TV is SOCIAL, again

TOK.tv: ready for take-off

2013-04-01T10:25:00.001-07:00

As you might know, we have been working on TOK.tv for a while now.

Our goal is to let you TALK to your friends while watching TV, making sure you will never watch TV alone, while enhancing the overall experience.

I am convinced that the Second Screen market is the next big thing (Mashable put it as the #1 trend for 2013, so I am not alone).

I have never seen a market that is nascent, where the desire by end users is incredible (80% of people use a mobile device while watching TV today), and the business model is obvious.

The convergence of TV brand advertising with Internet transactional advertising is the Holy Grail of advertising. 85% of ad spending is still on TV ($200B/year...). Companies spend a million dollars for a SuperBowl ad, having no clue who watches it and what kind of people like it. Moreover, they have no way to give you an action to follow-up on the ad (i.e. "click"). If Google built a zillion dollars company with the remaining 15% of the ad market, I am sure there is a big company to be built here, one that allows you to "click" on a TV ad because an icon pops up on your iPad, while you watch a commercial.

We think TOK.tv is going to be that company. Simply because we nailed the user experience. We tested voice as the medium to share emotions while watching TV, and we discovered it changes everything.

Last October, we ran a test during the baseball postseason. TOK Baseball allowed users to watch a game on TV, with the scoreboard in their hands, talking to their friends. Because watching TV is a passive experience, voice is just perfect. People used our app for 57 minutes during each game (on average). Talking to their friends, while leaving the iPad on the side of the couch and kicking back. It makes sense, but we proved it.

If you force your users to type, they will pick up their device, type for two minutes, then stop and go back to watch the game. Not when you can talk. Actually, you will pick up your iPad during commercials (Ka-Ching! ;-) and you will be able to browse an ad while talking (see, voice is passive... You can even talk to your friends about the ad itself...)

In January, we ran a second test, during the football postseason. We saw 50% of baseball users move to TOK Football and we added a Facebook integration, which made the friendship numbers balloon (from one to eight on average). Yes, the additional content is important, but the key is the social interaction.

Then in February, we ran our last test, during Oscar night. Despite no advertising whatsoever, we had four times the users we had during the SuperBowl. And 68% of them were ladies. It proved to us that the model works beyond sports (and that it is true that ladies like to talk ;-) It was also the first test of the TOK.tv platform, the way we will scale, allowing others to provide the content.

Finally, we are done with tests. We are now ready for take-off.

Today, we launched TOK Baseball 2.0. It is not a beta anymore, it is the real deal. We added content so that the app is useful before and after the game, not just during the game. And a lot of cool stats.

You can check it out on the App Store.

What else? We announced that we have completed our Angel round. $400K from a phenomenal group of individuals, covering the mobile, TV and advertising space. I am honored to have them on board and I look forward to make them very happy (since they are already rich ;-)

We have a pipeline full of incredibly cool features (and an iPhone version), plus a series of spectacular apps (yes, we'll do soccer and basketball, I promise).

Stay tuned, the sky is the limit.

Google has killed Android (the brand)

2013-02-20T14:59:00.000-08:00

There are days where a trend you noticed becomes absolutely visible. Today is one of those days.

I have seen the Android brand disappear over time. First, it was the Nexus, then Samsung came with the Galaxy brand, who made Android less relevant. Now, Android is just invisible.

I thought Google was losing a war against its partners, but I finally concluded that it cannot be just a coincidence. It is not just a trend. It is a deliberate effort. By Google.

At Mobile World Congress last year, Android was everywhere. The Android space was the biggest of all. It was all about Android and a bit about the hardware manufacturers.

This year (BTW, if you are going to Barcelona and you want to meet, just let me know), Android will be absent at MWC 2013. No space, no booth. Gone.

If you read about the new HTC One, you'll have a hard time finding Android anywhere. HTC is trying to promote its brand, Android is way in the background. Gone.

Of course, Android is dominant. So much that saying you sell an "Android phone" makes you a cheap commodity play. Nobody wants that, they all want to be cool and different. Leave Android to the Chinese knock-offs.

However, it is not just the device manufacturers. It is Google killing the brand. They moved away from it when Android Market became Google Play, and they are distancing themselves even more now.

They want Google to be the brand, not Android.

Risky business? I am not sure. Who cares about Android? Developers. Only developers.

Even if you water down the brand, developers will know it ;-) It does not make a difference. You are not going to lose developers because you are de-emphasizing the brand.

However, having two brands confuses consumers. Google is planning to open flagship stores. They bought a hardware manufacturer. They are changing, and they want Google front and central.

Who knows the word iOS? Nobody (oh, you do, but you are a geek).

People out there know Apple. They know iPhone and iPad. iOS is for geeks. It is hidden inside. For those who can tell the difference between a V12 and a V6 engine (see, maybe you are not a geek after all).

Android is now so dominant, it can be killed. Because it is just what's inside. What matters, it is the outside.

Gone is Android. Killed by its own father.

Believe me, you want to buy a Google.

About drinking (and defense) during the Super Bowl

2013-02-04T12:15:00.002-08:00

During the Super Bowl yesterday, we had an explosion of downloads and users for TOK Football.

The systems responded very well, and I was pleased with the way we set up the app infrastructure. The app worked flawlessly, with peaks during the lights-out moment, and the only thing that actually suffered was the web site, which is funny (and a lesson learned for the future)...

I do not really remember the result of the game (ehm), so I decided to do a check of some stats to figure it out.

What I found is the chart below.

What the chart shows is how many times the users clicked on a particular noise in the app.

The focus is on two noises: burp (you might imagine what the sound is) and defense (which is the D# chant).

I plotted them over time, from the Wild Card to the Super Bowl.

What I found out is that DEFENSE was less and less a concern. Apparently, during the Wild Card, offense does not count much, while in the Super Bowl it is all that matters (and the MVP is usually a quarterback).

What is interesting is that BURP grew over time. That tells me people do not drink much during the Wild Card, but they go nuts as games progress. I am not sure if it is due to celebrations or to forget the result of the game.

For me, it was definitely the latter...

TOK.tv on NBC

2013-01-14T08:35:00.000-08:00

The day before the big 49ers game, NBC news had a segment on second screen.

We were a bit surprised they decided to dedicate it entirely to TOK.tv (but we did not complain).

What I found very encouraging is that they described the app better than I would (I am taking notes for my next presentation ;-) even using the TOK/talk joke effectively.

Something must be working in our marketing story. Good sign. Let's keep plowing ahead.

If we made the Giants win the World Series with TOK Baseball, we can definitely make the Niners win the SuperBowl with TOK Football. And I have some more ideas for apps on sports I care about ;-)

57 minutes and why the second screen is a big deal

2013-01-04T13:13:00.001-08:00

Today is a great day for TOK.tv. TOK Football can be downloaded from the App Store, worldwide. It is our second second screen app, after TOK Baseball. It allows you to talk to your friends while you watch the NFL postseason. We are very excited about it.

Why?

