Apple's Safe Society

Apple has received a lot of criticism for making the iPhone application universe a closed system. Every single application must be vetted by Apple's mysterious approval process before it makes it to the iTunes app store. This system is quite different from how Internet-enabled and PC-based applications function - where free-for-all rules rules govern how applications are created and distributed.

Although I agree that a closed system is highly flawed in many ways, it is also an extremely comforting mechanism. In a world where any web pop-up, email attachment, or even Twitter/Facebook link could lead to virus hell, it's very pleasant to not worry about whether an application will disrupt my iPhone.

No matter how controlling, limiting, and ultimately closed the iPhone ecosystem remains, it sure is very user-friendly - down to the inherent peace-of-mind concerning every single application download.

The Twitter Decline?

I've found myself not utilizing Twitter's services very frequently over the past few weeks. Although my schedule has been disrupted by travel and odd work-hours, the most telling sign for Twitter's potential decline is my lack of caring. No longer do I feel the urgency to view the constant glow of the Twitter stream - stemming either directly from Twitter.com or from any of the Twitter-enabled applications.

Although I am just one person - whose personal habits probably have nothing to do with larger trends - it has been documented that Twitter's traffic over the past few months is stagnating. I have encountered a good deal of anecdotal evidence of similar usage trends amongst friends and family.

It would be a revolutionary leap in Internet-enabled trend cycles if Twitter has indeed already crested. Only a few months after culturally peaking as the darling of Oprah, Twitter now faces a potential ceiling. Although this slowdown may be quite temporary - as was the case for other hits such as Facebook - it may also signal a deeper and more fundamental lacking of the Twitter value-proposition.

Click Here for Fame

A lot of time has been spent on the topic of fame recently. Fame is the new currency of success. Tiger Woods' life has been turned into a shamble due to fame. The White House security infrastructure was overcome by one couple's obsessive urge for fame. Two parents faked the disappearance of their son - via a seemingly dangerous balloon ride - for the sake of obtaining fame.

For some, it seems that fame is now really worth more than dignity, kindness, honesty, or even sanity. Because fame has become more accessible and ubiquitous, it is no longer untouchable or unreachable. Ironically, because of cable, reality television, YouTube sensations, etc. fame is now just one (potentially absurd) step away - where some are willing to do anything to touch it, to reach it, to capture it.

This increased value of fame makes digital social-media even more valuable. Beyond allowing us to connect with friends and family, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter allow us to simulate fame. These channels give everyone the ability to innocently, easily, and quickly gain a following. Facebook puts a face to this simulation. Twitter puts a number to it. When combined, we all now have the tools required to feel famous.

Risky Real-Time

The real-time web refers a broad set of Internet-based services that enable instant digital communication. Some elements of the real time web have existed for a while now - e.g. real-time one-to-one and few-to-few forms of communication such as Instant Messaging and Chat. But over the past couple of years the Internet has experienced the quick proliferation of one-to-many real-time communication - i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Along with digital communication, digital goods have also enabled real-time transactions. iTunes is the prime example of a real-time commerce application where a quick transaction brings upon instant gratification. Anyone can purchase a song, movie, or software within seconds.

The real-time web has significantly improved the Internet - it has fostered many new forms of communication and transaction. But the real-time web also introduces new risks that the old, more static web didn't suffer. Since data can spread instantly, misinformation can reach many people before it is proven to be false. Rumors are thus experiencing a Renaissance within this new reality. In the financial realm, the real-time web gives bad guys the ability to quickly perform hit-and-run scams. Money laundering and other transnational schemes can flourish before anyone realizes what's going on.

So what we have is typical to most human innovation and evolution - the new technology that is quickly misused. But this time things may be different. The real-time web is quickly becoming the foundation of the new Internet. It is here to stay and so are those who attempt to misuse it. We must realize that real-time is both a gift and a huge challenge. The real-time web is the battlefield of the future.

Don't Unfriend Me

"Unfriend" was declared to be the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary. The word means to disconnect a link to someone within a social networking setting.

