Mark Sigal's Blog - The Network Garden

The ‘VC-tested’ CEO Scorecard

So you want to be a CEO, raise millions of dollars and take your company to the ‘liquidity event’ promised land?

Well, this CEO Scorecard, which was provided to me by a first tier VC, and friend of mine, will help you get started (or keep your job, if you are already in the CEO hot seat).

What follows are the criteria items on the scorecard:

1. Meets or exceeds plan 
2. Identifies/upgrades management on a timely basis 
3. Recruits world-class people; does not under hire 
4. Keeps company and team focused 
5. Has respect of executive team and employees 
6. CEO level selling, does the big deals 
7. Crisp, fast decision-making 
8. Anticipates financings and executes a strategy 
9. Cost/Expense control and cash management 
10. Articulates the vision internally and externally 
11. Honestly and Objectively Assesses the Company status 
12. Seen as an industry leader/leading company 
13. Communicates well with the board 
14. Available and allows board level access to the exec team 
15. Effective at partnering 
16. Appropriate focus on technology and new products 
17. Focus on building shareholder value 
18. Thinks globally 
19. Crisp, on time preparation of annual operating plan 
20. Business has appropriate metrics/dashboard

This particular VC maintains a spreadsheet with each of the fields ranked on a scale of 1-5 and color-coded “GREEN,” “YELLOW” or “RED” so visually there is no confusion how you are doing in a given area, and your cumulative scores are re-rated after each board meeting.

Thus, scores are easy to track over time and can be compared to the performance of other CEOs in the firm’s portfolio. 

Ala my recent post on the Three Steps on the Path to Success, the CEO Scorecard has the benefit that it is SPECIFIC, is easy to COMMUNICATE and provides a mechanism to COORDINATE going forward expectations relative to current and past performance levels.

Three Steps on the Path to Success

Because I continually see really good people struggling to realize their personal goals...

Because I continually encounter dedicated entrepreneurs struggling to achieve their business objectives...

Let me suggest three simple steps to getting on the path to success:

STEP ONE: Be SPECIFIC about the details of your plan.  I can not underscore how much confusion and outright failure is the simple by-product of having fuzzy objectives whose very existence lies undocumented in any form.

STEP TWO: Clearly COMMUNICATE roles, expected deliverables, key milestones and timelines.  So often a plan is dependent upon the actions of others, yet the very same constituency is left to guess or interpret what is expected of them.

STEP THREE: Hope is not a strategy.  Therefore, you have to regularly and proactively COORDINATE with stakeholders on the status of their deliverables and develop contingency plans when they are missed. 

A final disclaimer.  There is a tendency to cast even the most simple of goals into the bucket of all or none.  In truth, the process of 'documenting' the specifics need not be monolithic. 

It can be a page or two, a checklist or a wiki or even a continually evolving PowerPoint presentation.

For that matter, coordination can result from scheduling regular demos or aligning on specific release themes and/or use cases.  There is no one right answer.

In fact, while process matters it is ultimately subordinate to prioritization.  When something is a priority, process follows.  When it is not, no amount of process will yield the desired results.

Necessity is truly the mother of invention in this regard.

Think about that the next time you are staring at a fork in the road.

Chaos, Order and Target’s Inner Circle

By refusing to submit to the tyranny of the ‘all or known’ syndrome, devotees of chaordic systems willingly and enthusiastically embrace the paradox that exists between chaos and order. 

To be sure, the ‘AND’ dance (as I call it) is a dance on the razor’s edge.  On one side, is compelling uniqueness and breakout success. 

On the other, lies the crushing weight of trying to be all things to all people, ultimately representing nothing.

With these bifocaled lens as the backdrop, read ‘Target’s Inner Circle,’ an excellent article on discount retailer, Target, in this month’s Fortune Magazine.

Target is a company that in so many ways embraces the paradox between chaos and chaos.  Its corporate motto, ‘Expect more, pay less,’ is the quintessence of the mass/class bifurcation, a discounter that nonetheless encourages budget-constrained consumers to aspire for good quality, brand names and designer touches.  Its commercials play like the height of high fashion. 

The success of this approach has enabled Target to grow into an iconic brand existing on a plane that Wal-Mart, Sears, and many other retailers now residing within the discounter’s graveyard, just can’t touch.

What is unquestionably one of the more buttoned-down, home grown corporate cultures, nonetheless drinks from the firehose of a decentralized, chaotic marketplace via a system known as Creative Cabinets, an ad hoc assemblage of third parties from all ages, disciplines, demographics and geographies that help the company discern what products from what manufacturers targeting what consumer needs should find their way onto Target shelves. 

