it's "new" Buzz service proves that real-time web is interesting for everybody, even the biggest web company in the world.

The main point of real-time web is already hidden in its name. It's about information when it happens. News portals and blogs are minutes if not hours behind, after all, they usually present professional and lectured articles with sources and photographies. But in this hectic and hyper-speed world we live in, information has the highest value when it happens. In the case of extraordinary and unpredictable events, such as natural and man-made disasters, or just casual popular things, such as the premiere of a new movie, timing means everything. That is why journalists turn to these sources more and more, and CNN occasionally analyzes the twittersphere live on television, taking advantage of these new modern media platforms. They actually deserve to be congratulated for seizing this great opportunity.

Privacy issues

Where does Facebook fit into this picture? Well, to be honest, I think it's still trying to fit in it, and that's what the whole "Privacy and real-time web" in this post title is all about. To understand what I'm getting at, we must go a few years back, back to Facebook's beginnings. Facebook started as a closed network for elite schools, then slowly opening up to general public to become one of the biggest websites ever. The service and concept was originally based around privacy – where everything you did you had a full control over who will see it, what probably made it big in the first place. Today, this privacy is almost gone, and even Mark Zuckerberg admitted it doesn't interest them any more.

This decline of Facebook's privacy is concerning many people right now, and you can check out this interesting evolution for yourself (also visualized). Activism and search for alternatives have already made it to the mainstream and it looks like I'm becoming a part of this movement too. Don't get me wrong, I still think Facebook is a great service both for personal and professional life, but sometimes you just have to not want it all (sounds familiar?). It's a bit ironic actually, the thing which made Facebook could also become its end.

In the case of content providing, real-time web and search, for which Facebook perhaps also has ambitions, privacy is a giant barrier. Facebook has content, not only that, it has the most content of them all (including multimedia), but this valuable content is entangled inside Facebook's huge web of (dissolving) privacy, making most of the streams unreachable for general public. Even Facebook Pages, designed to have their information fully open to public, were not helping a lot, because it's the the millions of microbloggers, from the most influential, to the most insignificant, who are empowering the real-time web, and not brands and corporations. Real-time web is a giant crowdsourced news network with reporters scattered all around the world, and that is something Facebook so desperatly wants to be a part of, using all means necessary.

Twitter is the king

We will see if Facebook went too far or will it be able to become a real player in real-time web too. For now, Twitter seems to be the dominant platform and the fact that it's entire timeline will be archived in the Library of Congress is an amazing achievement proving this theory. Facebook's only option to make it on this market is to continue getting rid of privacy, making it's content available for everybody, both human and machine. Of course, there will be other players too and uncle Google will sit right on top of it, trying to use all the platforms and services to its own benefit.

Number of users is the crucial component of real-time web, so Facebook could probably have a greater potential in this field in the long run too. But the truth is Facebook users are becoming annoyed, and it's still a question how they'll accept its new strategic policy and how intimidated they will become by its frequent debacles. But the attachment to Facebook can sometimes be too heavy, so it will be interesting to see if users will actually leave Facebook or simply adapt to its new privacy, continuing to feed it with accessible real-time content.

If the future is semantic web, reality is real-time web, and at this point Twitter is very much in the lead. In the end, it probably doesn't make a lot of difference for a casual user if he gets the information late, but still, the whole concept of real-time web is quite amazing and holds great potential for many people and businesses. An interesting thing, the World Wide Web is, and everything that came with it. Welcome to 2010.

Check out the complete Facebook vs. Twitter series.

Why are all browser logos and icons round (and blue)?

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:23:31 GMT

I'm not a professional graphic designer, but I've been doing web development for years and got to know a few things about it, both intentionally and accidentally. I hope my designer friends won't get mad with me simplifying design in this post, but the way I see it, there are mostly two main purposes design serves. One is to support function (present both in industrial and graphic design) and the other is to enable effective representation and communication (specific for graphic design).

