The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

Pattern Recognition: Mobile Web v. Mobile Native; TV's Blind Spot; 'Invisible' Designs

My goal is to write one 'Pattern Recognition' a week. Just the top 3-4 stories that stayed under my skin. Here's what stuck this week:

1. Mobile Web > Mobile Native > Bifurcated Native: In the continuing 'banjo duel' between Mobile Native and Mobile Web, three threads got into my bones. One, is the idea that whereas Apple has the best combined story in terms of providing BOTH a superior mobile web environment and the best mobile native platform, the reality is that their unfair, defensible advantage lies in iOS. Hence, it makes sense that Apple would boot Google from Maps, a native app, but keep them in Search, a mobile web environment, a decision that Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land called 'Containment' (in lieu of Thermonuclear). After all, Apple is not at war with mobile web, but definitely wants to WIN mobile native. Two is the fact that whereas all of the banter is that HTML5 is the great disrupter to be of all things Native, the hard truth is that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. In abandoning their HTML5 gaming ambitions, featured Facebook Platform developer Wooga cited insurmountable challenges with discovery, performance and connectivity. I guess the contender is still a pretender, but then again, I have been waiting since 1994 for Web apps to offer a caveat free application model, as opposed to merely a (quasi) universal one. Finally, the meme of what it means to be mobile NATIVE, has been buzzing in my brain since reading Fred Wilson's excellent post on the topic. I think that I have a thesis around the evolution of native apps. If the first generation of native apps were knocked as being little more than native wrapers on web functionality, and the second gen were mostly parallel to the web, what we are going to increasingly see are what I call 'Bifurcated' Native Apps. These are apps, like Instagram and Path, where the optimal creation, consumption and service-ready environment (e.g., social share + discovery) is within the native app itself, BUT one of the output methods is in a web-friendly format suitable for blogs, tweets, Facebook, G+, LinkedIn pages and the like. In other words Native first, with a 'best-practical' gateway to the web. I can see a great many application scenarios for such apps.
2. TV's Blind Spot: Peter Kakfka of AllThingsD argues that the TV business is vulnerable, but it's not with highly pirated premium shows like 'Game of Thrones,' but rather, cheap to produce, cookie-cutter reality shows. I have two takes on this one. One, "must-see" programming and live sports are the straws that stir the drink, and everything else is bundles and fillers. That's why ESPN drives Disney profits, and HBO cares not one whit that GOT is most pirated. It's the same reason that Bravo, the den of reality programming, has cultivated the hell out of their few franchises, including continuous advertising, which cost serious coin.In other words, cost reduction is not the silver bullet in itself, even if it has real prospects as a low-end disrupter. What will be a silver bullet is when the next wave of web "tv" programmers start creating media units that are native to the web/app medium, and deeply integrated from the first storyboard. Whether that means integrating community into the programming, designing in locality handles, reinvigoration of live to create a new shared experience, game-ification, or something else, that's the bucket, and it's a different animal, in the same way that TV was not simply radio with pictures. So far, what we've seen are loosely-coupled approaches that I view similarly to the dog that walks on its hind legs. Interesting, but nothing that anyone would conclude was designed from the ground up to be that way. As an analog, think of the distinction between our concept of the smart phone pre-iPhone (see Blackberry) and post (see iPhone, iPad and beyond). TV has a long way to go in that regards.
3. Integrated to the Point of Invisibility: One of the books that has deeply influenced my thinking about industry, economy and technology models is the book 'Waves of Power' by David Moschella. In WOP, the author shows how technology evolves in waves, such that in the initial wave, the technology is so new, complex and brittle that the only way to deliver a real solution is to be verticalized. As the technology matures and becomes understood, the trend is towards commoditization. Here, the best model is to be horizontal, so as the leverage the broadest swath of innovation, and to be able to focus on the narrowest slice of differentiation, where your margins will come from. One can see how the mainframe and mini was the first wave of computing, and the PC era was the second wave. What's interesting is that Moschella, who wrote the book way back in 1997, goes on to show how the wave after horizontal is the embedded wave where the technology becomes so pervasive and the best practices are so well-formed that computing becomes both ubiquitous and invisible. Apple's dominance is best understood in this light. In an industry organized around 'speeds and feeds' and loose-coupling, they correctly realized that once everyone understood what technology could do, they would want it to work well. To do so, it would need to be an extension of their aspirations, their vanity and their daily outcomes, not the other way around. I thought about this in comparing my iPad 1 to my new iPad; namely, marveling at the many elements where the 'magic' lies not in some cool new feature, but rather in the tiny bits of integration 'finesse' that turned functionality that I formally noted, 'Wow, I can do that,' to instead, 'Wow, I no longer even think about the steps to doing it.' The source of delight is in the fact that it's simply invisible, an extension to what I am doing in the moment. I thought this an interesting contrast to Microsoft's announcement of Surface earlier in the week (which I like, even though it's vapor at this point), where they were touting the hinges on the kickstand of the device's case as being 'designed to feel and sound like a high end car door.' It's the opposite of designing invisbility, IMHO.