A perfect snapshot of the marriage between chaos and order at work is the fact that while the Creative Cabinets definitely shape product decisions, they have no real authority and individual members never meet as a group, perpetually working independently from one another.

As Michael Francis, Target’s marketing head puts it, “There's no power in bringing them together as a body.  The power is in their working independently. We're the cross-pollinator. We're the integrator."

To be clear, EXECUTING on such a strategy is really hard.  Remember Gap?  Once, a mid-market ubiquitous, well-liked brand, first they misread the fashion market one too many seasons and then they spread themselves too thin.  Now, no one talks about Gap anymore. 

Similarly, the Starbucks freight train that introduced us to $4.00 coffee, baristas and seemingly cannibalistic concentrations of Starbucks locations in every locale has lost its mojo.

Such is is the challenge for Target to maintain its brand and market status over the long haul.  In a world where Wal-Mart is about doing one thing and doing it exceedingly well -- compete on price -- Target, to be successful, not only has to be price competitive, but is dependent on innovation, design and quality as well.

Therein lies the paradox.  To be a creative type and everything that that implies or to be a control and execution freak.  The answer is an unqualified YES for Target’s CEO, Robert Ulrich, who has been with the company for 23 years.

“We micromanage and we think and sweat about every little aspect of the guest experience...we take the time to communicate to our broad organization what they do, why they're doing it, how it fits the whole,” he says. 

Hard to argue with that logic.

Related link:

1. The Marriage from Hell (Great CondeNast Portfolio article on Kmart Sears Merger)
   

The Chess Masters: Apple versus Google

“The simple, obvious truth is that both Apple and Google have atypical strategies and cultures, and both companies have achieved atypical results. Imagine that.”

Such is the counter-punch by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber in his memorably titled, ‘How Leander Kahney Got Everything Wrong by Being a Fucking Jackass,’ a posting which rips apart the logic of Wired Magazine's recent article on the re-birth of Apple titled, ‘How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong.’

Gruber is dead-on when he says that it’s ludicrous to conclude that it’s somehow surprising that Apple has succeeded despite being different than Google, or that Google is somehow representative of a typical Silicon Valley company, when it is not.

As I asserted in my post, ‘iPod touch: take two,’ Google and Apple pretty much are without peers in terms of their ability to ‘Think Different’ enough to play the disruptor role across the entirety of the media, mobile, PC and Internet segments; industry segments which once were impenetrably different, but no more.

While both companies are indeed so very different in the particular approaches that they employ to success, they’re actually very much alike in the game-changing outcomes they yield and the almost-religious fervor they inspire.

They are the Chess Masters of this particular point in time, and as such, destined for a showdown in the year or so ahead. 

In fact, when I wrote my post back in February, I wondered aloud whether “given their respective mammoth ambitions, are ‘friends’ Apple/Google destined to become ‘frienemies’ ala Apple/Microsoft (circa 1990), and if so, when?”

Last week the first “WHEN” moment took form as a Google executive went on record asserting that Android, Google’s smart phone initiative, would outsell the iPhone.

I said it then, and I will repeat it now.  This is a major storyline to watch.

Related Links:

1. Holy Shit! Apple's Halo Effect: how and why gravity has become Apple's friend.
2. iPhone SDK - Mobile reasons for optimism: why the iPhone Universe is a big deal.
3. Googling Innovation: how Google seeds new ideas, selects the ones that sprouts and amplifies them to success.
4. iPod touch, the first mainstream Wi-Fi platform: why it's important not to lose sight of the iPod touch side of the iPhone Universe.

 

Asset or Liability? Context Matters.

Imagine your life as one long trip, going from one room to the next.  The path that you take and the possible outcomes that you can achieve are pretty much endless.

Now, imagine two different scenarios.  In one scenario, you go from room-to-room with little more than a commitment to ‘forward progress.’ 

Armed with such a mindset, you will visit a lot of rooms and cover a lot of space over the course of your life.  But will you truly be getting anywhere?

Instead, now imagine a scenario whereby each door has a label on it – a plus sign if the door takes you to a place that you specifically want to go and a minus sign if it takes you somewhere that you don’t want to go.

Armed with such clarity, otherwise interesting paths are now more clearly marked as ‘detour’ or ‘dead-end.’ 

Similarly, arduous paths that you might have otherwise avoided, are now spotlighted as ‘this is my exit’ or ‘take this left turn.’

Moral of the story? Having concrete awareness of when a given direction, decision or tactical outcome is an ‘Asset’ and when it is a ‘Liability’ makes the decision-making process suddenly more workable and less arbitrary.