Most discussion on this matter has focused on the merit of the word - i.e. if it is valuable enough to be added to a serious dictionary and thus near-permanently inserted into the English language. But I take this debate to be moot. The word exists and it is widely used. It's hard to predict the future, but for now it is an important concept.

What intrigues me is the underlying reality that unfriend establishes. It depicts a world where friendship can seemingly be turned on and off with the click of a button. Although this might just be the digital method of a symbolic process which humans have utilized for decades, it connects a chillingly simple word to the deconstruction of a relationship.

The Facebook Generation

I have an awesome one-year-old cousin. He is a very cool child that already knows how to hold a mobile phone, look into a web cam, and speak into a microphone. He is also part of a generation that will never know a world without Internet-enabled social networking - e.g. Facebook, Skype, Twitter, etc.

What does this mean for the little guy?

• He will have every important moment of his life permanently documented
• He will have the concepts of networking and social portfolios ingrained in his psyche from his earliest points of consciousness
• He will expect a high level of openness and sharing from most
• Geographic distance will no longer be a barrier
• Diversity will be based more on personality than ethnicity
• Reading and writing will be his primary means of communication.

Those are just a few potential repercussions for The Facebook Generation. I'm not sure what this will mean for the world in twenty years - but I am sure that it will be different from today's reality.

Twitter Bots Kill Reputation

Twitter is clearly a fascinating phenomenon. It allows for evolutionary human traits, idiosyncrasies, absurdities, etc. to be clearly and easily displayed in 140 characters or less.

In fact, it's much more than just those 140 characters that make up a Twitter persona. The other main qualities any Twitter user has are the number of people that user follows and the number of people that follow the user. The prior describes overall engagement; the latter signifies overall popularity.

Companies have grasped these concepts rather quickly and now strive to make their Twitter personas followed by thousands of adoring fans. But what many of these fair-minded companies have realized is that it's usually pretty difficult to quickly manufacture followers. So various Twitter-"marketing" companies have sprouted touting the ability to miraculously provide thousands of fans in only a few days - for a small fee of course.

As we all know, when something valuable comes for only a small fee then things are usually not as they appear. These thousands of new fans are often bots - fake Twitter personalities created for the sole purpose of boosting the follower equation, for making it seem, at first glance, that someone or something is very popular.

(Un)fortunately, these types of shenanigans are usually quite transparent. The bots are not very good about posting realistic pictures in their profiles or communicating in natural ways - i.e. they can be spotted from a mile away. This doesn't really hurt the "marketing" companies that provide these fake masses, but instead damages the reputation of those seemingly honest companies that have these strange supporters.

So today, when I realized that a company that I've been following for months and that I felt was quite honest had gained over 35,000 fans in a week, something smelled fishy. And when I dug a little deeper I found a lot of fish - in the form of a reputation-killing digital mob. How sad.

Chocolate-Covered Rice Cakes

In terms of taste, rice cakes offer the least amount of excitement among any snack. Usually rice cakes taste very much like a combination of bland white rice and cardboard. Their nutritional impact is minimal as rice cakes serve a purely utilitarian purpose, to satiate without fattening.

But today, for the first time, I tried chocolate covered rice cakes: Quaker Rice Cakes Chocolate Crunch. I was very pleasantly surprised. Although the amount of added chocolate is quite small, the overall experience is many times better. The improved taste combined with the traditional fulfillment turned rice cakes into a pretty good product.

Since rice cakes have been around for years, it's amazing that I haven't seen this variety in the past - although apparently the added flavors have been around for awhile as well. This little treat points out that a slight change can have a disproportionate impact on an old product or service - in the case of rice cakes, it has prolonged and enhanced the existence of a food-type that would have probably been extinct by now. This is what Twitter might do to SMS. This is what Gmail might do to email. This is something that offers countless opportunities for those willing to recognize and improve products that most overlook.

The Second Résumé

We've officially reached a point where most new job applicants have two general types of résumés. The first is the typical one-to-two page template-based résumé that's been popular for decades. The other is a more fragmented, digital, cubist-like résumé.