Because one number hit us about our experience with TOK Baseball: people have used the app, on average, for 57 minutes per game.

57 minutes, with our app open, in front of a TV. On average (a lot of folks had it open for three hours...).

It is a huge number. Consider that the average time spent on a mobile app is 71 seconds...

If you stop and think about it, it makes sense. A second screen app is technically a mobile app, but it is used in a static environment. On your couch. In front of your TV. It is not really a mobile app, even if it is enjoyed on a mobile device.

That changes everything.

When you are on your couch, you are relaxed, in a passive state. An advertiser can hit you with a commercial for 30 seconds, and you are going to watch it. Yes, I know, people want to change channel during commercials, but they rarely do. In particular, during a sport event (what if I come back late and I miss the touchdown?).

With a second screen on your lap, when someone or something gets your attention, you transform from passive to active. You jump on your device and act. Anybody with an iPad knows what I am talking about. During a game, a news event, a movie, anything. They say something you are interested to know more about, and you are on your iPad searching.

The same is going to happen with advertising. You see something interesting on TV, the app in front of you will pulse so you can act on it.

Act means also transact. Synchronized ads between TV and the second screen represent the future of advertising. It is a multi-billion dollar market.

If you think about the ad model of the Internet, it is all based on transactions. Done with a mouse, in a working state of mind. When you are relaxed and on the couch, you are in a better mood to spend. Advertiser will catch you off guard. It is even better than traditional online advertising. Then, you add a TV on top.

The second screen merges the ad model of TV (brand advertising) with the ad model of the Internet (transactional advertising). It is such a powerful tool, that it is scary...

You have it bundled in the perfect state of mind (on your couch) with the most intuitive device on the planet (a tablet, with a touch screen).

A second screen app is a mobile app with hormones.

Ok, not every second screen app will lock you in for 57 minutes (we have our special sauce, linked to the social nature of our voice-enabled platform), but for those who achieve what we have, it is going to be huge. We offer a full meal, not just a bite. It is fun, and social, and you have no reason to leave.

Second screen is already a top trend for 2013 (#1 for Mashable, and many others) and it is growing faster than anything I have seen in my career. If history tells me something, it is that new trends grow faster than the ones which came before. I expect an unprecedented growth.

For now, enjoy a talk with your friends during the NFL postseason. You know, you watch the SuperBowl for the commercials. Now you can talk with your friends about it, without waiting for the day after. One day, you'll be able to act on it ;-)

57 minutes. Second screen is a new paradigm, with the most powerful business model attached to it. That is why it is a big deal.

It is confirmed: Microsoft sucks less

2012-12-05T17:08:00.001-08:00

I spent the last two days in Redmond, invited by Microsoft (hey, they seems to be interested in Social TV, that is a good sign...).

As you probably know, I have never been a fan of Microsoft. In the early days of Funambol, they were the enemy. It was us and them. Open Source against the Evil Monopoly...

It was easy.

I even remember a Microsoft conference I was invited to attend in San Francisco, just the day after they announced that Linux was infringing on 325 of their patents. I showed up with a box full of t-shirts with a huge "325 more reasons to love open source". It was a big success :-) and I am told a lot of the Microsoft open source guys still have one of my t-shirts...

Microsoft was evil, the monopoly, invincible. They were about to do on mobile what they did on every other market. We needed to stop them.

I am not sure if I actually did anything, but they did not make it in mobile. Open Source won. They now look like the underdog. Which is amazing...

Now, I always love the underdog. With Apple looking more evil than ever, Facebook being a close second and Google a question mark, Microsoft has started to look a lot better.

Before leaving for Redmond, I bumped into the following video.

I know, it is hard to believe it is a Microsoft video. But it is. They really say "IE sucks less". That's their marketing slogan.

I believe it is brilliant. I am now considering installing IE 10 on my desktop PC. I swear.

Then I came here and they showed me a bunch of new stuff. They talked about Windows 8, Typescript (which is a very cool open source project), their plans around device management (wow) and a lot more. I played with the Surface with its weird keyboards, which surprisingly work pretty well.

All of a sudden, I realized that Microsoft is a company which is innovating. For real.

Think about Kinect. I am not sure there has been anything comparable lately, when it comes to innovations touching the consumers (Google and the cars that drive themselves are probably better, but the technology is just a prototype, and I am always scared when I pass one of them on the highway...).

Think about Windows 8. You really need balls to merge the desktop and tablet paradigm. I am not convinced it is going to work, but they are not afraid to try. For a giant, it is a huge gamble. It is amazing just to see them making this move.

Of course, they have plenty of issues, all over the place. For example, Windows Phone is completely separate from Windows 8, although they look similar. If you are a developer in the second screen space, you think mobile+tablet, as in the Apple world. At Microsoft, they live in two different domains, and this spells trouble for developers (and end users). The two platforms will not be in sync, with updates which will come at different times... They did the ballsy move to merge desktop and tablet, but they should bring phone in as well, pushing politics aside.

There are more examples like this. However, they are minor.

If I look at the big picture, one thing is clear to me after two days in Redmond: it is actually true that Microsoft sucks less. And this is news, or as they say: Progress. Unexpected and amazing at the same time.

Why Steve Jobs was wrong on the iPad Mini

2012-11-15T15:52:00.005-08:00

I have always been a big admirer of Steve Jobs and his work. For an open source guy, the love I have for Apple is hard to justify (they are the most closed company in the world). I just like their stuff and I have felt Steve Jobs was rarely wrong (in particular, when he said that the cloud was the future of device synchronization ;-)

On the iPad Mini, however, I believe Steve Jobs got it wrong.

Of the smaller tablets, he famously said "This size isn't sufficient to create great tablet apps" and "The seven-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad."

I have used an iPad Mini for 24 hours now.

The apps look exactly the same as they are on my large iPad. There is very minimal tradeoff here. The size of the Mini is perfectly sufficient to create great tablet apps. WRONG #1

I agree it is way too big to compete with my smartphone or camera (people who go around taking pictures with iPads are nuts), but it is definitely a huge competitor to the iPad3. Huge.

Look, the tradeoff is minimal. Mostly, it is the keyboard. However, if you keep it vertical, you can type with your thumbs, BlackBerry-style (formerly Gangnam-style, but now just depressing). I have not found a better way to type than with my thumbs. Even when I use all my fingers on the iPad3, I make mistakes. With my thumbs, I might be slower (might) but I am definitely more accurate. I will always be slower than typing on my laptop, but that is a given. I will never write long emails with a tablet. Period.

If the tradeoff is the keyboard and the Mini makes it even better in vertical, then what else is left?

Size and weight are a huge advantage of the Mini, for people who carry both a laptop and an iPad (again, those who go around with just a tablet are also nuts, the tradeoff between laptop and tablet is still gigantic).

Yeah yeah, I hear you: "it does not have a retina display! My eyes will pop out!!". No, they won't. Sorry, you have spent too much time in Silicon Valley. The retina display is something that only the 0.1% of the population (designers, artists) can really appreciate. The rest of us, we just pretend because it makes us look cool. You can live without a retina display, believe me. And if you wait nine months, you'll have your iPad Mini with the retina display, I guarantee it.