Logos are probably one of the most praised elements of graphic design. They make an effective characterization of a company, product or service, besides being aesthetic and memorable to enable high user recollection. It's also good to have an original logo, something that stands out from the rest and helps a brand not to get mistaken with other brands. But there is always a trade-off between creativity and standard, and in our case of browser logos and icons, it looks like this desired representation was a bit more important than originality. Most of the browser logo designers went for a safe and predictable solution, producing one of the greatest graphic design cliches of our time.

When you think about the Internet and the World Wide Web, there are probably not so many geometrical shapes and colors you can associate it with. The net is huge, endless and fluid, so the proper shape is definitely not a triangle, a square or something else with edges. The net is global and it's everywhere, so the color representing it has to be something resembling our planet.

If you compare six of the most popular internet browser icons, you can see this concept in action. Most browser logos and icons are round and contain blue, except Opera, who went for red. But it's not just about the shape and the color, the bottom line is they generally look alike, using similar elements such as Earth, light beams and reflections. Opera logo stands out, but upon second observation, it kinda looks like an uncreative red Internet Explorer clone, so perhaps it's even worse than the others.

Are the designers behind these solutions to blame? Probably not. The internet browser is arguably the most widely used piece of software there is, so it's important that your mother also finds it's icon representable and appealing. The truth is we probably won't reinvent the World Wide Web or colonize the galaxy any time soon, so there is a good chance we also won't see any original and creative browser logos any time soon too. Therefore we just have to accept that round and blue it is.

Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

The impact of hyperlinks, toolbars and URL shorteners on Google Analytics

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:51:45 GMT

In the past few weeks I've done an extended analysis of visits on my blog, which made me wonder how the super fancy new web gadgets and features influence Google Analytics and traffic reports. By these new gadgets I mean the nowadays very popular URL shorteners, such as tinyurl or bit.ly, and the annoying inside-browser toolbars, used by Digg, Stumbleupon, Google images and other services. These inventions made me wonder, as well as probably many other bloggers, web developers and marketers do - are these things messing up the traffic statistics? To be sure, I had to try it out by myself and found out the following: No, they do not. Or better put, Google is smart enough to know what's happening.

The methodology

Google Analytics and other statistical software is based on combining the user agent (operating system, browser), IP and browser cookies to calculate visits on a site. While others are captured for different information, cookies are still the base of elementary web metrics, so it's crucial to understand them and have them under control. I did just that each time I did a test – clean Google's cookies, close the browser, open the browser, check it out. I made a hidden post for testing, one which definitely wouldn't get any other referrers other than me, besides using some old and already forgotten posts I made on Digg months ago and some indexed by Google images. Then I started testing different cases, which would help me understand the behavior of all the above mentioned things.

Referring vs. navigating

The first interesting thing I found out was that Google Analytics knows the difference between clicking on a link and manually navigating to a page by entering the URL in the browser. In the first case it recognizes the referrer, and in other one it doesn't (it is displayed as google / organic in the statistics). This is caused by the referrer information captured in the HTML header of every web page. So, if somebody manually enters your web page's address after seeing a link on Facebook, Facebook won't be counted as a referrer, but if they click on the link, it will be.

Url shorteners

I tested a few url shorteners, tinyurl, is.gd, skrci.me and the one Twitter automatically uses (bit.ly). I found out that the ones I manually created and clicked on them inside the URL shortening site showed this site as the referrer. But in the case of Twitter, on which I made a tweet, clicked on the link and deleted it within seconds, Twitter was correctly shown as the referrer, even though the click first went to bit.ly and than to my blog. I went further, created a new shortened URL, put it in a hyperlink on a server, clicked on it, and again, this server was shown as the referrer. Because url shorteners only make the redirect, the click is keeping the original referrer, which enables the referrers to be fully captured, even if they go through the shortened URL.