This second résumé stems from the many different personal fingerprints we leave on the Internet. Some are explicit and easily managed - e.g. LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. Others are semi-relevant and mainly controllable - e.g. Tweets. Finally, the least predictable and least manageable forms on Internet-based expression could potentially live on without our knowledge and control - e.g. old Instant Messenger conversations, etc.

I believe that we are seeing a rapid growth in Web-based communication that fits within the second and third categories of the second résumé - i.e. Twitter usage is steadily growing more relevant, location-based services that come with more advanced mobile technology are becoming widespread, etc. This means that it's becoming increasingly difficult to manage the second résumé. It also means that employers are increasingly relying on the second résumé as the main, true behavioral indicator.

Because of these trends, identity management will become a much bigger industry than most can foresee. Since millions of jobs will soon depend on one's Web activity, billions of dollars are at stake from controlling the second résumé.

Twitter is to Email as Radio is to Telephone

A very interesting, but flawed article by a young and wise blogger, Cody Brown, has been getting a good deal of deserved attention lately. He argues that because Twitter lacks a clear focus and an explicit mission, that it will suffer the same fate recently experienced by the similarly unfocused MySpace – i.e. a steady loss of users to more targeted and better defined services. His recommended remedy would have Twitter place all its chips on a core market, like MySpace has now begun to do by centering its offering on music.

Although I believe there is some validity to this overall argument, it is greatly hindered by the assumption that Twitter is a comparable species to MySpace – i.e. that the same evolutionary rules apply to both companies. I believe that Twitter is a fundamentally different beast from either MySpace or Facebook.

While progressive at the time, MySpace and Facebook were designed based on essentially static principles: profiles, virtual bulletin boards (walls), clearly defined networks and connections, groups, and photographs. These principles have been present in static media for decades – in yearbooks, in newsletters, on real walls and bulletin boards, in albums, etc. MySpace and Facebook initially represented the digitization of a pretty old paradigm for socialization. This paradigm is very reliant on the quantity and quality of content and is thus much more vulnerable to fragmentation – whoever offers the most of the best content usually wins more users. Cody’s analysis fits in very nicely within this framework because it clearly depicts how Facebook was able to offer more of better content – primarily driven by both an initial focus on colleges and by the transparency of actual identity verification. Both Facebook and MySpace have changed over time, but their initial principles shaped the trajectory of their relative success.

Twitter is based on different principles and thus relies on a different set of rules, a different group of prerequisites for success. Twitter was initially designed based on essentially dynamic principles: on mobile technology known as SMS (texting). This mobile technology is driven by real-time interaction. It is directly affected by the users’ unique geographical location and the unique perspective that stems from the location. This means that the paradigm is primarily reliant on the quantity of content – and the diversity that inherently stems from large quantities. For Twitter to succeed, it doesn't need to ensure the quality of its content. It only needs to continue to grow the amount of raw information that flows through its system – to become the go-to platform for this form of 140-character communication.

In many ways, Twitter represents a similar evolutionary leap from email that the radio was from the telephone. The radio added a new sense of mobility to distant communication. It opened the door to a more dynamic, democratic, and broader network of communication – eventually allowing the rise of mobile telephony. It also allowed for a much simpler process of rudimentary one-to-many communication. Like radio technology, Twitter represents a platform on top of which different networks are built. Companies will not build around Twitter, they will build on top of it. Because Twitter is a fundamental channel for communication that has opened up its infrastructure to others, its success does not depend on the quality of content that flows through its veins. By encouraging all forms of interaction, Twitter grows the required quantity of information that is transmitted across the system.

What this means is that Twitter is not a social network, it is a tool that social networks use to communicate. It also means that Twitter doesn't need to focus its content on a core target market in order to survive. Just like radio communication is used by billions of different stakeholders, Twitter’s aim should be similar in its broadness. It should serve as the most basic infrastructure for a new form of communication, where the greater the diversity of users and usage-categories, the greater the success of the core platform.

Although promising, Twitter still has numerous important challenges to consider and overcome - many of which I will explore in the near future.

The Fragile Internet

The events of this week continue to highlight the fragility of the new Internet. The new Internet is based on a few simple principles and emerging trends: real-time communication, person-to-person sharing of content (especially links, the real currency of the Web), one-to-many dialogue, and the proliferation of mobile as an added channel.