Think about that next time you contemplate your career choices, when you assess the customers that you choose to keep and the product decisions that you choose to make.

Is what lies behind the door that is in front of you an Asset or a Liability?

Related link:

1. Metamorphosis: Change your Life (real change in 12 mos. or less)

The Scorpion, the Frog and the iPhone SDK

I have waxed poetic about the reasons for optimism around the forthcoming SDK.  Keeping things real, this post presents the reasons for (would-be developers) to exercise caution before taking the plunge.

You know the fable about the scorpion that needs a ride across the river so he asks the frog to carry him across on his back. 

The frog is understandably fearful that the scorpion will sting him during transit. 

The scorpion assuages the frog’s fears by telling him that stinging the frog would make no sense since the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown in the process.  The frog agrees, only to be stung in mid-transport, dooming both. 

As the frog dies, he asks the scorpion, “Why?” The scorpion coldly explains, “I’m a scorpion.  It’s my nature.”

Such is the challenge that Apple faces in rolling out its iPhone SDK and creating a mobile platform that takes the company and the industry to greater heights. 

Namely, will they recognize the importance of the ‘frog’ (developers) to their self-interest of crossing the proverbial river? Or, will they give into their nature, sting developers and drown themselves in the process?

Why should developers even contemplate such dark scenarios?  To be blunt, Apple’s history with developers is a mixed bag. 

On the one hand, the very success of the Mac is a by-product of third party developer innovations in desktop publishing, spreadsheets and the like, which opened up previously unforeseen HUGE market opportunities.

On the other hand, Apple has a legacy of co-opting third-party developer innovations, thus claiming new market opportunities for themselves and killing their partners in the process. 

They have a history of announcing APIs and then promptly abandoning them, wasting third-party developers’ scarce resources.  They do not have the richest tradition of listening to developers and being responsive to their needs.

(Disclaimer: my first tech company, Tribe Communications – circa 1994 - faced many of these issues first hand.  Paradoxically, Apple was also one of our best customers.)

In the cold light of day, Steve Jobs himself would probably have to acknowledge that this difficulty in partnering is a core reason that Microsoft was able to outflank Apple during the PC era, despite Apple’s arguably superior technology, richer integration and better design – see the parallels to our current world?

So where does that leave us?  To call a spade a spade, the iPhone/iPod touch platform is Apple's creation. They can and should be able to decide how open they want it to be.

Also, to be clear, one challenge in delivering an SDK is that applications on the iPhone/iPod touch need to be performance optimized. You don't want a developer’s cool slideshow app causing your music library to skip or phone calls being dropped.  You don’t want mashups overwriting critical data.

That said, if Apple precludes even building such applications by failing to provide inter-application APIs for safe and structured read/write access to the address book, email, iPod library, photo library, and so forth, then they are hobbling the platform in ways that turn what could be a rocket ship into a mere vehicle, and something that could be insanely great to something that is merely interesting and useful.

Either way, perception has a way of becoming reality, and serious developers can and will go where they believe they garner the highest 'return' for their efforts. For some, return will be a monetary or user base construct. For others, it will be a creative one.

Thus, it is troubling to read articles that suggest (based upon review of the beta SDK and underlying developer license) that Apple will leverage its god-like control to anoint itself as the sole browser, contact manager, media player, and/or preclude mashed up applications that are a composite of these functions.

My hope is that, just as they iterated their original third-party developer world view -- from pushing a 'web application' development model -- to their current 'native application' oriented one, they are in the operational mode of 'groping' what it means to deliver a proper SDK and shipping the 'idea,' but will promptly fix it and then iterate until developers chant as enthusiastically as iPhone/iPod owners do. 

If they embrace that approach and communicate their commitment religiously, with consistency and clarity, they and we will be okay.  If not, an unhappy titanic-sized iceberg lies in the distance.

Hobbyists and tiny developers will accept whatever Apple gives them.  For them, religiosity knows no bounds.

Winning the hearts and minds of serious developers, however, requires more than hope.   After all, this is a multi-year commitment and they are being asked to Think Different once more.

UPDATE 1: Hank Williams wrote an excellent post on this topic, 'Apple’s iPhone SDK Prohibits Real Mobile Innovation'

UPDATE 2: Somewhat of an inflammatory post in ZDNet about bad feelings associated with form letters going out to new developer program requests telling them to check back later.  When you have 100K+ developer downloads in such a short window, support resources are going to get pressed but underscores emotional nature of what's going on.  A little scarcity may not ultimately be a bad thing.

UPDATE 3: Great post by Michael Tsai on Apple's lack of transparency with its constituency.