There you have it. I can't find a good reason to say that the Mini can't compete with the iPad3. The Mini is no tweener. It kicks his bigger brother. WRONG #2.

I believe the Mini will quickly outsell the iPad, as the iPod Mini did with the large iPod (remember?).

And where will your Mini live? Let me bet: in your living room, on your couch. The iPad Mini is THE device for Social TV. It is the perfect companion to your TV. It already looks like a big remote control, but 1,000 times smarter. It is the perfect trigger for the amazing growth of second screen apps, an unstoppable wave in 2013.

Now, if only Apple had the guts to price it below $300 ;-) They did not, and I clearly understand why: they know it will cannibalize the iPad3 and they did not want to do the same with the iPod Touch (which is still selling like crazy). Had they gone below $300, who would have bought an iPod Touch for its kids this Christmas? Nobody. However, now you are going to pony up $329 and buy them the Mini instead. Not bad. With time, the price will go down, because the premium Apple can demand will no longer be more than 50% like it is today (the Nexus 7 is $199). There will be a $249 iPad Mini one day, and more than one per household (hey, I wrote it a long time ago... There is a reason why the iPad has never been multi-user: they want one per person, not one per family).

Well, you can't be always right... I remember Steve Jobs saying that he would never open the iPhone to developers, because they would ruin the device. And than say the App Store is the best thing that they ever invented ;-) I am sure today he would say that the iPad Mini is more than 7". It is 7.9".

That 0.9 makes all the difference between a tweener and the best device ever conceived. Right?

My next big thing

2012-10-24T09:22:00.001-07:00

I have been fortunate to spot the Internet at its infancy, when I started Internet Graffiti in 1994. I launched a web document management product in 1996, when the word Intranet was still unknown. I started Funambol ten years ago, when I felt mobile was going to be the next big thing. We built iCloud way before Steve Jobs said it was a good idea. I am a lucky man.

Sadly, you can't spot the next big thing by trying hard. It just hits you.

A year ago, I was hit. Again.

I was not looking for it. It just happened.

I am a huge sports fan. During the weekend, my schedule is CEO-style: soccer, baseball, football, Formula One, MotoGP. I like them all. I spend hours in front of the TV, always watching it alone (actually, my dog Roberto is a silent company, but he gets scared when I yell).

My dad is just like me, although his focus is squarely on soccer. My mom did not like it, but she surely loved my dad, and she would see every game with him. Just for the company.

A few years ago, I gave her an iPad. She loved it. When she passed away, my dad took it.

Thinking about the solitude of watching all those games alone, my brother told him: "Dad, when you watch soccer, turn the iPad on and open Skype. I'll call you, so we can watch the game together".

My brother is a genius. I found myself at home on my dad's couch, with my brother sitting next to me. Virtually. Screaming from the iPad at the referee. It was like having him there. It meant not being alone. That hit me.

Watching TV by yourself is pathetic, I admit it. TV was meant to be social. That's why we invite people over for a big game. Sharing is half of the fun (and even more).

I can't have people over every night (or I would be single, fast), but what if I could share the fun of the game with them, even if they are not physically where I am? I know they are watching the game. We talk about it the day after, always. I know their iPad is next to them.

The iPad mini is the perfect companion to your TV. It is the remote control of the future. At $329, Apple is going to sell a boatloads of them this Christmas.

88% of iPad owners use it in front of the TV. People in the US spend almost five hours a day watching TV (ouch ;-) It is still our favorite pastime, by far. All of a sudden, it is possible to talk with your friends, who are watching TV at the same time. It is called Social TV.

The TV advertising industry is huge, but they have no idea if you are actually watching their commercial, and they definitely cannot have you act on it (e.g. buy). Brand advertising is emotional advertising. It works with a 55" TV. But it does not work on the Internet. There, transactional advertising works. You can act on an ad. Buy.

Imagine how big the TV+Internet ad industry can be. Where you can show an emotional ad on TV and have the viewer act on it on the iPad. It is the Holy Grail of advertising.

There you have it. My next big thing is giving people back the fun of watching their favorite shows on TV together, even if they live far away. It works for sports, and for everything else you want to share (the Presidential debate, the Emmy awards, American Idol, you name it).

Hey, what about Funambol? Like I said two years ago, the company has being placed in good hands. It is growing so well: in the last six months, we have signed almost all the top carriers in the developed markets. In 2013, we'll have half a billion people with access to the Funambol technology (without a carrier in China or India, for now). I will stay involved with my baby indefinitely as Chairman of the Board and watch it thrive.

My next big thing is called TOK.tv.

There is a new app for your iPad on the App Store. It is called TOK Baseball. It is the first voice enabled second screen TV companion app. It will allow you to watch the World Series with your friends, wherever they are (and GO GIANTS!!!).

You can TALK to them, not type (who wants to type after a home run? Not me, I am too busy screaming). If you are in the US, I would love for you to download it from the App Store and share your feedback with me. Actually, we can talk during the games, which would be even better.

For now, we have raised an angel round. If you think you can provide more than just cash, let me know, there is still a bit of room.

The app is just the first step. I would have called it a beta, but Apple does not allow me ;-) We built an MVP for baseball (Posey or Scutaro?), and we have a million features in mind. We are already working on TOK Football and we know the sky is the limit.

This is just the start of the TV revolution. It is called TOK.tv. It is going to be big. Stay tuned.

The last post

2012-05-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was invited to give a talk at OSBC 2012, called "The Future of Mobile Open Source". The Open Source Business Conference has been the gathering for those involved in open source, and trying to make a living out of it. I have been there many times. Initially, it was a lot of fun, with all the startups innovating on the business model. Lately, well, things have matured a bit ;-)

Being forced to talk about the future of Mobile Open Source, I had to look back at what happened over the years I have been in this market. I realized it has been a phenomenal ride. From 2001, when Stefano started working on Sync4j (exactly when Luca Passani started working on WURFL, strange Italian connection...), to 2003 when we formed Funambol, to 2007 when the iPhone came out and Android went open source, to today.

Going back in time and assessing where we have come, made me realize one thing. The future of Mobile Open Source is actually today.

Look at this chart:

I do not know what else to say... It is a Pacman. Open source dominates in mobile, and I am ready to bet that it is just going to get better. The PC world will have an equivalent in the mobile world. Only reversed, where open source has more than 80% of market share.

Can you believe it? Open source dominates in mobile. Wow.

Look at this other one:

Chrome uses Webkit. Safari uses Webkit. Firefox is open source. If you consider that the growth is going to come from iOS (Webkit) and Android (Webkit), it is quick to conclude we are going to see another Pacman. Once again, with open source winning. Wow.

What is the only critique you hear about the mobile open source model today? I bet it is (drum roll...): FRAGMENTATION!!

I know, there are almost 4,000 Android devices out there, listed below.

