The Bewilderness

Opensource aims to open up the Amazon

Open source is not dead and continues to provide a primary path for innovation. Cloud computing is one of the areas where programmers hope to overturn the Amazon headstart. The dream is to create an Android language that will create an ecosystem for services, software and infrastructure as a platform.

Their clear desire is to provide simple portability between all platforms. A reduction in the complexities dogging cloud computing and a wish to prevent the continuation of a dominant behemoth.

The sector will change and Amazon will become more flexible in response to that change. It is unlikely that Amazon will lose its capabilities in the near future. 

Core competence can lead to stagnation

Running through an interview with Jeff Bezos on Les Echos reminds me that the mass take-up of the internet stretches to one decade, no more. All of our household names have sprang up in that time.

Bezos ruminates on how Amazon has survived and thrived as an internet firm. The death of the core competence is celebrated; the search for stability is actually stagnation. Bezos highlights the cultural adaptations of Amazon: obsession with the customer, not the competitor; an ability to think over the long-term; and, the courage to learn whole new sets of skills and build new institutions if that is required to build a profitable service.

In fast growing sectors, companies can acquire the skills of the conglomerate: acquiring, seizing, learning, innovating and adapting. Sticking to one's knitting is a recipe for stagnation as all profitability is open to disruption.

A core competence is now extend and profit.

More 2011 predictions on mobile city

The most successful apps in Iphone, Ipad and Android shared some commonalities in 2010: ease of use (a must on mobile phones); a springboard for social networking and shared communities with add-ons, such as locations; and based upon the working strategy of free at the point of use, paid for by a bigger brother down the line or advertising.

The apps for this year promise more social interconnections, spreading television to the mobiel world. Yet, payment systems are unmentioned: an omission that could prove a radical reorientation for the mobile world from leftfield, allying retail to the smartphone.

Another forecast from a company perspective appeared on Mashable.

Self-appointed guides to the noise

How has the world of blogging changed since I started so many years ago on Airstrip One? Well, I still toil in obscurity. Not that I mind.

The early adopters, primed by the rise of terrorism and war, perhaps minded to discuss law and sciences, have been superseded by a whole ecology of content. Indeed, blogging is embedded in a whole set of channels for advertising self-generated content to your networks: Twitter, Facebook and so on. What you know complements who you know.

Jean Aw of Notcot sets out a hierarchy of content from the lowly hobbyist to the grand content kings of AOL and Yahoo. Between the amateur and the giants lie intermediary websites, semipro businesses that meet the need for curation in content. Some of these intermediaries are dubbed Lifestyle Bloggers:

The rise of the Lifestyle Blog doesn't mean that other blogs will disappear. It's just a growing and increasingly relevant part of the ecosystem. This crude breakdown is to illustrate the differences between Lifestyle Blogs and other blog businesses. It’s not a job. It’s a lifestyle. It’s something that evolves in parallel to living fulfilling, exciting lives. It’s a means to share a perspective on life. Not news. Not covering every topic. It’s a curated view of the world that readers can fall in love with and live through. It’s about passion, aspiration and inspiration.

 

Within communities, certain individuals will naturally acquire a wider following. They become minor celebrities: fulfilling the role of leaders and mentors. The overarching need is for regular readers or fans of their lifestyle.

Curation is a natural role for the gatekeeper: self-appointed guides to the noise. But can this role turn a dime?

Has Web 2.0 found its mark?

McKinsey's research on the adoption of social media by traditional and start-up companies has concluded that sophisticated adoption of the web leads to higher productivity and greater profits. Web 2.0 has a marked impact on companies and an improvement on their bottom line. It is not clear why this is occurring or whether it is limited to certain industries.

McKinsey argue that a commercial structure has developed for applying these new technologies. In the well used phrase adopted, a networked company, it is argued that networking creates better informational flows and easier communication between employees and customers, suppliers, stakeholders and so on. They look forward to a battle in the next few years between sophisticated early adopters and laggards.

McKinsey are confident that the time for disseminating the business model amongst a wider set of companies is now upon us. The innovative curve is quicker and more competitive than for earlier technologies. This should not surprise us but time will tell if companies and other institutions get it.

A series of six for social networks

Hoovering up social networking predictions commences round December time. David Armano of Edelman Digital has put together a series of six for the Harvard Business Review. Some strike a similar tone to those discussed on here earlier: the downfall of the location specialists like Foursquare as their niche is integrated into the larger players. 