Related Links:

1. iPhone 2.0 - What it Means to be Mobile: a detailed summary of my experience to date with the iPhone 2.0 platform.
2. iPhone 2.0 - swinging for the fences: an analysis of the WWDC Keynote by Steve Jobs.
3. iPod touch: the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform?

iPhone SDK: Mobile reasons for optimism

Sometimes in life you can have an epiphanous moment when you recognize a stage, and know that you have a part to play in the story that is unfolding.

For me, the story began on January 22 when Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said during their earnings call that "we believe one of the iPod's future directions is to become the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform."

This led me to buy an iPod touch and ruminate on the platform concept in ‘iPod touch: the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform?’   

I am a pragmatist so I very much need to separate reality from concept, as well as get my arms around a given solution’s ‘unfair advantages’ relative to other alternatives like ‘stick with incumbent market leader’ or ‘do nothing; sit on sidelines.’

Less than three weeks later, I became a convert. ‘iPod touch: take two’ articulates the WHY and SO WHAT.  In ‘Mobility 2.0 and the iPhone SDK,’ I propose a conceptual framework for thinking about mobile applications and services based upon the native applications built on the iPhone and iPod touch devices to date.

After digesting the different online analyses of the iPhone SDK roadmap event, I posted ‘Mobility Lives! The iPhone SDK looks awesome,’ as there is now a clear sense that (using a sports analogy) the ‘second quarter’ just ended and something new and exciting is about to begin. 

(This is not mere soliloquy, as the living, breathing version of this vision doesn’t become real until the end of June when both the SDK and iPhone 2.0 software simultaneously ship.)

Last night, I had the benefit of watching the entire hour plus presentation of the road map by Steve Jobs and company, and I will attempt to summarize my read as clearly and concisely as possible.

The basic pitch is that Apple is a platform company and that mobile requires an end-to-end approach, something that Apple does exceedingly well (read: Mac, iPod, iPhone).

This is the Microsoft meets Cisco playbook with a ‘just add water’ sensibility.  Microsoft is about winning the hearts and minds of developers.  Cisco is about understanding big customers and delivering solutions that meet their requirements.  Just add water is what we have come to expect in the internet age.

The platform story is pretty solid.  It feels ‘almost’ open.  But almost may not be a bad thing in the sense that there is a well-formed model for across-the-board security and synchronization in this model, and you can only do that if you have some sense of end-to-end guidelines.

Don’t take my word for it.  Check out the video of the event yourself. 

If you aren’t willing to sit for an hour plus and watch the entire presentation, then I have done you the favor of flagging what I think are the four key spots in the presentation:

• (Time - 20:00) Native iPhone SDK.
• (Time - 40:50) Three axis Accelerometer as a Wii type of control.  This is a game-changer in terms of enabling true mobile immersion in a social and networked fashion.
• (Time - 45:00) Electronic Arts. Spore.  Immersive gaming
• (Time - 1:13:00) John Doerr calls the Jobs greatest entrepreneur.  Totally earnest.

Platforms require growing developer ecosystems to really achieve breakout success.  That is what makes Apple’s AppStore concept so compelling.  What is AppStore?  It essentially rides on top of the iTunes model to enable developers to ‘get your application in front of every iPhone/iPod touch user via AppStore.’ 

From there, consumers can buy effortlessly (since their credit card info is already plugged into iTunes) and then wirelessly download the application. 

Equally important, the model scales down to the level of very small transactions, even free offerings, as is the case with iTunes.  Hmm, 100% reach with a friction-free transaction model.  Where do I sign up?

They have thought through the economics (70/30 split, fee or free offerings) and the distribution (they do hosting, order handling and credit card processing, and support wireless download direct to device). 

And to repeat, this approach will reach every iPhone and iPod touch user.  That said, there is a question of how will ad-supported services work because one could easily see a thriving market for products that are locally, vertically or psychographically targeted, and thus have potential to be 100% monetized via an advertising-supported business model.

So when is this available?  For all practical purposes, this doesn’t go live until late June when the iPhone 2.0 software update ships. 

The ‘software update’ terminology is sort of marketing optics because what it really represents is delivery of a new runtime, the SDK and a very cool simulator that helps reconcile a lot of the optimization and process flow between the development environment, the Mac-based simulator (yes, you have to have a Mac to be a developer) and the device itself.

Netting it out: the revised delivery time (February was when the SDK was originally promised) gives Apple the runway to ship and support a robust platform for fully native, functionally rich applications and truly grow an ecosystem, something that I think they only got religion on recently, but now have embraced with full vigor.