That translates in a multitude of companies working on it. Fragmentation? Well, you can call it as you want. I call it open source being adopted by a bazillion of companies...

Now, how bad is this fragmentation, which can kill open source in mobile? Not too bad, actually. If you look at the current status of Android in the market, you see that over 90% of Android out there have Android 2.x... Fragmented? A bit. Devastating, I do not think so. You might not have checked the variations of JavaME or Symbian ;-) This is easy.

Lastly, let me quote Sean Moss-Pultz of OpenMoko fame: FRAGMENTATION IS INNOVATION.

Dont' you believe me? Consider for a second the Kindle Fire. It is a total fork of Android, made possible only because of open source. It took over 50% of market share in the Android tablet market, in a matter of months. Amazon is innovating on Android, faster than Google. The result will be some code from Amazon to come back to Android, making it even better and even faster in the market.

You call it fragmentation, I call it a better way to innovate.

After reviewing the state of Mobile Open Source, I concluded that the future is going to be just more of the present. More domination. We won, nobody is going to take it away from us.

What do you do when you are on top, you won and you realize the future is going to be like the present?

You quit :-)

Always better to leave where you are on top of your game.

Therefore, I have decided to close this blog. I opened it six years ago, because of a bet with Matt on Juve vs. Arsenal (he won). I am sure I would win that bet today, and it is just appropriate that I close this blog because Matt asked me to talk about the future. If you are interested, the slides of the talk are on Prezi and the presentation + audio is below.

That said, I am not disappearing. I am convinced I know what the next major disruption in our world will be, and I plan to share it with you as soon as I am ready. Stay tuned and thanks for watching!

The war on the personal cloud has started

2012-04-24T11:34:00.003-07:00

I have been talking about (and doing) personal cloud for years now. Ten years ago I wrote the first line of code of what became Funambol (thankfully, now not including any line of code I wrote :-)

I have to admit it: I thought it would happen sooner. I was a tiny bit early ;-) Still, it is still a satisfaction to see it is actually happening.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced a bunch of new features of its personal cloud service, called SkyDrive (including a Mac and iOS app, which is cool). Strangely missing an Android app...

Today, Google announced Google Drive, strangely missing the iOS app...

Both look like great products, although way too vertical (Google is going to be mainly Android, and Microsoft will try as hard as they can to make it Windows Phone perfect) but still better than iCloud, which is the closest thing on planet earth.

However you look at it, today marks the start of the personal cloud war.

I am expecting Amazon to jump on it fully, because their Amazon Cloud Drive right now is just a mockup of what a good product it could be. Actually, I am surprised they will end up late to the party, when they started so early. I believe it is going to be a four horses race, eventually.

Honestly, it does not look good for Dropbox. They just do not have the weapons to fight in a war of this size. The price of storage is going down, and they have no business model or major feature advantage that can sustain their growth. Even worst for SugarSync.

Right now, I am so glad that we positioned Funambol not in the B2C space... I believe the opportunity for mobile operators and the other device manufacturers to fight this battle is still there. They have the size and the reach to consumers (and most importantly, the billing relationship) to make it. In particular, in countries where there are no credit cards and the OTT players are not that strong.

Especially when you look at cross-device synchronization, because I do not see Google or Microsoft or Apple to really do a good job there. And cross-device in a family means everything, in particular if you start adding a lot of other devices, like TVs, DVRs, game consoles, stereos, scales and so on.

The carriers, and those in particular providing a multi-screen service (Phone+Internet+TV) have a great advantage when you look at the family cloud. That is the next battle.

Long live to the personal cloud. We are living exciting times.

Why onboarding should be priority #1

2012-04-23T18:11:00.000-07:00

If you do not live in mobile, you probably have never heard about the word "onboarding". Too bad, because it is the most important word in this space today.

When the mobile revolution started, phones did not store any meaningful user data. Yes, there was the address book, and it was a pain to move it around (for example, to your new phone), but the suffering was minimal.

Nowadays, your phone contains your entire life. Not just your friends, the pictures of your kids, the video of your graduation and much more. Losing a phone is a horrible pain, so many people do backups, or use a personal cloud solution (such as iCloud, or SkyDrive, or really soon Google Drive) to store their stuff somewhere secure.

That does not solve one little problem, actually it makes it worst: it locks you onto one platform. If you are an iPhone user and you start using iCloud, you are stuck for life. You cannot change device. The same for Google with Android, and soon for Microsoft with Windows Phone and SkyDrive.

Onboarding is the process of moving your data into a new device, just after you buy it.

It is simple if you buy an iPhone after an iPhone. However, if you have an iPhone and you want to move to Android, good luck. What about having a BlackBerry and moving to something else? Or a Symbian phone? Exactly.

If you are a device manufacturer, and you want to expand your market today, you need to steal a user from someone else. It is not a green field anymore. You need to take a user from a dumbphone, or another smartphone. You need to make it super duper easy to move its data. Or you are dead.

It is not just address book, video and pictures. It is everything. It is apps, for example. If I have 75 apps on my Android, how do I know if I will find them in the other device? Am I going to lose all of them? If you leave a user with a doubt, you are not going to convince her to move. Period. We have too much data in our phones now. The pain of switching is too big.

Funny enough, onboarding is a very tough problem to solve for a device manufacturer. Think about it: you need to build apps for different operating systems, own by your competition. Put them on their App Stores... It is a task nobody is assigned to, in a device manufacturer. Nobody owns this. And it is the most important thing you should be looking at, to get market share. Forget the color of your device and the megapixels of your camera, nobody will buy your phone if you cannot move their data.

Of course, I should add a disclaimer: I have been working on onboarding for a long time. The company I founded (Funambol) is the only one I know that allows data to move from a Blackberry to an iPhone, to an Android, to a Symbian, to a Windows Mobile, ... and back ;-)

That said, despite my clear bias, I still believe onboarding should be the most important task on a device manufacturer list. One that is always overlooked, left at the end of the process, just in time for that "oohhh crap, nobody is buying our phone because we are not giving them a way to move their data".

Interesting how fast this market moves. In the span of a few years, this item moved from priority #100 to #1. Trust me. This is where it belongs. There is no market for a phone that does not allow you to move your data. None.

Europe lost the mobile race. For good

2012-03-19T19:11:00.002-07:00

When I moved to Silicon Valley in 1999, one thing really hit me: my grandma in Italy had a cellphone then, and in my soon-to-IPO tech startup only few people had one. I mean, in the heart of Silicon Valley, at Tibco, going IPO that year... I was puzzled, my grandma (she is over 90 years old now) was ahead of the geeks here.

At that time, the gap between Europe and US on mobile was huge. Europe had the fastest networks, the best phones (remember Nokia), the software developers (crying over JavaME differences), the ecosystem... Everything.

Here, we had nothing.

A few years later, I started pitching a concept of a mobile synchronization play to investors in the Valley. It was 2002 (Funambol is about to pass the 10th year mark, wow ;-) and there was no mobile signal whatsoever at 3000 Sand Hill, the heart of the VC world. For years, the mobile signal over there sucked.