Pattern Recognition: Connectors; Winning; Facebook's Growth Team

My goal is to write one 'Pattern Recognition' a week. Just the top 3-4 stories that stayed under my skin. Here's what stuck this week:

1. Brands Should Target Connectors Aggressively: This week, I was in NYC on business. As it was raining, I asked the doorman at my hotel if he could hail a cab for me. While we were waiting, he pulled his new Samsung Galaxy Note out of his pocket, and starting checking the news. Having never actually seen someone using a Galaxy Note, I asked him if he liked the device. Almost apologetically, he told me how he's a long-time Apple gadget lover but had needed something a little bigger than an iPhone, as a lot of the time, guests of the hotel ask a question, need directions and what not. In fact, he was quite happy with the device. This got me thinking. A hotel doorman must find himself in dozens of (potential) like encounters every day, all the while in a mode that puts a device like the Galaxy Note in a favorable light. Given the natural position of such connectors to spread the good word about a product relevant to doing their job, this sure seems like an argument for brands aggressively targeting key connectors in relevant segments. They are the ultimate influencers when the context is right. To be clear, I am sure some brands are doing this; I just don't believe it's a standard part of many companies' market penetration strategies.
2. Staying in the Game: Being in the tech business, I constantly marvel at the number of companies who despite mediocre products and dubious customer adoption in the early stages of their life, somehow manage to 'hang around' until they achieve victory. By victory, I mean: A) outlasting the competition; B) finding a market; C) achieving product maturation; or D) realizing a successful M&A event. To me, this suggests that winning is as much a product of finding a way to 'stay in the game' as it is about pursuing greatness or building a dominant market position. Sometimes what separates the winners from the losers is the conviction that you simply won't be defeated, and the unyielding drive to keep moving towards the goal line in the face of doubters, defectors and hard data. Mark Suster delves into this topic in an effective post called 'What to do about that chip on your shoulder,' and I love how Facebook challenges its rank and file to ask themselves, "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" Sometimes, when we're feeling against the wall, we let fear and a sense of doom drive us into the crash position. Winners ignore such facts, as the KNOW their destiny is otherwise. Paradoxical, to be sure, but such is life.
3. Facebook's Growth Team: Probably the most impressive thing that I read this week was the response on Quora to the question, 'What are some decisions taken by the "Growth team" at Facebook that helped Facebook reach 500 million users?' Read the whole piece as it spotlights how a company goes about institutionalizing growth in the same way that Apple, under Steve Jobs, insitutionalized the process of creating insanely great products. It's indicative of how fundamentally different business CAN be in the age of the Internet Economy, and one gets the sense that Facebook is absolutely dogmatic in their approach. This truth is best framed by the following snippet from Andy Johns, who worked on the Growth Team at Facebook, "Growth was a horizontal layer across product like engineering/ops is a horizontal framework behind product. Not only would someone ask 'What's the performance impact on site speed or stability if we build and ship 'X'?' it became common for people to ask 'What's the impact on growth if we build and ship 'X'?'. The decision to make growth a canonical part of the product, engineering and operational discussion was a really important decision that the executives made." In the end, it all comes back to understanding your product and the value + outcomes that it delivers. This requires having both the rigor and framework to suss that truth out, then test it, and iterate tirelessly to the bullseye. This truth is underscored by the comment by Chamath Palihapitiya, who led the Growth Team, and stated, "At Facebook, one thing we were able to determine early on was a key link between the number of friends you had in a given time and likelihood to churn. Knowing this allowed us to do a lot to get new users to their 'a-ha' moment quickly.  Obviously, however, this required us to know what the 'a-ha' moment was with a fair amount of certainty in the first place." Needless to say, way too few companies know this answer with such certainty in their business, and even fewer build the systems required to optimize it, which explains Facebook's unique position in the market.

