Tag Archive for 'trends'

Unfollow people on Twitter: it’s good for you

Published on March 23, 2010 in Trends, with 0 Comments. Tags: , .

Since my first Tweet in April 2007, I've been using the service in different ways. In that time, my career has changed; the people using it are now beyond the early-adopted tech crowd which dominated when I first started using it; and more significantly, Twitter has added new functionality that has changed the pattern of usage.

In other words, I've changed; the people around me have changed; and the service has changed. So with that in mind, I'm asking myself now how should I use Twitter now? It's become a new communications paradigm, and so our personal evolution in using it is an interesting thing to consider for the future of communications.

What has Twitter become
Put simply, people and companies use it to connect with other people. Not only that, but its become a means to discover information and people. The discussions on it have allowed communities to emerge (and organise), trends to be noticed, and people to be identified. Its created the social melebrity - the term I give to the trend of "micro-celebrities" - and created a new avenue to the consultant (online self-promotion), researcher (uncovering trends and breaking information), and business development manager (discovery of opportunities), among others

What's different about Twitter now
Twitter was implicitly designed to encourage a gaming of human psychology based on the number of followers you had. The more followers, the more perceived status an account had and by extension a person or company. This status created perceived influence and authority - which in some ways was true, but true or not is not the point: it was enough of a motivator to get people thinking constantly "how can I get more followers", a brilliant state of mind from the perspective of a profit-making company benefiting from usage.

Several new features have since emerged, one of which is lists. Lists themselves have become another way Twitter, inc has been able to game its user-base as it implies a sense of status. But from a user point of view, its also become a great new way to track people stream's, which at core is what Twitter is meant to be about.

Foe anyone that follows a lot of people, tracking every Tweet can be impossible. I now hover around the 500 mark of people that I 'follow', but the reality is, I don't actually follow them in the true sense of the world: only in the off-chance I check-into Twitter to see what's happening. 'Following' these days is not a reflection of my engagement with that person, but simply, my interest (once upon a time).

Thinking about value
With all the above in mind, let's now answer the question of who should you follow. Should it be people you're interested in following, like how it's always been no? I say nope to that, and here's why.

I get no benefit following someone who is not following me back, other than the initial notification someone gets that I've followed them (and which I know can be quite successful as a marketing tool). The value we get, is if they follow us back, is the fact we can directly message each other. And this has real value: I know people who are impossible to reach via email, myself included sometimes, because of email overload. But, if someone sends you a direct message via Twitter - it can come to you via email, IM and SMS. And the conciseness of the message makes the communication more direct and pointed (a benefit in itself). It's an efficient way of reaching busy people.

On the other hand, there is a real cost following someone who doesn't follow you back. If you have an account where you follow more people than follow you, you are considered a spam account in the eyes of other users. If you follow more than a certain amount of people - say a few hundred - then you are not considered (rightfully) engaged in that person. And let's not forget the cost to your attention: you get more value out of the Twitter stream when you can consume more of it - meaning, the less accounts you follow, the more engaged you are.

So what's my point? Unfollow people and start using lists. Don't be gamed by the Twitter communications platform, and start thinking about what value it can provide to you in your life.

The information age is still filling up its rocket with fuel

Published on July 20, 2009 in Innovation, with 0 Comments. Tags: , , , .

Today, the Wall Street Journal published an article by a fund manager who suggested the Internet is now dead in terms of high growth. While I can respect the argument from the financial point of view (although he's still wrong), it also shows how widespread and unsuspecting even the educated are for the transformation the Internet is preparing us. Yes, ladies and gentlemen - we ain't seen nothing yet.

But I won't get into the trends right now that are banging around my head, making me willing to change careers, country and life to position myself for the future opportunities. Let's instead start with his core thesis:

The days of infinite margins, 1,000% productivity gains, and growth of market throughout the universe are long over. Internet companies now should be treated, at best, like utility companies that get bought at about 10 times earnings and sold at 13 times earnings. Even then, I'm not sure I would give the Internet sector the same respect as the monopoly-protected utility sector.

I am glad that was said, because this is more of a world-wide problem we have, that has lead us into the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The ridiculous false economy generated over decades of speculative growth - where fundamental asset values were supported by unreal cash - is something we need to stop. The best thing the GFC has taught us, is that valuations need to be supported by independent cash flows with markets not manipulated to inflate their true value. And I can't wait to see the technology sector (who along with their partners in crime in banking and property) use some basic accounting skills, and come to the rude awakening that, in the real world, that's how things roll.