Toolbars

I use a few Web 2.0 services to promote my blog, and it's been a trend for them to provide toolbars, which display the target site inside the parent site. The main reason for them doing this is to keep users inside their site, and in my opinion, it's annoying and it sucks. But at least it doesn't influence the statistics. I tested this behavior on Digg toolbar and on Google images (without removing or closing the toolbar) and in both cases it worked perfectly – the referrer was correctly recognized. After all, upon technically examining both cases, it's only an iframe opening the designated page below the toolbar, so the target page actually does fully open anyways.

Proof

The screenshots of Google Analytics below support my theory. In the case of the hidden post, I managed to create the following situations which prove my discussed behaviour of hyperlinks and URL shorteners:

I clicked on a link from neolab.si (one referrer from neolab.si),
I manually navigated to the post from neolab.si twice (by entering the url in the browser while being on neolab.si), shown as google / organic,
I clicked on a shortened link on the is.gd site, later I pasted another is.gd short url directly to my browser (two referrers from is.gd),
I clicked on a shortened link on the tinyurl site (a referrer from tinyurl),
I clicked on the automatically bit.ly generated url in a tweet (a referrer from Twitter),
I generated the skrci.me short url, put it in a hyperlink on localhost and clicked on it (a referrer from localhost).

The second report displays the referrers from Digg and Google images, both services using toolbars. On the first occasion, I opened two different posts inside the Digg toolbar, and on the second, two posts inside Google images toolbar, all of them without closing the toolbar (I went for one post twice, to check out if a session is also created and found out it is). As you can see, the referrers are all there and the toolbars don't corrupt the data in any way.

Conclusion

Look like we don't need to worry about these things anymore. I'm actually quite surprised about finding out the mentioned things work like a charm, not influencing the analysis and statistics in any case. From now on, there can be no more blaming these new features and gadgets on low traffic and weird referrers. The World Wide Web has been well planned and Google Analytics is able to know everything, so if your statistics seem weird, there is probably more chance that you are the one who's wrong.

Facebook vs. Twitter - Part 1: The battleground

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:50:45 GMT

Facebook and Twitter are probably the two hottest Web 2.0 services available. A lot of us are familiar with both of them, but it's hard to predict which has greatest potential in the long run to take on the title of the main social networking service. The competition is on, but it's also obvious the race is long, even infinite. The World Wide Web runs on a time of its own, and we have seen major players vanish and marginal players with great ideas take the lead in years, if not months. Because I like to speculate on things like that, I bring you the first part of my thoughts on Facebook vs. Twitter.

For now, I won't go into details, but we'll rather check out different categories and variables that represent the already made success and future potentials for both giants. The list of the comparisons is based on my opinion as a web developer, web 2.0 user and social media strategist, in no specific order. Later posts will go into specific fields and analyze how things are turning out.

The size

Today, Facebook is a few times bigger than Twitter, with 350 million registered users vs. Twitter's 50 million. The following diagram is already a bit old, but still gives an interesting overview on the comparison between the two giants. We must admit Facebook has been around longer, but that doesn't change the fact it's way up ahead in this category. More users mean more possibilities and greater potential. Facebook 1.

The revenue

Facebook already went cash flow positive, while Twitter is still thinking about its revenue model. This could turn out to be one of the crucial stages in Twitter's development, where bad decisions could change everything. Besides, it's a no brainer that making money is good, in our case probably even the main goal for everybody. Facebook 2.

The karma

Facebook’s karma is getting worse and worse. Ever since the infamous Facebook beginnings and stories of the stolen idea, issues concerning privacy and other weird decisions have been a pain in Facebook's behind. On the other hand, Twitter with its involvement on the Iranian elections and now with live reporting on Haiti earthquake, seems like the good boy of Web 2.0. Twitter 1.