 

Google+ doesn't hit the bulls-eye, but Google's found a 'wedge'

Sure, we'd all love to be killer apps, to have hit the bulls-eye, to have delivered a solution so compelling that it forces the competition to change, and adapt.

And in tech especially, there is a tendency to create these false dichotomies - fueled by the echo chamber of the blogosphere - such that everything either "sucks" or is a "game-changer."

But sometimes, it's just as important to find a wedge, some wafer-thin morsel of utility or delight that gets you into the game.

For Google, I think that's the best way that I can describe Google+.

Is it going to kill Facebook? Probably not, but then again, it doesn't need to. It just needs to provide another reason for Google's base of users to use a Google product twice a day, "just like your toothbrush," as Google CEO Larry Page suggested in last week's earnings call.

So what is that reason? For now, it's status updating with decent visual display, and at a more basic level it's an opportunity for users to reboot their friending process.

In that regard, Circles is a **potential** middle-ground on the friending front between:

A) Being a prude with your social network, so as to maintain intimacy and trust; AND

B) Being promiscuous, so as to maximize reach and connectivity.

Personally, I think that as Fred Wilson noted, once you get beyond true "Friends" and "Family" buckets, the 'circle' distinctions get to be arbitrary and unwieldy except for the most die hard users.

As such, I believe that for the concept to scale, it will need to be more simple and algorithmic, probably some combination of tracking "like minds" and "like content," coupled with contextual, visual content "traversal" tags, along the lines of what Posterous facilitates on the user-generated side, and Quora enables on the auto-generated side.

Again, these are implementation details, but unlike my past knocks on Google for being unclear about what purpose a new product initiative serves, and what path Google will take that product, with Google+:

• Google is showing clear leadership at the CEO-level (Larry Page categorically frames three product buckets for Google)
• Google-folk appear to be eating their own dog food by using the product
• Google has defined Google+ in meta terms as a project that will permeate all their efforts, while at the same time showing continuous, daily iteration of their offering.  

On that last point, today brings a native iPhone app, and you can see the iteration on the web side daily.

Yes, I could quibble about the UI or the user experience that Google+ currently delivers, or I could lament the fact that Google+ is yet another social service to post to.

But, that would only affirm the point that in the same way that Twitter succeeded -- despite its unreliability -- specifically **because** it was useful, so too will Google+ succeed, despite these annoyances.

Simply put, it's useful and engaging enough, which constitutes a wedge.

Ironically, given how fully Twitter has changed the rules of the game on its developer base (perception is reality here), if Google gets any religion on making G+ into a developer platform, that could be a game-changer, but I'll keep my platitudes to a minimum in this post.

Related:

1. Google+ (Wake me up when I should care)
2. Google Buzz: Is it Project, Product or Platform?
3. Quick Take on Google Earnings Call: Put me in the bucket of being a Larry Page 'fan'