For years, there were no mobile companies here. And the networks were so bad that I could drive from San Francisco to San Jose and have the connection drop five times (and I knew the spots where it was going to happen, so I could tell the european guy at the other end of the phone that I was about to drive into a tunnel...).

First, the mobile companies started showing up. I was one of the early people to say Silicon Valley will jump on the mobile bandwagon, that this valley would not miss the biggest change in our lives. Many in Europe thought I was dumb to try to do a mobile company here. They told me to move to Finland instead (too bad I like the weather here better ;-)

Then the mobile OS war started. Palm first. Then Apple with iOS. Then Google with Android. Then Microsoft moved their mobile team here. In a few years, the mobile world moved here. On mobile operating systems, iOS and Android alone command over 90% of the market. Easy. Bye bye Europe, with Symbian and all the other stuff.

Still, Europe had the better networks. UMTS, HDSPA, the 3.5G: just ahead of the US by a mile.

It all changed when I went to MWC in February. Before leaving, my friend Hal (our VP Marketing at Funambol) showed me his new Android phone. It had LTE. I did a SpeedTest and my jaw dropped. This thing is faster than my DSL at home. By a lot. It seems like something coming from the future.

Then at MWC, I heard the CEO of Telecom Italia say: "we have started an LTE trial in Turin".

Hey, what do you mean "An LTE trial"? Trial? But it is live in pretty much the entire US! And it works, I saw it with my eyes, from a guy who is not even a geek!

When a week ago Apple announced the new iPad, with LTE, I just had a flashback. Hal is like my grandma (sorry buddy ;-) and my geek friends now live in Pavia, Italy. They have no idea what LTE is and how fast it is. If Apple has LTE on its flagship device, it is mainstream, not a trial.

Mainstream is the US now. Europe just lost the mobile race. For good.

The return of the stylus

2012-02-20T10:42:00.000-08:00

Among the somewhat interesting things I saw at CES, the Samsung Note topped the list.

Mostly, because Samsung made a big deal out of it: they hired graphic artists to sketch your face on the device and that created a long line of people (there is nothing people like more then themselves: smart move, Samsung...).

What is the Samsung Note? A huge phone or a small tablet, depending on how you look at it. It is 5.8 by 3.3 inches (if you are not American, don't worry, it means it is huge). It fits in your pocket, if you are ok with going around with a brick in your pants. You can also use it to make calls, unless you are worried that people will look at you holding an iron board.

You know what I think about super-sized phones (a.k.a. versatile bricks), and I have the same feeling about the Note. It is just too big.

However, the new (?!?) thing about the Note is that it sports a stylus pen. Yes, exactly like the one we had in the old Palm Pilots. The one we hated. The one we lost so many times, we all bought five replacement pens. It stays inside the device, you push it and it comes out. You can write or sketch on the device (there is a Note app), while you use the finger for anything else.

I had lunch with a friend a few days ago and he had one of these monsters. I sketched a face (not mine) and the experience was quite good. Still, the thing is too big, sorry. It will be a device only for a niche.

However, it made me think about the stylus. It was gone when the BlackBerry introduced the mini-keyboard and even more when the iPhone introduced multi-touch.

Do I ever miss it?

Yes, I did. I clearly remember one day when I went looking online for a pen. For my iPad. I could not find one that would actually work and I gave up.

Why was I looking for a pen?

To sketch ;-) And take notes while in meeting. Typing on an iPad in a meeting is just too much and the social experience is still bad: better than taking notes on a laptop, with the screen creating a visual barrier, but still bad because you must look at your fingers while others are talking. We are so good at writing, that we do not need to look at it. We write and we look at the person in front of us, or we alternate. It is socially acceptable.

The same for taking notes in school. Try doing it with your fingers. It is too hard. Personally, I believe tablet will totally eliminate sketchpads eventually. Now, it is not possible. With a pen, it could.

Somehow, the idea of a stylus for a tablet makes sense to me. And not only me: I heard rumors that Samsung is about to launch a Note 10.1, a tablet with a pen. It is something that would make it different than any other tablet out there. On a phone, I say no. On a tablet, oh yes.

More, let me predict one thing about the new iPad 3: you will be able to write on it with a pen. A magic pen, sold as an accessory. Probably nicely fitting in your cover.

This is the return of the stylus.

Is 2012 the year of Nokia?

2012-01-11T20:06:00.000-08:00

I am on the plane back to the Bay Area from CES. Las Vegas is always a cool place, even if you have a lingering jet-lag. Actually, in that case you might be able to experience the beautiful dawn in the desert while sober, which is not common in Sin City. I definitely recommend it.

CES was packed with people, but lacked exciting stuff, in my opinion. I traveled the show extensively and I can't say many booths impressed me because of new gadgets. I actually felt sad in the empty BlackBerry booth, looking at a new tablet OS whose top feature is email (really? It sounds like a joke ;-) Even TVs looked like TVs, just oversize and slim.

The only place where I saw something exciting is the Nokia booth (yep, they had a booth this year, pretty big and quite crowded). The Lumia 900 was in big display. It is the Windows Phone device coming out with AT&T.

In particular, what caught my eye was the blue model.

There is a reason for it: it looks exactly the same as the Nokia N9 I received as a gift from a friend, who works at Nokia (I guess they did not know where to throw them :-) The N9 is the last model with MeeGo on it, a defunct OS (or maybe still alive, but barely breathing). As soon as I took the device out of the box, my wife asked to look at it. As soon as she had it in her hands, she asked me if she could keep it. I tried to say no, but I had no chance. She fell in love with it, at first sight, as rarely happens. She is now the official owner of a Nokia N9, with an OS she does not care about. It is blue, it is gorgeous, she loves it. It is all about the hardware. One last important bit: she trashed her iPhone to have it.

I know the sample of one is meaningless, but she is my wife so she must have good taste...

Jokes apart, the Lumia 900 is a big deal. The hardware looks different. The shape is cool, and it feels great in the hands. It is simply sexy. Even without turning it on.

Once it is on, Windows Phone shows up. It is a eye-catching OS. Nobody is taking it seriously, but with a sexy hardware and a massive marketing campaign (just wait, combine Microsoft and Nokia budgets, both at the last chance to make it in mobile...), I think it has a big chance.

Honestly, I believe there is a concrete possibility this device will finally spark adoption of Windows Phone.

That would be exciting. I do not like monopolies, and duopolies are not that much better (it is what Apple and Google are doing these days, with the variation that Amazon is creating a lot of trouble for Google). With Windows Phone in the middle, the competition will be even better.

I personally thought Nokia was done for good (same for RIM, but I have not changed my mind on that...). Instead, I am now convinced they have a winner in their hands, despite the crappy name (said the guy who came up with the name Funambol...). They have the big carrier behind them, which is not going to push the iPhone anymore (and has no reason to push Android much). That will help tremendously. If they execute the plan well, at the end of the year we could be looking at 2012 and realize it was the year of Nokia.

In any case, welcome back old friend.