The service

Facebook was built around a ton of services, such as events, photos, fan pages, etc. On the other hand, Twitter was build around one service, analog to Facebook’s status, but so much different in content. The so called microblog. External services, such as Twitpic also exist, where one photo becomes richer than the whole album with 100 photos on Facebook. Besides, we have to admit Facebook is becoming a little spam machine and we all know less is more, so this one goes to Twitter. Twitter 2.

The openness

Facebook’s API is focused on building applications inside the portal, where Twitter’s API is focused on having different clients to access Twitter. But concerning the time an average user stays on Facebook to play all the quizes and games, looks like this is an effective approach. Farmville alone, one of the most popular games on Facebook, is bigger than Twitter. Besides, looks like different Facebook clients are also more actual and available than before. Facebook 3.

The relationships

Facebook and Twitter have two different approaches on relationships. On Facebook, both people have to "confirm" each other to become friends. This is called symmetric friendship, which ends with 5.000th friend on Facebook. On the other hand, Twitter has asymmetric friendships, which allows people (and celebrities) to have millions of followers. This makes it more flexible and open and we can only wait for Facebook to do the same. Twitter 3.

The publicity

The celebrity base made Twitter big, and many popular microbloggers intentionally and unintentionally help to promote Twitter. Oprah did her first tweet live on her show and got immediately corrected by Shaq. This type of publicity is something Facebook just can't manage with current architecture. Here is the list of the most followed people on Twitter which gives it a lead over Facebook, because they are far more active and appealing than Facebook fan pages, managed by PR companies. Twitter 4.

The technical platform

If you had to take an estimate, it would be clear that Facebook’s platform and service is much more complicated from the technical point of view. Besides, Facebook has much more users who are more active, but still remains more stable and is online more often. Twitter has a problem with being over capacity often. Is this a problem with the core software architecture or just with the physical architecture and number of servers? Facebook 4.

The influence

2009 was the year of the Twitter, and Twitter was the top word of 2009. Ashton Kutcher kicked CNN's ass to become the first account to have a million followers on Twitter. This clearly show the shift of broadcasting information from mainstream media to opinion leaders. Facebook is for following people you actually know, Twitter is for following people you would like to know. On Facebook you are trapped inside your social circle, while on Twitter you are free to go and look anywhere. Real time search is more actual than ever and Twitter is faster with delivering news than the mainstream media. Even though Facebook groups have some activism influence, Twitter is becoming a platform rather than a service and in this surely means future. Twitter 5.

Conclusion

I think these 9 facts should cover the initial battleground between Facebook and Twitter. For now, I would go more towards Twitter, who also won this faceoff 5 points to 4. Leaving aside this rough analysis, history usually likes to prove that ideas that are the most simple and the most elementary, usually are the best and most history changing, and Google is direct proof of that. You can't go more minimalistic than Twitter, and collaboration of millions of users could mean a whole lot of information and potential. This gives Twitter an opportunity to go beyond Web 2.0, something even Google could be afraid of. On the other hand, Twitter is probably not that useful and fun for non-heavy Web 2.0 users, because it doesn't offer so many things to do. We probably shouldn't underestimate people who are bored online.

This competition will be fun and interesting and I really am curious what will happen. We will see soon, probably even too soon, but it's safe to say the ordinary web user will benefit from this battle anyways.

Check out the complete Facebook vs. Twitter series.

The decline of web forums

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 16:05:53 GMT

The Internet, specially the World Wide Web as we know it today is all about interaction. The first generation of web applications supported little of it. Most of the web was "official" authorial content, but at some point the world was ready for a step forward. User generated content was manifested through forums or discussion boards, which gave surfers a newly discovered access to tons of "unofficial" knowledge. The boom was driven by user interaction and necessity of sharing ideas and thoughts. Looks like times are changing again and forums are dying, at least in the form we knew them. What the hell happened?