What all of these trends have in common is that they depend on one or more bottlenecks to exist - e.g. social networks such as Facebook, communication platforms such as Twitter, URL shorteners such as bit.ly, etc. Gone are the days where email was the primary means of communication - i.e. where a technical collapse can be easily isolated to a company or a region. Today, the collapse of Facebook would instantaneously disrupt a global web of communication.

What's particularly frightening is the fact that these bottlenecks have become so important that they are global targets for scammers, nefarious hackers, and other bad guys. Even seemingly benign changes can affect how bottlenecks function and thus how the whole Internet communicates. Three examples from the past week clearly illustrate the delicate nature of the new Web:

• Out of business. This week tr.im announced that it was shutting down its operations. Although this second-tier URL shortener is relatively small, it still facilitates thousands of active shared links. Its demise would mean that those links would cease to function, thus instantly creating thousands of dead ends. The potential ramifications of such a meltdown have led to a variety of plans to either save the company or the links themselves.
• Absorbed. A few days ago, Facebook announced that it has purchased FriendFeed - a more robust Twitter-type sharing platform. FriendFeed is still a nascent platform with a small yet growing following and an interesting portfolio of technology and talent. Although the move makes sense, it depicts two troubling facts - 1. Logical consolidation will only lead to bigger and more valuable bottlenecks; 2. The users of these technologies are fickle - as seen by a revolt of old-time FriendFeed users.
• Too big for its own good. Finally, the ongoing saga of the DDOS attacks on Twitter illustrates that bottlenecks are perfect targets for disrupting global communication. The bigger and the more important these new Internet platforms become, the greater the media coverage they will receive, and the larger the probability of more persistent attacks.

In the past, the collapse of AOL's or Yahoo's website would be disruptive but still localized. In the present, we have the growing consolidation of a relatively few global communication platforms. The platforms increasingly sustain a diverse set of economic, artistic, and social activities that provide significant value to our society. These platforms are bottlenecks that are susceptible to a wide variety of disruptions. The emerging Internet is quite fragile for now.

Get Ready for the Tangible Backlash - Part I

The commercially available and massively usable Internet now touches nearly every facet of life. In less than twenty years of rapid expansion, widespread digital communication has completely redefined what constitutes as real - in terms of relationships, content, and value. Today we are faced with the prospect of the massive digitization of products, services, and basic human norms that seemed untouchable only a decade ago - e.g. the newspaper, the doctor, the marriage.

The Internet has forced a fundamental societal change. As with any radical cultural revolution, a backlash is inevitable. I believe that we are on the precipice of such a backlash. It will be manifested by the extreme emotional need for the tangible - either through real items or through face-to-face human interaction. The sales of vinyl records will continue to rise. The proliferation non-Twitter gatherings will continue to gain popularity.

This backlash is caused by a nostalgic need for the familiar reality of the past, by the evolutionary human connection to tangible tools, and by the beneficial nature of scarcity.

Real things evoke emotions of "simpler times," of childhood, and of control. This control stems from the physical constraints of real things - these real items and interactions can't be shared on Facebook or retweeted a hundred times. The touch and feel of human interaction cannot be quickly forgotten or digitally reconstructed.

For thousands of years, human beings have utilized physical tools to maintain our existence and improve our environment. The basic paradigms and supporting mechanisms are genetically encoded in our being. It will take a long time for human beings to anatomically embrace the reality of potentially ubiquitous digitization.

Finally, scarcity is much more easily created, maintained, and excused through the existence of tangible products. This is why gold or silver decorations are infinitely more expensive than digital decorations. Scarcity drives many basic economic principles. But scarcity can't be easily replicated in the digital domain - those who benefit from scarcity will continue to foster its existence.

There Is No Such Thing as The Norm

I define norms as expectations for both personal and collective behavior - these expectations are based on everything we've encountered and experienced in the past. Recently Seth Godin wrote about social norms and how they translate in the online world. His belief is that digital norms are still quite diverse and unpredictable because so little time has gone by since the Internet became popular - not nearly enough time for uniform behavior to be established.