HP dumps WebOS in the open source trash can

2011-12-09T11:15:00.001-08:00

Hey, this should be a day to celebrate for me. I wrote a post 18 months ago titled "Why HP should open source WebOS" and it finally happened. They did it.

Yay, right?

Nope.

When I wrote that post, HP had just acquired Palm. Android was not as big as it is today (not even close). The time was perfect. It was a phenomenal opportunity for HP.

Let me pick a statement from that post:

My suggestion on WebOS is easy: open source it. Fast. If there is one thing I believe Palm did wrong, it was following the Apple model. Keep it closed and you die, unless you are ahead of everyone and big.

I still agree with myself (which is good, I guess). The "keep it closed and you die" sentence, in particular ;-) HP did not open source WebOS. And, therefore, they killed it.

Throwing something which is dead in the open source trash can does not revive it. Try throwing a dead body in a trash can (after asking Siri where to find one) and let me know.

Open source is not the panacea. Or the emergency room. You can't expect the magic to happen, just because you threw some code out. It does not.

Open source is a lot more than that. It is a community. People who believe on a common mission, with common interests. It is changing the world together.

I know, I am too romantic. Tell my wife. But it is true, even for Android, even when there is a giant behind a project. You get people excited to participate, only if there is a reason, a mission, a common goal.

What is the common goal on WebOS being open source? I have no idea.

Opensourcing WebOS was the right thing to do 18 months ago. Now it is useless. It is an excuse not to say "we screwed up and we killed it".

It is simply too late. RIP WebOS.

The tipping point: Android won

2011-11-15T08:58:00.001-08:00

I know we all love Apple. I know you do not see many Androids in the hands of pundits in Silicon Valley. I know you like to think different. Still, Android keeps taking market share away from everyone. And iOS market share is shrinking.

Look at today's data from Gartner:

You are reading it right: Android has now more than 50% of the market, while iOS has less market share than a year ago. Android keeps growing, quarter after quarter. Apple will grow this quarter for sure, because of the iPhone 4S, but Android is going to grow faster.

There is a moment where you realize a team has won, that it has taken an insurmountable lead. That moment is now. Android has passed 50%. There is no way back. It is the tipping point.

Let me brag a little: I told you so :-) Mobile Open Source wins.

All those that claim that Android is not really open source, please click here. See, Google has just released the source code of Android 4.0 (ICS or Ice Cream Sandwich). I know, there is no steering committee blah blah. However, can you negate how powerful open source has been for Android (and Google)?

Look at the tablet world. Amazon has just launched the Kindle Fire. No help from Google whatsoever. It is open source at its best. You can even take other APKs and install them on it. If you ask me, I am ready to bet that the Kindle Fire (with its younger brothers) is going to be the most popular tablet ever, even passing the iPad eventually.

Fragmentation is innovation. Open source is pushing the limit of mobile, making it better and more interesting. More, it is an open world, where the OS moves around, and apps move around. Add an open cloud, where data will move freely, and we will have a perfect world (we are far from it, but there is room to fight).

To me, the game is over. Android is dominating. The next player is so far behind, and it will not catch up. Android won.

WARNING: do not use iCloud while drunk

2011-10-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

I have been carefully listening to the feedback on iCloud in the last few days, and I have to say it is underwhelming. I keep hearing people bitching about it: it is not much different than the last time they launched MobileMe.

Of all the comments, one stood out.

If you take a picture on your iPhone, it shows up automagically in Photo Stream and it is synced right away to your other devices. In most cases, that means an iPad sitting on the couch. Cool.

One little feature Apple forgot to add: delete.

Yep, if you take a picture on your iPhone, it gets automatically synced to your iPad. And you cannot delete it from Photo Stream. Ever.

Now, let me imagine an unlikely scenario (also known as a use-case): you are out drinking, you drink too much, you snap a picture you should not take. You wake up the next morning with a hangover. You remember you did something the night before (not sure what, though...), you check your pictures for confirmation and there it is, the picture you do not want anyone to see... You delete it and go on with your life. You are allowed a crazy night once in a while, right? Nobody will found out, anyway.

Wrong.

You get home the next night, your daughter is playing Cut the Rope on your iPad (remember, it is a shared device in any household...), she opens up Photo Stream, sees your picture and hands it over to your spouse with a "mom, look at this picture of daddy!!"...

Ooppps. Didn't you delete it? Yes, you did. But only from your iPhone. You cannot delete it from Photo Stream. It will be there to haunt you on the friend's couch you are sleeping on tonight.

If you want to use iCloud, make sure you are sober.

Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

2011-10-05T21:05:00.000-07:00

Apple cannot build a better iPhone

2011-10-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

I admit it: I was wrong. A few days ago I wrote:

First of all, there will be an iPhone 5. I know some of you are thinking "doh", but there are rumors that Apple will actually launch an iPhone 4s instead. I do not think so. There is too much competition, they have to move the number up, whatever they ship. They just cannot give the world the impression that the iPhone platform is not moving, that Apple is not innovating, that Steve Jobs is gone and therefore the company is screwed. They have to ship an iPhone 5, even if it is just the iPhone 4 in pink.

To be fair, I was right on the reaction to the lack of an iPhone with a new number: the analysts, the media, everyone was disappointed. The stock tanked after the event. Everyone is convinced this is a window of opportunity for Nokia (I bet there was a lot of alcohol flowing in Finland last night, knowing the Finns), RIM (stock is up 12% today...), Samsung and the like.

Now, I have been thinking about the "why" since yesterday. Why did they not ship an iPhone 5, improving on the case and the form factor? Why? Why?

They did open a window for the competition, there is no doubt about it. Whatever is inside the device does not change it (Siri being the coolest thing after ice cream). They could have killed Windows Mobile 7. They could have finished BlackBerry. They could have challenged Android for real, stopping their growth (and not just trying to play the price game with the 3GS still alive).

Instead, they did not do it. But Tim Cook is no dumb... Sure, having the same case will make logistics better, probably even increase margins. Now why?

The easiest answer is: arrogance. Hubris is what kills companies, and Netflix is giving us a good example of it. Apple maybe thought they were so ahead of the competition, that the world loves them so much that they could have the luxury of slowing down. Something like: "you know, we kept the iPhone 4 in the market for 18 months and it is the best selling device, another year would not make a difference: we are the best and we win anyway".

I just do not buy it. You finally become CEO of the coolest company on earth and - at your first event - you disappoint? You make your stock go down? You make everyone say "aahh, when Steve Jobs was here..." or "this looks like Microsoft when Bill Gates left"??

No, no, no. I do not buy it.

I have a different theory: they just could not make it. They looked around at ideas, like the teardrop design. But it did not make any sense in landscape mode. They looked around for new materials, but they just could not find anything better than what they had built.

Simple said: the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone factor there is. You cannot make it better. It is the best shape, it has the perfect dimensions to hold it in your hand, the buttons are where they are supposed to be. You cannot improve it.

I believe we have reached the top of the form factor in smartphones. Apple is telling us this is the case. Period.