An important thing happened, and we call it Web 2.0. The new generation of services supporting networking, cooperation and higher levels of interaction made hierarchically structured knowledge repositories separated from authorial content obsolete. Today, the content became integrated with interaction to form even richer content. I think three types of services that did most of the kill: wikis, blogs and new types of user interaction. I wouldn’t put chats or instant messaging in the same category, because they were around since ever (f.i. IRC) and they leave nothing behind (at least publicly), making them useless for broader crowd and future generations.

Wikis

Wikis are actually some type of a forum, where people gather content and knowledge. Instead of having knowledge scattered around in threads with comments and replies, all the users are working on the same "article", making it better and better as time and knowledge progresses. Few people know that wikis are not just Wikipedia (which is by the way a great example of human interaction achievement), a lot of companies use the same engine to build their knowledge base and web portals use them to build their web presence.

Blogs

With Web 2.0, people went from anonymity behind nicknames to front row participation and ego building. Instead of participating in forums, millions of bloggers started making synthesis of useful forum threads to short and highly informative blog posts with an interesting side effect - building personal brands. Google’s page rank and other search engines did the rest, making forums less important and good blog posts better ranked and easily found.

New types of user interaction

There was a time when the only interactive thing you could do on the web was writing or replying (perhaps vote on a poll which had nothing to do with a content, at least technically). Today, you can post, view, like, dislike, support, comment, vote etc.. This fact gives users more flexibility on how involved they want to get with the content and the content becomes more informational. Knowledge is not hierarchically structured anymore, it’s rather scattered around the web in forms of multimedia (text, audio, video, etc.), with interaction activities attached to it (likes, comments, etc.). That makes it fun and more interesting, and if it’s good enough altogether, it will get synthesized and rebuilt into another form of information.

I think there is still space for forums on the web, but mainly in the functionality of huge chat rooms. On the other hand, general portals will probably be shifting more to combined approach, without the "Forum" link, but with integrated Web 2.0 services and approaches. This doesn’t have to mean using friends and connections, it can easily be the form of better support for different interactions and focus on participation of users around authorial content. Good news for users, bad news for portals.

I want it all - the curious case of Microsoft

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:18:12 GMT

There's Microsoft, probably the biggest software company in the world. And there are others. In the past years Microsoft has been trying to expand it's business to pretty much all the markets, faintly connected with it's core business - developing software. Marketing experts could say this is not a good strategy, because it is better for companies to retain their focus and stay specialized in things they do best. But if Samsung can build bridges in South Korea and at the same time make smart phones, why shouldn't Microsoft make iPods?

There are a few interesting new markets Microsoft entered into. But are they profitable enough to let the Windows family suffer because of this expansion? Here are the most significant:

Gaming consoles market: the Xbox 360 is supposed to be one of the best gaming consoles according to independent tests, because of it's high performance and good online support. They even offer some exclusive Grand theft auto content, which was probably the most anticipated game of this year.
Portable media devices: we are supposed to see the new Zune HD in autumn, designed to kill the iPod dominance of portable mp3 and video devices. But is it cool enough to be able to take this burden upon itself?
Search: a few years ago Microsoft introduced Live search, which was the successor of MSN search. A few months ago Bing was launched, and it is actually successfully taking search engine usage and share from Google and Yahoo, at least for now. But is it just curiosity, or is it actually good enough to replace The mighty one?

In the mean time, Windows Vista was quite a debacle and left most of the users longing and keeping Windows XP. We will see how Windows 7 does, but they surely lost a good position against Mac and Linux in the past years. I still think that Microsoft's business suite is the best there is (Office, asp.net, SQL server), but negative attitude can easily travel from operating systems towards enterprise environment and fun gadgets. People want the iPod and the iPhone because it is easy and fun to use, will they think the same about Zune after using Windows Vista?

It is always fun and interesting to check what the stock market says. The following diagram compares Microsoft (MSFT) to it's competitors from different markets mentioned above, Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG) and Nintendo (NTDOY), from the beginning of 2005 until now.

It doesn't look that good, does it (even though the dates and players in the diagram were carefully chosen to support the hypothesis)?