Once they got that AHA, they had to talk to a lot of customers, figure out priorities (e.g., enterprise is a big deal), integration challenges, abstractions, etc. This is a lot of functionality to deliver.

In other words, they over-promised in terms of ship date but my gut is that they will over-deliver in terms of what we otherwise would have gotten in February.

Some last notes that spotlight different aspects of why this is a big deal:

• They have a holistic sense of this application model and how it fits within both the Mac universe and the iPod universe.  They correctly see that moving from a ‘mouse and keyboard’ to a ‘touch and turn’ based interface and control system is not simply a linear innovation.
• Connecting the dots, there is a strong vertical play inasmuch as by Apple dealing with the requirements of enterprise customers coupled with the fact that the iPhone/iPod touch is a legitimate mobile application platform this feels like something that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Specifically, Salesforce presented and waxed about bringing their base of 64,000 applications to the platform.  They talked about their strength in reporting and analytics and their 70,000 developer strong ecosytem.  It was an integrated pitch around an integrated device platform story. Think mobile sales force/workforce vehicles riding on top of a ready for prime time infrastructure.
• One thing is very clear.  The system is optimized for game players since there is hardware acceleration of media functions, and the device excels at video playback. All of that is a big yawn moment until you see how the device itself can function as a Wii type of game controller, thanks to the Accelerometer functions. As noted earlier, this is a game-changer in terms of enabling true mobile immersion in a social and networked fashion.  What types of applications will ultimately manifest from this is to be determined, but the concept of consumers interacting with games spaces in a 3-D realm seems promising.
• Some of the language in the presentation speaks to APIs for ‘talking to’ contact data, which clearly means READING of data but might not allow WRITING of data. Similarly, how open are the container functions for things like contacts and how atomic are the information units in terms of a developer being able to extend what contacts can do, subset them or create custom views of this data? Could the developer build an application to skin their contacts and extend them into full blown profiles if they wanted to?
• There seems to be a lot of emphasis on doing cool stuff with photos (it would seem like there is room for all sorts of cool slide show builder and player applications) but there was not a lot of talk about audio or video.  Not sure what this means. 

Venture capitalist, John Doerr, in announcing KPCB’s $100M iFund, referred to the iPhone as ‘the third great platform,’ and a bigger idea than the personal computer. 

After all, it is broadband, connected all the time and personal in the sense that it knows who you are and where you are (you can build location-aware applications, too).

Invent the future, Doerr implored.  Amen!

UPDATE 1: Excellent post by Tom Yager on iPhone SDK first impressions (developer perspective) in InfoWorld.

UPDATE 2: According to analysts, Apple may now produce the same eight million iPhones in 1 QUARTER that they have been predicting for the ENTIRE YEAR.  The positively affects revenue assumptions in a big way, doesn't it?

UPDATE 3: Very interesting AppleInsider article on Apple's exploration of location-based iPhone services.  There are some compelling contextual advertising plays around this one which might enable full infrastructure to be ad network subsidized.

UPDATE 4: Touch Arcade assesses the iPhone's mettle as a gaming platform, concluding that given all of the trade-offs of iPhone as a general purpose mobile platform (versus a dedicated gaming device), iPhone stands tall nonetheless.  Read the comments section of the post, though, as it raises valid questions about whether installed base will be large enough to capture game developer crowd en masse.

Related Links:

1. Holy Shit! Apple's Halo Effect: how Apple has turned gravity into its friend.
2. Upward Mobility, Land Grabs and the iPhone Universe: on the implication of Apple's growing mobile patent portfolio

Mobility Lives! The iPhone SDK looks awesome

March 6, 2008.  Mark the date as the proverbial ‘big bang’ moment when a game-changing platform was born.  That platform is, of course, the iPhone/iPod touch family of mobile devices.

The “SO WHAT” is a kick-ass toolset and APIs (in terms of the actual SDK), a well thought out distribution model (including economic proposition for software developers) and strong enterprise support from a security, manageability, and integration perspective. 

Plus, a $100M venture fund to seed new startups focused on the iPhone/iPod touch platform.

Apple, in fact, asserts that it is opening up the same APIs its been using to build its own iPhone applications, noting that third parties are getting 'the same tools, the same SDK.' 

Specifically, developers have access to the iPhone/iPod touch sensors, its locating abilities, graphics, audio, video, audio recording, the camera, and an interface builder application that makes creating great interfaces as simple as drag-and-drop. 