The game now is inside. It is the software, and the stuff around it to make it faster. It is the cloud. It is the personal assistant and the voice recognition. The outside is not going to change, all smartphones will look alike. Same for the tablet world. Forget the outside, it really does not matter anymore. Apple knows it, and they are delivering on the inside and the cloud.

It is that simple.

The form factor is dead. It is not a factor anymore.

Siri and the evolution of crazy

2011-10-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

As you might know, I grew up in a mental institution. Yep, it explains a lot of things. Anyway, my parents were both shrinks and it was convenient for them. It was great for me too, because I learned to see things a bit differently.

Who was crazy back then?

Think about it. It was a person who talks to himself in the middle of the road, like she is having a conversation with an imaginary other person.

What about now?

You still have people walking down the street and talking loudly to themselves. The difference is that they are actually talking to a real person. They have a Bluetooth headset you cannot even see, and they talk loudly. Nobody around them cares about what they are saying, everyone around is just annoyed.

We moved from reacting to crazy people with a smile, to being annoyed. Sad.

What is going to happen next?

Well, Apple just announced Siri. It is a personal assistant for the iPhone. You tell her things like "remember to call my wife when I leave work" or "please wake me up tomorrow at 8 am" or "how do I get home?". She replies with the perfect answer, assuming you do not have an accent (I am eager to try it, of course ;-)

The next crazy person is going to be someone in the middle of the road, yelling to a phone. Not having a conversation with someone else, real or virtual. Yelling to a little piece of plastic. Swearing like a sailor "F***ing Siri!! Do you understand what I am saying??". Not even a Bluetooth headset in sight.

The evolution of crazy. No way to tell them apart.

iPhone 5 predictions

2011-10-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

UPDATE with scorecard

RIGHT

faster, better screen, better camera (that was easy)
no teardrop design (many were betting on it, I got this one right)
Siri is indeed spectacular
they kept an iPhone 4 and even 3GS for the low end
the cloud was all over the presentation

WRONG

no Iphone 5: wow, I got this one badly wrong. Apple must be feeling really comfortable against Android and Windows. Or they have an iPhone 5 coming up very soon. Or they have no clue on how to make that device better: it is all inside...
Considering I missed the number on the device, I would give myself a 5 out of 10. The real big news was the absence of an iPhone 5, really. The rest was kinda easy.

__________________________________________________________________________________

If you live in Silicon Valley and you work in mobile, you have to play this game: what is Apple going to present tomorrow at their live event?
I play it every year, sometimes twice in a single year. I win some, I lose some. Actually, even when I win, nobody gives me a prize, so it does not make any difference.

Now, what about tomorrow, the launch of the iPhone 5?

First of all, there will be an iPhone 5. I know some of you are thinking "doh", but there are rumors that Apple will actually launch an iPhone 4s instead. I do not think so. There is too much competition, they have to move the number up, whatever they ship. They just cannot give the world the impression that the iPhone platform is not moving, that Apple is not innovating, that Steve Jobs is gone and therefore the company is screwed. They have to ship an iPhone 5, even if it is just the iPhone 4 in pink.

Actually, I do not think it is going to be pink. Just with a bigger screen and a great camera. The best screen out there. The best camera out there. Super light. Very fast. No frills and no teardrop design (this is my biggest bet, I do not believe a teardrop design would fit well in landscape mode, so I do not think they will go for it).

I believe they will go nuts around voice recognition. The event is called "Let's talk iPhone", so - in my opinion - the big message will be around voice recognition. They will sell it as the best thing that happen to a device after Star Trek (whatever that is, you know my love for sci-fi...). If you recall, Apple bought Siri over a year ago.

I am expecting something spectacular, a lot better than what I have today with Google (which is already pretty good, even with my accent). I am expecting you could just look at the new iPhone, talk and it will do pretty much everything you want. Speaking with your normal voice, giving commands with casual sentences and creating a wow effect in the audience (BTW, Windows Mobile is built on a very powerful voice technology but nobody gives a damn, because it is Microsoft. We are talking Apple here, so it will be the best thing after the invention of the wheel).

What else? I think they will have an iPhone 4 or 4S, a low-end phone. 8GB, cramped down features, old look&feel. Perfect for emerging markets (finally entering India) and the low-end of the market in many places. It is not much a tool to attack the Android market, but more to defend and make sure Android does not take the entire bottom part of the pie: those who will buy a low-end Android now, will end up buying an high-end Android later. Apple needs to make sure they get on the iOS bandwagon instead, to move them up the chain later (to a powerful iPhone, iPad, AppleTV and a Mac).

Lastly, the cloud will be all over the place. It is the official launch of iCloud and they will make sure everyone understands why it is going to change everything we do.

Here you have it. My predictions.

One last thing: I do not think Steve Jobs will show up.

Open Source and the Kindle Fire

2011-09-29T17:29:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog what seems a gazillion years ago, I had a feeling that open source would become a dominant force in mobile. I was absolutely convinced that it would do better in mobile than in the PC world. That it would be the winning model.

Most of the people out there disagreed with me (not a big deal, I am used to it ;-)

They said mobile and open source together would not work. That this market was too closed. That the carriers would not allow any openness. That the wall gardens were too high...

It turned out to be false, and the walls came down tumbling faster than anyone expected.

Then it came Apple and they said it is going to be the winning model. It is closed, no open source allowed. They said open source was not going to make it. Again.

It turned out to be false, because Google made Android open source and it became the fastest growing OS of all time, passing Apple at a speed nobody expected.

Now look at where we are today. I have been bullish on the Kindle Fire even before it was born. Actually, compared to that post, now that we know the price is $199 (instead of $249), I am even more bullish. I am more convinced than I was before that Amazon is going to be the biggest competitor for Apple in the space (and no, I do not believe the Fire will kill the iPad, they will live happily together for a while).

How did Amazon managed to challenge Apple in such a short time?

Open Source.

Think about it. Amazon took an open source mobile operating system (Android), forked it, changed the UI a little and added a few apps. With that, it is going to build the most successful tablet of our times (my prediction, we'll see how it goes).

There was no chance for Amazon to do the same without open source. It gave them speed and time-to-market. It gave them a stable and high-quality platform. The ability to compete and innovate. And maybe the biggest advantage of all: an enormous development community. All things we always said open source would bring to the table, making a huge difference.

The Kindle Fire is yet-another demonstration of the power of open source. The innovation is not going to stop here. Expect even greater things in the future. With the market moving towards HTML5 and the open web, we'll be talking about the dominance of open source and openness again and again.

And yes, open source in mobile is doing way better than in the PC world. And yes, it is clearly showing to be the winning model. I should close this blog now that I am peaking :-))

When Facebook split from Twitter

2011-09-26T14:42:00.001-07:00

I am sure you know about Facebook Timeline and the idea behind it: the history of your entire life in Facebook will be exposed. A great way to see what you did last year, a very risky proposition for people that change girlfriend or boyfriend: your new girlfriend will be able to go back in time and see what you wrote about your old girlfriend. It should be a lot of fun...