Godin is on the right track but he's understating the reality of change - since he assumes that widespread norms will be established at some point. I believe that the Internet offers such a unique platform for the development of new communication channels that nearly-universal social norms (such as handshakes) might never come about (or at least not in the foreseeable future). Taking the written word as an example, in 20 years we've gone from bulletin boards to email to chat to instant messenger to blogs to Twitter - with newer channels built on top of the old, never replacing, only adding further complexity.

If you compare the simple actions of emailing an acquaintance vs. tweeting an original link/comment into the ether of acquaintances, I suspect that two fundamentally different sets of response-expectations play out. Once an email is sent, there is a longer high-probability response-period - with rapid declines after certain periods of time (correlated with email-responding hot-periods such as morning and evening). The world of Twitter moves at a much faster pace. A response is initially more probable (due to the one-to-many nature of Twitter) but quickly declines because of the fast-paced flow of new messages.

The reality of Internet-enabled, rapidly evolving communication-channels forces us to constantly re-learn and re-socialize. This need to repeatedly re-establish norms has wide-scale implications for both individuals and companies. Adaptability and a fundamental comfort with change are required for successful communication.

The Game of Life for the Digital Gaming Generation

I am part of a generation that was born to a world of video games - I am a member of the Digital Gaming Generation. We are a group that hasn't lived without the option to score digital points, explore virtual worlds, or "compete" for hours-upon-hours against pixilated adversaries.

It is within this context that we view the world. My generation functions within a completely different paradigm from all previous age-groups - where reality can and should be augmented at all times by computers large and small, where measuring success, i.e. seeing the score, should be explicit and constant.

It is within this reality that a new crop of mobile and Internet-based offerings begins to bridge reality and the digital domain. For example, the newly launched Booyah links real world accomplishments (such as travel) to a virtual self in a virtual community - fully linked to Facebook and Twitter. Foursquare takes a similar but more localized approach - rewarding real world socialization with virtual badges and titles.

These games are made possible in part due to the proliferation of location-based technology in mobile phones. They also represent the obvious tip of a major game-life iceberg that is yet to come. These early examples link real world fun with virtual world fun - an easy connection to establish. The really interesting innovations will come when games are linked to more serious matters such as personal health, political involvement, financial decisions, on-the-job effectiveness, etc. Mine is the generation that incorporates the principles of gaming into all parts of life.

Will Twitter Be the Modern Esperanto?

With the recent disclosure of numerous internal and confidential documents from Twitter, the world has gained a deeper insight into the core business strategy and goals of this fast-growing company. The most major goal seems to revolve around the total number of users. With that, Twitter states that it desires to become "the pulse of the planet" and questions whether its role is to build the "new Internet."

Even a fractional success could change the way we communicate using the Internet and other digital platforms. But unfortunately, these lofty aspirations remind me of the intent of another global man-made communication system: Esperanto. Esperanto is a modern language first designed in the late 19th century. It is a hybrid of primarily European languages with its own grammar, alphabet, and other communication rules. The language was conceived to unite the world and to serve as the new global method for understanding and interaction - to essentially become the new "pulse of the planet."

Although Esperanto did at one point have millions of supporters and speakers, it has failed to reach its intended status. This lack of success is due to numerous fundamental flaws including the fact that the language didn't take into consideration the increasingly influential world outside of Europe. I believe that Twitter faces the same fundamental flaw. It seems to be failing to consider the increasingly influential world outside of North America. Its founders, staff, and most successful users still come from a predominantly U.S.-centric culture. If Twitter truly intends to be "the pulse of the planet" it must quickly expand its source of inspiration, design, and usage.

Facebook's Privacy Obstacle

As Facebook and Twitter both continue to evolve into similar offerings with similar services, one major philosophical difference between the two social networking behemoths seems to have no chance of disappearing any time soon: a focus or lack thereof on privacy.

Facebook seems to be obsessed with perfecting its privacy policies. Numerous iterations of their privacy functions have been rolled out since Facebook launched. The most fundamental and controversial change involved opening the website to non-college/high school students - to everyone. Today Facebook has again announced new modifications - slowly starting to open up its website. This issue isn't going away for Facebook; it's only becoming more muddied.