In total, the SDK includes:

• Cocoa Touch: Multi-Touch Events, Multi-Touch Controls, Accelerometer, View Hierarchy, Localization, Alerts, Web View, People Picker, Image Picker, and Camera.
• Media Support: Core Audio, OpenAL, Audio Mixing, Audio Recording, Video Playback, JPG PNG & TIFF, PDF, Quartz (2D), Core Animation, and Embedded Open GL.
• Core Services: Collections, Address Book, Networking, File access, SQLite, Core Location, Net Services Threading, Preferences, URL utilities.
• Core OS: OS X Kernel, BSD TCP/IP, Sockets, Power Management, Keychain, Certificates, File System, Lib System, Security, Bonjour.

The People Picker, for example, will let developers access contacts from the iPhone/iPod touch Address Book and, similarly, Image Picker provides access to the iPhone's Camera and Photo library.

In somewhat of a surprise, Apple has said they will not restrict VOIP (voice over IP) applications that use Wi-Fi, but won't allow VOIP applications that use cellular networks.  While the limitation over cellular networks is understandable given Apple’s partnership with it wireless provider partners, removing such limitations in the Wi-Fi environment seems to allow them to have their cake and eat it too, which is great for consumers and developers alike.

Finally, the cost for developers passes the economic viability sniff test, with Apple taking 30 percent to cover the bandwidth costs, store management issues (the iTunes store is the distribution model), credit card fees, and processing costs, and developers keeping 70 percent. 

Other than this, developers only need to pay an annual $99 certification fee to participate, which filters out the bozos but also allows very small developers to plug in.

Here is a quickie fire hose synopsis of first impressions from customers, developers and investors:

CUSTOMERS

• Todd Pierce, a VP of Genentech, stated that “the iPhone is a watershed event in mobile computing for corporations” and has deployed thousands of iPhones within the company.
• The senior VP of IT at Disney also endorsed Apple's enterprise strategy on the iPhone, stating "Apple has really done their homework, addressing issues of security, manageability, and integration. We currently have hundreds of iPhone users and expect the demand to grow significantly with this release."
• Bill Clebsch, Stanford's CIO, reported, "The iPhone has worked effortlessly at Stanford and the user acceptance has just astounded us. We have been inundated with orders."

DEVELOPERS

• John Gruber of Daring Fireball comments that, “The tools look awesome — far better and more advanced than what most Mac developers were expecting. Pleasant surprises include Interface Builder support and a full-fledged desktop simulator. And the API has a name: Cocoa Touch,” adding that, “The reasons developers are willing to accept a 70/30 split are simple: convenience and exposure. Apps sold via the iPhone App Store will be far easier to register and install than apps are for the Mac. Once you’ve registered for an iTunes Store account, your credentials are saved. No credit card numbers to type in, no emails to wait for containing serial numbers. It looks as easy to buy these apps as it is to buy songs. And the exposure of getting listed in a store that’s available to every iPhone user in the world is tremendous. It’s like Apple’s Software Downloads web site, but with one-click Buy buttons.”
• "The animation technology…enables us to build awesome games,” said EA chief executive John Riccitiello. "I think iPhone consumers are going to be blown away by the games we create for this platform."
• SEGA's Ethan Einhorn showed off a version of his firm's Super Monkey Ball title that leveraged the device’s Accelerometer, and…was also ported to the handset within two weeks. To move the monkey around the screen, all players have to do is tilt the iPhone.  "It's gonna be really hard to go back to a traditional game controller," he said.

INVESTORS

• "A revolutionary new platform is a rare and prized opportunity for entrepreneurs, and that's exactly what Apple has created," says venture capitalist, John Doerr of midas VC firm, KPCB, in announcing the $100M iFund, adding that, "We think several significant new companies will emerge as this new platform evolves."

When customers, developers (big and small) and investors are all singing the praises of a shipping product (versus the concept of a future product), it is truly a seminal moment.

Related Posts:

1. Mobility 2.0 and the iPhone SDK (on best practices, workflows, building blocks)
2. iPod touch: the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform (on key applications)
3. iPod touch: take two (what makes a platform, user impressions)

Other Links Relevant to this Post:

1. Daring Fireball's blog: Crisp articulation on the One App at a Time limits in SDK
2. furbo.org's blog: Compelling arguments that programming on iPhone/iPod touch requires a different mindset.  Great quote - "It takes several months of actual iPhone development before you eventually realize that the iPhone requires a completely different mindset. Until that happens, you’ll make assumptions based on desktop experience, and that in turn will lead to a lot of bad designs."
3. Apple updates iPhone SDK with Interface Builder

Mobility 2.0 and the iPhone SDK

(this post is reprinted from my blog on O'Reilly)

I have previously written about the iPhone SDK from the perspective of the applications that I would like to see as an iPod touch owner (side note: Apple is touting the touch as the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform, and non telephony apps built via the SDK should run on both the iPhone and iPod touch).