Edelman's predictions highlight some of the larger themes that we can expect to continue during 2011: the inability of any large player to maintain a walled garden for their users; the continued dominance of the first movers and greater innovation in hardware and software to keep people on the go all of the time.

Three of the points do merit further play. The first is the return of the Googleplex, as Google cements its role with search functions that tap into the social networking history of the networked individual. And there will be a market for a Wayback machine for individuals. As the second point is social media schizophrenia: individuals torn and twisted by the informational overload. The answer for this may come in 2011, with an early for of the avatar (where are you when we need you?)

The third issue was the slow take-up of social networking amongst companies. Successes have been limited to PR, marketing and brand management. That is because firms have not had to allow social networking or Web 2.0 to leap the firewall. That may start to change.

Location, vocation, staycation - the network tripod

Location networking received a lot of hype over the past year or two. Gowalla, Foursquare and other services used rivalry, competition and status to enhance their esprit de corps amongst the early adopters. Yet, the chances of achieving a breakout appear less than they do for Twitter. Then again, who ever thought a 140 character limit was attractive.

My hunch is that Foursquare and Gowalla and similar services are going to need to adapt to survive. Why? Because most of the world does not really care about mapping their check-ins to let their friends know that they are grabbing coffee down the street. What people do care about though is getting local discounts and scoring a good deal on purchases. People want value, especially in this economy.

Click as you like

Was the Facebook Open Graph product the most important development in social networking in 2010. The innovation certainly has a claim to fame in this respect. OpenGraph was announced at F8, the most recent Facebook conference for dealing with developments. Its objective was to link the web, walled gardens and any damn think that any Facebook member could potentially like (within legal constraints).

"The Web is at a really important turning point right now," Zuckerberg said. "Up until recently, the default on the Web has been that most things aren't social and most things don't use your real identity." Facebook, now, is forging its way across the Web and staking a claim to its infrastructure. Zuckerberg called the demonstrations at F8 "a taste of the future where everything can be more personalized." And, it seems, one where Facebook is the center of it all.

We have seen these alliances springing up, so that one may now get Facebook updates on Skype, Yahoo and Msn. For Zuckerberg, the underlying protocol for thsi real-time stream across all websites is the use of the Like button. Simple to use, an innocuous and incremental link that potentially deepens the ties between friends on Facebook.

However, the Facebook woodpile includes multiple jurisdictions involving privacy laws and data protection. 2010 was the year of the open graph, 2011 will be the year of signing up to share so Zuckerberg can avoid going to Jailbook.  

Not so slick: BP lost control and failed to converse

@BPGlobalPR was one of the biggest trending twitterers (Sic) in 2010. The handle was a successful example of how a realtime social network can hold a corporation to account, damaging reputation with critical questioning via spoof PR. Unfortunately for BP, the only part of their operation that was slick turned out to be the oil from Deepwater. Spoof twitter could be confused with real utterances from BP employees.

BP found that they operated in new times, where their message was open to far greater exposure and response in the media. Even more galling was the information firewall surrounding corporates with propaganda broadcasting from the towers was undermined by the new media: unguarded comments led to confusion in these transparent times. Traditional tools of PR proved a vehicle for ridicule. Unable to initiate a conversation, BP fell prey to chinese whispers.

This sounds the death-knell of traditional PR and institutional secrecy. The State Department can vouch for that. Corporations are struggling with the loss of control over the message. Grappling with a public as awkward buggers rather than passive receivers, they are building the firewall higher and tighter. Yet, whilst we will see more companies under siege, the pendulum will swing slowly from control to conversation. We are not quite there yet.

Give Leroy Stick his due:

I’m trashing a company that is literally trashing the ocean, and these idiots are trying to figure out how to protect that company?  One pickledick actually suggested that BP approach me and try to incorporate me into their actual PR outreach.  That has got to be the dumbest, most head-up-the-ass solution anyone could possibly offer.

An appetite for improvement

An interesting take on what will end Moore's Law: a lack of attention, as other factors become more important in driving the economy of computers, gaming, entertainment... This is the argument of Bing Gordon, who charts the gradual weening of the computer games industry from an obsession with hardware to a realisation that social networking forms the new framework for innovation.

Moore's Law retains its power. But, the transformation of the gaming industry from culturally dominant geekdom to a manifestation that can incorporate norms, mirrors the social decline of Moore's Law as a concept of admiration. None of this means that the Law will not continue to operate behind the scenes: providing the necessary power for the innovation and visions that games have brought to our lives.

People retain an appetite for improvement in their game, their lives and their friends.