On the other hand, Twitter has reached massive scale with very little regard for privacy. Any user can follow any other user. Although the "block" function exists, I suspect that it's mainly used to block spammers and other evil-doers. Very low expectations have been set.

What does this philosophical difference mean? I think it's clear that Facebook has to play catch-up with Twitter on this issue. As more and more people become comfortable with the Internet and the free communication that it allows, privacy is quickly losing its value. Facebook should stop wasting time and other resources on this matter. Facebook needs to realize that privacy is not a requirement but instead an obstacle.

Twitter will be very monetized.

It's been argued by some that Twitter won't be able to monetize its services and create a profitable business model. I completely disagree with this assertion. To prove my point, I took just 15 minutes to brainstorm potential revenue-generating activities for Twitter. I organized my thoughts by loosely clustering different ideas around general concepts.

Here is what I came up with in 15 minutes:

Clearly the ideas range from widely known to absurdly illogical. But if it took me only 15 minutes to come up with a few reasonable thoughts, I'm quite sure that teams of well paid professionals will come up with a good way to make money from Twitter.

The Dying Middleman

I'm a big fan of Bill Simmons, a.k.a. The Sports Guy. Although his writing usually focuses on sports, it's his ability to connect sports with wider culture that I most enjoy. Recently Simmons spoke with Mark Cuban about a wide range of topics including media and the economy. Cuban is an über-entrepreneur who owns the Dallas Mavericks, HDNet, and a bunch of other ventures - his blog is also quite insightful and worth a read.

In particular, the two spoke about how new media (Twitter, etc.) has basically destroyed the need for newspapers to serve as the middleman between athletes and the wider public. Athletes and other celebrities can now directly speak with their fans. This got me thinking about what other traditional middlemen might be cut out by Twitter, Facebook, etc.:

• The Health Middleman. Doctors, nurses, psychologists and other health professionals have traditionally served as the middleman between a wide array of health knowledge and the general public. This gatekeeper role is no longer necessary, although we'll still probably need health professionals for hands-on tasks.
• The Education Middleman. Schools and colleges are quickly losing their competitive advantage over the Internet.
• The Real Estate Middleman. Brokers will become an endangered species.
• The Consultant Middleman. Data collection has become much easier. The analysis and recommendations have to shine for Management Consultants to survive.
• The Public Relations, Marketing, Advertising Middlemen. If a company can directly speak with its customers, then why bother with a message middleman.

I'm sure there are many more industries that could see their value-proposition greatly diminished or even completely destroyed. The trick will be to ride the wave and adapt instead of fighting the losing battle - like many newspapers have attempted to do.

There's Something About Cool

I've been lucky to grow up with The Simpsons. The show has not only thoroughly entertained me but has also taught me quite a bit. The Simpsons helped me learn to speak English, to realize the brilliance of Phil Hartman, and to identify the value of vague cultural references. The show also taught me that "cool" is often a necessary ingredient for success. The Simpsons represented the cutting edge of cool and manifested all the usual symptoms - a subversive undertone, occasional controversy, rapid word-of-mouth expansion, and eventual mass success.

Cool is what made my friends and I decide to sign up for Facebook instead of MySpace. Cool is what made me go to Google.com for the first time. Cool helped me sign up for Twitter and cool inspired me to write this blog. Cool is both powerful and precious.

Unfortunately, cool is often difficult to identify, define, and manufacture. The Simpsons tackled this problem in a brilliant car-ride conversation between the main family members:

Homer: So, I realized that being with my family is more important than being cool.
Bart: Dad, what you just said was powerfully uncool.
Homer: You know what the song says: "It's hip to be square".
Lisa: That song is so lame.
Homer: So lame that it's... cool?
Bart+Lisa: No.
Marge: Am I cool, kids?
Bart+Lisa: No.
Marge: Good. I'm glad. And that's what makes me cool, not caring, right?
Bart+Lisa: No.
Marge: Well, how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we've tried everything here.
Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you're truly cool, you don't need to be told you're cool.
Bart: Well, sure you do.
Lisa: How else would you know?