Today, I am going to propose a vocabulary for thinking about the building blocks of mobility applications in the iPhone/iPod touch universe, a vocabulary based largely on an analysis of the composite set of existing functions already supported in these devices.

My goal is two-fold.  One is to attempt to connect the dots for would-be developers thinking about how they can emulate the best practices, services and workflows that have emerged around this platform. 

Two is to hopefully spotlight how Apple can provide maximize leverage for third-party developers by exposing well-defined APIs and providing tools that make it easy for developers to build applications around these function sets.

After all, the moral of the story from the PC revolution is that Microsoft became the gorilla specifically because they outflanked Apple in defining and supporting APIs and tools around their platform, and then systematically cultivated a developer ecosystem.

Let me disclaim upfront that I have no inside knowledge of what Apple is going to announce in terms of SDK 1.0 and/or what their plans are from a road map perspective.  Also, I have not spent any energy trying to map the terms I am using to Apple terminology or be exhaustive in documenting every feature these devices support, as this is really a straw-man effort, designed to be picked apart and iterated.

A final note is that whereas a general-purpose platform like a PC can reasonably cope with poor developer decisions around system resource allocation handling, the iPhone and iPod touch are highly optimized, performance-sensitive devices.  You don’t want phone calls being dropped or music skipping because a neophyte developer’s slide show application has memory leaks. 

Given that fact, I hope that under the hood Apple is incorporating some logic into the development/run time model to automate/optimize handling of concurrent threads and applications, as well as garbage collection of system resource blocks.

In any event, this is the vocabulary and SDK constructs that I hope inspire better thinking about iPhone/iPod touch as a development platform:

Rich Media Presentation and Manageability

1. Media types: out of the box, the iPhone/iPod touch does a phenomenal job of handling entire music and photo libraries.  Owing solely to storage limitations, it does only a decent job with handling video libraries.  While iPhone users lament the usability of the YouTube video application over EDGE, on a Wi-Fi connection, the application is a revelation.  Similarly, the Google Maps application is just a joy to use.  Were Apple (and Google in case of Maps) to provide read/write access to these libraries, entire categories of rich media applications become possible.
2. Media listings: media can be presented in a thumbnail fashion with profile data showing title, description, media length, upload date, tags, ratings, etc. The user is always a click away from being able to search for specific media items, and a full history of past actions is always handy, greatly simplifying the process of re-finding past content of interest.
3. Social media: filtered views of media items can spotlight featured content as well as content organized by parameters such as most viewed, most favorited, recently viewed, play lists or related content (either via top-down via taxonomic definitions or bottom-up via folksonomic algorithms).
4. Player controls: media can be played, fast-forwarded, paused, reversed, resized and/or traversed (if multiple views are supported, as in case of directions on a map itinerary).  Individual items can easily be bookmarked for later recall and/or emailed to others in a click.
5. Futures:  it seems that there is great potential for creation of ‘live’ shows that combine music, photos, video, text, maps, graphical charts and enhanced visualization of lists to allow interaction between iPhone/iPod touch users in a one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many fashion.

Mobility User Interface and Control

1. Three-tier UI structure: a popular user interface construct that has emerged with native apps is to have top level ‘header controls’ (e.g., filter content based on today, this week or ALL parameters), a bottom level set of ‘footer controls’ (e.g., compose, calendar, contact) and then have the main application presentation body in the middle.  Given the generous screen size and the touch-based interface of these devices, this enables tremendous dynamism in terms of application navigability and control.
2. Touch modes: slider controls allow things like volume to be turned up or down with a single finger; two-fingered expansion and contraction allows zoom/focus levels to be adjusted in real-time; multi-touch settings allow more complex configurations, like forms and/or filters to be deployed without typing; traversal controls allow multi-screen views (like weather or time in different cities) to be traversed in a single click; finger sorting allows items in a list to be easily moved up, down, or dragged to folders/garbage instantly.  In the future it seems that there could be potential to enable touch-based macro functions to be supported for invoking scripted actions.
3. Virtual keyboard: As an input device, the iPhone/iPod touch pale in comparison to my trusty Blackberry 7130e.  However, Apple has compensated for this limit in a couple of ways.  One is a keystroke memory function that makes it easy to recall past searches, email addresses and the like in very few keystrokes.  Two are optimized keys for shortcutting addition of text like the characters .COM onto the end of email addresses.  It seems that if the SDK supports it there is tremendous potential to create application-specific keyboards and keystroke memory functions that are optimized to specific tasks.  After all, the keyboard is virtual; why not make this attribute a virtue of the platform?
4. Futures: Given the dynamic nature of a virtual, touch-based interface, it seems like there is room for tremendous innovation around drill-down functions (think: stock tracking or sports applications) whereas today, a lot of these types of applications allow the users to traverse one layer across or down, as is the case with the stock application.  Innovation in this area could re-invent the way we think about search and topic-specific online research.