The change seems small, since it is just your profile who got larger (and you probably could get that information anyway, clicking on Older Posts). However, I believe the change in paradigm is massive.

Twitter has always been about NOW. Instant flow of messages. Anything older than a few seconds is history.

Despite actually having a memory (I am sure Twitter has every tweet you ever did), the way it is built and presented makes history irrelevant for a user (not for Twitter, that is gold). You can write pretty much what you want, and you know it will soon be forgotten.

Knowing a site has no memory - or shows no memory - makes the interaction completely different. More casual. You write things right in the moment. You do not think what you are doing is written in stone and will be there forever to haunt you one day.

Facebook had nothing like Twitter at the beginning. When Twitter became hot, they added status updates. It became like Twitter, but just for "friends". Then they added a public option (not the Obamacare one), mostly to follow Google+ (yep, they are smart, copying smart ideas is being smart) so it matched Twitter perfectly.

Then they added Timeline.

No actual changes anywhere in the site, just in your profile. You can post a public story, and it is like Twitter.

However, it is Twitter with a memory. A visible one. A searchable one. Not just by you, by anyone who knows you. Or will eventually know you in the future.

The change is dramatic. When you post in Facebook, you are now conscious of it. I am not talking about you geeks, I know you knew it. I know you were aware anything you did was permanent. You know what a database is and how to retrieve anything with a SQL statement. I am talking about the rest of us, the other 99.9999%, the real people.

They thought Facebook was like Twitter. They thought Facebook had no memory. They now have a visible confirmation it is not like that. Facebook has memory. You should not post anything assuming it will disappear with time. It is so clear, so obvious. Every single Facebook user will know it. And they will think one or two seconds more about what they are about to post.

Facebook and Twitter are now miles apart.

I am not sure this is going to be that good for Facebook. Having users worrying about posting might not be such a great idea. We'll see. I sure am glad that I always treated Facebook exactly like Twitter ;-)

Facebook wants your entire life

2011-09-23T09:08:00.001-07:00

I have played with Timeline for a few hours and I have to admit: it is great. You can see all the posts you made (they call them "stories" now ;-), the picture you posted (storied?), what others have posted tagging you and so on. It is great looking, and you can choose what you want to hide, because it is your public profile (although people will see just the things you want them to see).

It goes back to the day you signed up on Facebook. Surprised? You thought they would throw away all that gold, didn't you? Nope ;-)

Actually, it goes back one step more. To your birthdate.

Yes, they added a little space to fill up the info you did not yet put on Facebook. The picture of your birth, your graduation, your wedding...

Your life.

Facebook wants your entire life on their site.

It is not surprising to me. We are in the same space. We call it Personal Cloud. It is where you store your life. Where you record what you did. It is the modern version of your photo book, just a lot more interactive (and with comments of other people embedded).

What Facebook wants you to do is to start uploading personal stuff. Things that are private. That you are not going to share with anyone. Have you noticed you now can post a story visible to "Only me"?

Actually, they want you to upload everything. Better if you share (it increases engagement on the site), but it is ok if you do not. As long as you upload everything.

A site that has your entire life is the stickiest thing you will ever touch. It will own you. You will not be able to leave it. Right now, people are leaving Facebook. If it is just "social", it might pass. If it is your life, it is going to stay. Facebook is you. You are Facebook.

My problem with this idea is trust.

I read an article this morning. It went like this:

“You can really put a lot more of your life into Facebook,” says Dave Morin. And all of that is information that Facebook will store and potentially make use of. “Our primary business model and it always will be, is advertising,”

Clever move by the writer to put together in a paragraph "your life" and "advertising" :-)

It highlights my problem with Facebook. I am all in favor of a place where to store my entire life. I need it, my digital life is out of control, I need to take charge of it. However, I want to put my life in the hands of someone I trust.

That someone is not Facebook. It can't be Facebook. Nothing to do with their ethics. It has to do with their business model. They make money on my data. My life. I cannot trust them. Period.

Still, I am going to use Timeline. For my public stuff. My private life will go somewhere else.

Amazon is the real Apple competitor

2011-09-06T16:29:00.000-07:00

I have always perceived Amazon as a threat for Apple. After all, they have a mobile device which is kind of a tablet (Kindle) and a bunch of cloud services. Still, they never felt close, mostly because they have always focused on a niche (books).

Everything is about to change: Amazon is about to release a 7-inch touchscreen Android tablet, a direct challenge to the iPad.

Why do I think this will be huge?

Here you have the first eight things that come to mind:

1. Amazon is the most valuable and trusted brand online. The cloud, which goes hand-to-hand with mobile devices, is a place where trust is everything. In particular, if you are storing your most important data. Amazon has gained the trust of about everyone. Nobody comes close.

2. Amazon has your credit card, and everyone's else (at least in the US). Having a billing relationship is something Google is dreaming of, and the big advantage Apple has on the App Store vs. the Android Marketplace. I would bet Amazon has more credit cards than Apple does in this country.

3. Amazon has a phenomenal sales machine to push a new retail device, as they have done with the Kindle. Guess what? They will call this one Kindle as well, a new kind of Kindle, the natural upgrade to all Kindles they have sold so far. It will be on Amazon home page every single day, as the most important gift for your Christmas list.

4. Amazon is setting the perfect price for a tablet: $250. Anything closer to the iPad is a no show. Forget the Android tablets in the market today: if I want to buy a tablet and the price is close to the iPad, I will buy an iPad. Period. There is no game. If you say "half the price", you have my attention. And you are about to end in my Christmas list (and not only for me, it is a perfect gift).

5. Amazon has everything in the cloud. I mean everything you need: they have books (duh), music (Amazon MP3 is awesome) and movies (Instant Video). They match Apple (nobody else does). Actually, Amazon is better at books... There is a chance they will throw in free Instant Video, as they are doing today with Amazon Prime. It would be Netflix on a mobile device, for free... Huge.

6. Amazon is planning to ship a tablet with the right size. A 7 inches tablet does not really compete with the iPad. It is a different thing. It is something you can bring to bed with you. It is an upgrade to the Kindle. But it does everything else the iPad does. It is like an iPad Mini, at half the price.

7. Amazon has an App Store with apps. This tablet is built on Android, and Amazon has its own marketplace. You can be sure that 99% of developers will make sure to upload their app on the Amazon Appstore right away, as soon as the new Kindle ships. Right now, there is no incentive or very little (I downloaded the Amazon Appstore on my Android smartphone, used once and already deleted it) but users drive developers. Trust me, it will take days not weeks.

8. Amazon is choosing the right time to launch it: October, just in time for the holiday season.

Is this enough to challenge Apple and the iPad this Christmas? You bet. We are about to hit the second wave of tablet purchases, the massive one of the Early Majority, now that most of the Early Adopters have one (and some have already lost their first one, ehm...). Right price, right timing, right features, some cool perks (like Istant Video) and Amazon immediately becomes the #1 competitor for Apple. Cool.