Where he is wrong however, is in the innovation that is creating new ways of generating revenue. More importantly, what we are seeing is a stabilisation in technologies invented half a century ago. The Internet and hypertext (the web is an implementation of a hyptertext system) have all been in development for 50 years - and it's only *now* that we are coming to grips with the change. So to say this is a fad that's now over, is really ignoring the longer term trends occurring.

As identified in the article, the biotech market will be massive, but I was told by the head of the PwC Technology park Bo Parker in March 2009 that it's only just resembling Information Technology in the 1970s. However, when in comes to information, things are ramping up for a lot more as the industry has had a lot more time to evolve.

Where do I see things going? Oh man, let's get a beer and talk about it. Data portability, Semantic Web, VRM, Project Natal, the sixth sense, augmented reality - try that to get your imagination started. I call it the age of ubiquity: ubiqitous connectivity, ubiqitous computing, ubiqitous information - where we have those separate things accessible anywhere and everywhere and when combined will change our lives. Information and communications, after all, are a fundamental aspect of being human that underlie everything we do - and so its impact will be more broadly applicable, obvious, and transformative.

Where's the money in that? Are you kidding me?! The question is not how many dollars these changes can generate, but how many new industries will they spawn. We seriously don't know what's about to hit us in the next two decades for information technology, and clearly, neither do the Fund Managers.

Opera’s Unite is democratising the cloud

Published on June 17, 2009 in DataPortability and Ubiquity, with 0 Comments. Tags: , , .

Opera Unite - youtube imageOpera, the Norwegian browser with little under 1% market share of the English market, has made an interesting announcement. Following a much hyped mystery campaign, "Opera Unite" has been announced as a new way to interact with the browser. It transforms the browser into a server - so that your local computer can interact across the Internet in a peer-to-peer fashion. Or in simpler words, you can plug your photos, music and post-it notes into your Opera Unite installation - and be able to access that media anywhere on the Internet, be it another computer or your mobile phone. I view this as conceptually as an important landmark in data portability. The competing browser company Mozilla may lay claim to developing ubiquity, but Opera's announcement is a big step to ubiquity the concept.

Implications: evolving the cloud to be more democratic
Opera Unite features 1I've had a test drive, but I'm not going to rehash the functionality here - there is plenty of commentary going on now. (Or better yet, simply check this video.) I don't think it's fair to criticise it, as it's still an early development effort - for example, although I could access my photos on my mobile phone (that were stored on my Mac), I could not stream my music (which would be amazing once they can pull that off). But it's an interesting idea being pushed by Opera, and it's worth considering it from the bigger picture.

Opera Unite features 2There is a clear trend to cloud computing in the world - one where all you need is a browser and theoretically you can access anything you need for a computer (as your data, applications and processing power are done remotely). What Opera Unite does, is create a cloud that can be controlled by individuals. It's embracing the sophistication home users have developed into now that they have multiple computers and devices, connected in the one household over a home wireless network. Different individual computers can act as repositories for a variety of data, and its accessibility can be fully controlled by the individuals.

Opera Unite features 3I think that concept is a brilliant one that brings it to the mass market (and something geeks won't appreciate as they can already do this). It's allowing consumers an alternative to storing their data, but still have it accessible "via the cloud". As the information value chain goes, people can now store their data wherever they wish (like their own households) and then plug those home computers into the cloud to get the desired functionality they desire. So for example, you can store all your precious children pictures and your private health information on your home computer as you've chosen that to be your storage facility - but be able to get access to a suite of online functionality that exists in the cloud.

As Chris Messina notes, there is still an opera proxy service - meaning all your data connecting your home computer to your phone and other computers - still go through an Opera central server. But that doesn't matter, because it's the concept of local storage via the browser that this embodies. There is the potential for competing, open source attempts in creating a more evenly distributed peer-to-peer model. Opera Unite matters, because it's implemented a concept people have long talked about - packaged in a dead easy way to use.

Implications: Opera the company
WebFS-on-the-desktop
For poor little Opera, this finally gives it a focus to innovate. Its been squashed out of the web browser market, and its had limited success on the mobile phone (its main niche opportunity - although with the iPhone now facing a big threat). Google's chrome is fast developing into the standard for running SaaS applications over the web. But Opera's decision to pursue this project is innovating in a new area, and more inline with what was first described as the data portability file system and the DiSo dashboard.

Like all great ideas, I look forward to Unite being copied, refined, and evolve into something great for the broader world.