iTunes Store Integration

1. Downloads: it is well-chronicled that Apple intends to treat the iTunes Store as the distribution/download point for third-party applications, games, content, etc.  If they provide interfaces and tools to enable developers to create virtual storefronts, they could create an eBay for the mobility universe.
2. eWallet: via the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, your iPhone/iPod touch can function as an eWallet.  Why not open up this model to Amazon and other retailers?
3. Social Lockers: this is definitely in the futures bucket but why not enable consumers to publish their libraries, play lists, ratings, comments, posts, etc. as a way of enabling like-minded individuals to connect with one another in mobile environments?

Does this model resonate or miss the boat?  Can you suggest refinements or alternatives?

Related posts:

1. iPod touch: take two
2. Pipes, platforms and other forks in the road

Online Community Building: Three Critical Ingredients

I was recently interviewed by Dan Greenfield of Social Media Today for an article called, ‘Social Networking’s Field of Dreams.’  Dan’s article puts forth a key question that any business contemplating embracing social networking needs to come to terms with. 

Simply put, if you build it (community), will they (consumers) come?

Having worked with literally hundreds of companies – big and small – over the past few years on both formal community-building initiatives and ‘conversational’ marketing campaigns, I can say without hesitation that the answer is an emphatic “NO.”

Why?  Because communities are living organisms that are most analogous to gardens; they must be tended to, cultivated, and fertilized if they are to take root, grow and thrive.

Given that fact, let me be blunt.  If you are not prepared to commit to the following three cornerstones of a successful online community-building initiative, you should not undertake the effort to begin with. 

Item one is the raw ability to design a communal space that is engaging, speaks with a clear voice to the target audience, has a clear target audience and a well-defined set of “hot spots” that you are trying to drive users to (e.g., blogs, forums, photo or video archives). 

The second item of importance is having someone on the community-building side that is effective at reaching out to the spots online where a community’s target audience currently hangs out (e.g., related blogs, discussion groups, etc.), and having a strategy to compellingly communicate the WHAT, the WHY and the SO WHAT of your community to that audience.

The good news is that real businesses and organized groups already have a pre-existing mailing list that can be engaged, but simple Google searches can also help identify popular web sites and relevant news articles that you can target to build ‘bread crumbs’ back to your community.

The last item that drives success in communities is the existence of one or more community leaders that who are responsible for driving conversations, posting and spotlighting relevant content and the like.

So what does a successful community-building effort look like?  Let me give you three examples.

In the consumer arena, check out Batanga, a media and entertainment company targeting Hispanics, that has built a 300K member community called MyBatanga by combining a white label social networking platform (from my company, Snapp Networks) with their own proprietary user-generated radio station building tools and then leveraged viral distribution strategies to expand their reach to other social networks, music-oriented discussion forums and the like. 

In the business-to-business arena, Ragan Communications, a publishing house targeted at the corporate communicators vertical, has built a thriving 10K member community called MyRagan by successfully targeting professional communicators, like PR personnel. 

Key to the company’s success has been leverage of a built-in base of thousands of customers, a mailing list of many tens of thousands of prospective customers, a deep library of professional-grade print and video content, and an editorial-driven mindset that ensures that from a community perspective, purpose/audience, design, outreach, content and conversation are bounded by a very clear context.   (They are also a Snapp Networks customer, with my company, V:social, powering their video channel capabilities).

Lastly, there is The Knot, a popular web site for couples planning their weddings, which has recently launched the Real Wedding Awards, which calls upon visitors to the site to sign up for the awards and submit photos, videos and web pages of the best weddings of 2007. 

Because of the tight integration and messaging synchronicity of the awards with the site’s core purpose as a wedding planning resource, the conversational marketing campaign (which is powered by V:social) has generated thousands of new registrants and almost 10K media submissions in a couple of weeks.  A screen cap of that campaign is below.

Related Posts:

1. My post explaining how social media works, 'Social Media: it's about Breadcrumbs and Conversations.'
2. On the role of brand in social media initiatives and how not to diminish your brand equity in the process: Don’t Subordinate your Brand.
3. A short video on 'What is Social Media Marketing?'