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Owning the networks : part II

Social Networking has exploded on the Web and the inevitable consequence is that today, software often has to be designed with people, collaboration, and communication as a basic requirement. If we view the evolution of personal computing in three stages: Computers connecting to peripherals, Computers connecting to other computers and Computers enabling networks of people to connect with each other, then the user interfaces that will create most value are those that put people first - not menu items. The adage that the Internet brings people closer together who are physically far apart but separates us from our neighbours is becoming increasingly pertinent. Modern technology allows us to establish and maintain an unprecedented network of business contacts, personal relationships and information services, but a PC is an information processor first and a communications device second. A mobile phone is a communications device first and a context browsing device second. Software must leverage both platforms to get the best social networking experience, using the PC to do the "heavy lifting" and "deep dive" and the mobile to keep users connected to their friends so they can share things quickly and generate useful, location and context specific information on the go.

You want the device you carry around with you to enable a variety of conversations with your friends and family and allow you to share your media, ideas, location, events and plans with your own personal network. The minute you leave your house you are part of the mobile society and you need to know what’s happening around you...

Your social network is enabled by this technology, as long as the interface is designed to provide the features you require. You want to easily show your telepresent friends your stuff and freely browse theirs. You want to know what your buddies are doing on Friday night, what local restaurants they have been to and liked – or hated. You want to know if there’s a cool band playing locally or an upcoming event that’s linked to one of your interests. You want to checkout a lot of stuff your friends recommend and you want to tell your friends about the stuff you like too. If you listen to an excerpt of a song your friend has on his media list and want to buy it for yourself – you should be able to do that at the press of a thumb. Then it can be added to your own media list which is instantly updated on everyone’s phone who has you in their buddy list. That way, they can see you’ve just added something and check it out… This is a long tail engine like no other. Within 30 minutes you can have a global niche hit, all driven by the trusted word-of-mouth social connected network.

The social network is the filter for the information you consume and you are a part of that filter and an information provider too. Social networks are vertical and horizontal markets – separated by interests, demographics and location, and the diversity of individuals. To get it right you have to give people the tools to bring their friends together regardless of what social networks they frequent. The networks therefore are owned by the people that use them and are only facilitated by the user interface and the experience it provides. A user interface that is designed for mobile social networking should focus on aggregation and basic common facilities between networks. Give people access to their friends and their stuff and they will embrace you.

And who owns the user interface? Well, for any socio-centric user interface to be successful, it has to work cross platform and cross carrier – because the social networks are formed ad-hoc and regardless of hardware or data network. The interface in basic form will inevitably be free to the user – but for a fully integrated user experience, the most prepared handset/carrier partnership will lead the way. By installing optimized social-centric user interfaces on customized devices, and supplying targeted services, they can gain revenue from the transactions they enable. Social networks shift and change, they are self generated and respond to being fed and stimulated. Even with user generated content and fully integrated user interfaces, the high value networks of the future may never be fully ‘owned’. It’s a question of trust; Who do you trust? Brands and friends. But not in that order.

 

Owning the networks : part I

Last year, we wrote an article, Cell Death 2010 which suggested that the emergence of Ubiquitous Broadband (UB) via WiFi and WiMax offering free voice calls and high speed, low cost data would precipitate the end of the cell phone. Although some disagreed with our conclusions then, the general argument now is not whether this will happen, but when.

The brunt of this major disruption is going to be focused on the incumbent network carriers and it’s clear that some of them are already responding by installing their own, branded, subscription WiFi services (T-Mobile with Hotspot in US, DoCoMo in Japan etc). Handset manufacturers, too are racing to the scene with WiFi enabled cell phones. As users migrate from cellphone platforms to portable network devices which can instantaneously switch to the least cost/fastest option for voice and data, the crucial question which arises is; Who owns the networks?

In order to answer this question, it’s necessary to understand where the real mobile networks are. They are not in the technology that provides the wireless infrastructure; they are in the social connections and the ways the social networks are formed and serviced.

A year ago we wrote;

So how do the service providers make money when calls will in essence be free? Ask Google: It knows all about it. There are currently around 190 million cellphone users in the United States (out of 1.8 billion worldwide) who will spontaneously switch to what is basically a web interface for all of their communications—that's a lot of extra clicks...

And what will drive this revolution? Free telephone calls are a big deal—big enough, in fact, to make the platform dominant—but eventually it will be services (both paid for and free) that are the driving force. In the end, it's all about content, and the groans of service providers and content creators can already be heard as they wonder how they'll pay for or get paid for all of this content when the consumer expects so much for free.

Since then, Google have introduced Checkout, then they signed an exclusive search deal with MySpace and now they've just thrown a whole bunch of their valuable shares   at YouTube   which places them squarely in the contents delivery business with one of the world's most popular video/social networking sites. The argument about whether Google have paid too much for YouTube will bat back and forth for a good while yet and inevitable lawsuits from copyright owners will surface like pimples on a teenager – but when the dust settles, the deals are done and the content owners are getting paid for the viewing and purchasing of their property, what will emerge is a gigantic social network, 'owned' by a service provider who gives away most of it's services for free because it monetizes them in a different way.

When a major percentage   of the content the network consumes is user generated, with a micro payment method embedded into the user account to enable the content creators to share in the revenue they generate – then we start to see a network evolve that owns itself.

The obvious next step, as cities are blanketed with UB (guess who?) is to service that network while they are on the move. But providing the mobile society with what they need is not just a matter of porting web based applications to a cellphone.

With a PC, search is the gateway to the Internet. That is, after all, how Google started to build their empire. But keyword search is dysfunctional on a mobile device. Cellphones are simply not suited to display screens of links to pages which are frequently not optimised for mobile usage or even relevant to the immediate needs of the user. On a PC it’s not a problem, on a mobile device it’s tedious in the extreme. Search is still required, but the interface is fundamentally different. Why? Because a portable device, no matter how powerful, how high the screen resolution, how large the memory or how fast the data connection, is never going to be used the same way a PC is used. It’s one thumb and a 2” screen Vs ten fingers and a 15” screen – it’s Augmentation Vs Absorption. The gateway to the mobile web is the filter of your social network. Your buddy list is the way you connect to the things you want to know while you’re mobile. It’s about a trusted opinion filtered through your social connections – an algorithm far in advance of any heuristic search engine – one that suggests stuff to you simply because someone you know is interested in it and because it knows about your location.

And when it comes to owning the networks, are the handset manufacturers going to be sidelined again unable to share in the revenue streams their devices facilitate?

Not if they are quick on their feet. See part II.