target is new

We are talking about the you-web for a year now. Check out this presentation for instance. I was reading the words of the CEO by Larry Page of Google and I found it striking how this concept seems to take a central role in Googles strategy. It is also highly related to the importance of the concept of right-now in services I described earlier on Fastmovingtargets (Dutch).

But first the Google angle. I think the words of Page got a lot of buzz for the way they are putting the content on the result pages instead of the result pages. Which is definitely a sign of a strategic shift. Together with other developments like in Youtube, Google seems to put more focus on becoming a content platform. The danger is of course that they can lose the trust factor that you find the best sources for your question because it is biased by their own source (that does not have to be the best of course).

But that said, I think the way Page focuses on creating personal relevant experiences is more interesting. With the total connection of all instances of the Google profile by connecting all services to one profile, Google will have definitely the most information on all of us in searching and browsing behavior. Facebook will have some more on relations but if Google wants they should be able to filter that from e-mails etc. The way he talks on mobile is typical too. He praises the possibilities of seamlessly adapting the mobile experience to the device. Will be connected soon to the one user of course.

Interesting how Google wants to find out the real world connections and bring them into their platform. And this links with the right now. That is about the instant and the you.
Different aspects are important and driving the developments. The access economy is becoming a fact of life in some high profiled categories like cars (Greenwheels, Car2go, Snappcar, etc.) and music (Spotify). But it is broader than these kind of new aspects of business change. It is all based on a root of new behavior. I made some notes on the right-now development before and the way notification platforms are important.

The right-now approach can directly linked to the you-web. You can have right-now services without a personal experience. Let’s call them ad hoc, but it is much more likely that a right-now interaction delivers also a hyper personal service. A service or product that fits the wishes of the moment of use, especially your moments of use.

Directly linked is the data and profiles. As Google opened up the exchange of data between their services a lot more of data traces will be connected to you in order to make the personal experience possible. Here it is interesting to see if we will develop some data literacy. Will we be bold enough to demand more control, and at least more transparency on the data traces? This could be triggered as the use of data will have more impact.

Data will become ubiquitous to create flow this year. And we will see some major events that will trigger positive and negative in data as influencer. You can expect the first dirty campaigns via social in the US elections later this year for instance. And even models to steer the voting could be possible.
Obama’s social campaign of 2008 is the ultimate case for social campaigning until now. It was mostly based on activating voters and positive engagement. With success. What to expect now, four years later? Just like wars are triggering innovation you can expect these elections be pivoting in the way persuasive communication is introduced. You can expect a bot strategy, with weavrs kind of elements that will try to interfere with our perceptions. That will be smart in manipulating the hype driven journalists and will use social crowdcontrol to create voter control.
The elections will not only boost the big data mining and social roboting, but also drive social gamifying.

And just today we see another trigger for thinking on our data; the acquisition of Instagram by Facebook. The consequences for the service can be debated, I go with this take on it: the service is more likely to stay the way it is to keep the users happy, than that it will be ruined by Facebook. On the other hand, you will have to manage your settings even more if you don’t like the idea it contributes to the profiles of Facebook.

I’m not a pessimist by nature and also in these developments I see the value of the drivers of new technologies. We definitely need a societal approach where we learn and request transparency. The development of more and more ad hoc personal shaped products will be inevitable. With the gathered insights from data hick-ups, I hope we grow into more literacy to prevail a backlash in the you-web. I hope it will generate a context for companies to differentiate in transparency as product asset.

Update: And now I just hear about a new app called Placeme that does exactly the things you need for the you web collecting the constant stream of data of your context in all forms and give meaning to it. This whole trend of ambient services is of course at the beginning and booming, like we had the buzz of Highlight after SxSW. The extra angle of Placeme is the way it creates data as a tool for other services to build on.

And the other aspect is important too: how sincerely honest the guy of Placeme talks on the privacy and encryptions of the data, it is the main topic of discussion that raises with the app. I think the competitor that creates the same app where you store your own data and add tools so you can use the data yourself for personalized services with ease of use, will have a great opportunity. This happens one of the projects we are running within /Labs not coincidently…

It is 2012 already. It is a tradition on this blog to look ahead to the coming year. Thinking on what will happening is a good start of the year. But first, for the record, let’s look back at the predictions I did last year and in general what happened in 2011.

The breakthrough of tablets and nearby computing was a good feeling I think. In 2011 I think we saw some serious steps where digital lifestyle is becoming default for our approach to services and products. The way people adopt the home coach app in the Dutch version of The Voice of Holland for instance. Or the growing use of on demand media. And all cumulating in a new smart product like the Nest thermostat and Peel tv-guides.

I predicted (and hoped) newspapers would improve their apps to much more interesting digital content experiences. We saw some examples like the Guardian, and some magazines do good jobs like Autovisie. But many still hold on to the old models. What really did happen however was the emerge of new personalized services based on algorithms, social peers etc. Like Zite, News.me, Summify, and Livestand. This is just the beginning of what to come, I expect more of these kind of services in 2012, in all kind of categories. And we will see a Nest-like product release probably every month.

My optimism for the economy was not completely right. Halfway in a sense. Europe did get a hard time indeed, but I did not expected the Europe paralyzing act. I am not optimistic for the coming year this to change dramatically; we will suffer this pessimism, even if the real numbers will be better than expected. It will trigger some bigger trends that we saw rise in 2011; the sharing economy and the access based products and services. In 2011 Spotify reaches the masses, and different new services for car sharing next to Greenwheels appeared to the market. Car2go, Wego, Snappcar. And also in other branches like tools. This model will be more and more popular in all different kind of branches the coming year. Not all that successful, but there is a fertile ground for sure.

The virtual money layer that functions as play money and mean for exchange of profile data turned out not be as prominent as I expected for 2011. Still a trend that will be a fundamental development I believe. In different manners. If we would have a real economy crash, which I hope (and expect) not to happen, it will be triggered sooner as alternative for our devaluated real money. We will see the first steps however to virtual social currencies with the release of the NFC phones (an iPhone 5 at last) combined with more access based products and services for sure. But this will last till the end of the year and become really big not until 2013.

An interesting field could be our energy consumption. We will see that we are growing into a system where we contribute much more to the production of energy and a market place of electricity will be part of our sharing economy. Electric vehicles will trigger this, a service where private households are offering their fast charger to electric car owners via a service could be well in place soon, probably in 2012. But I think that this will not fly till 2013.

I think I was quite right with the prediction that gamification became hot in 2011, but stayed a hype at the same time. The hope for services that are designed with playfulness as one of the design principles in stead of cheap badgification is something that has indeed not been seen before 2012. There are some signs for this to happen indeed in de the coming year, hopefully with not to many lame implementations that danger the possibilities. The ROI of gamification will be a hot topic. Just like we got with socialification.

The social angle become default indeed in 2011. We see even some fatigue emerge from all social experts that did pop-up. Nevertheless, no company is neglecting to think about social and making it part of their strategies. Bigger corporations did this in 2011, in 2012 also SME will follow. At the same time we as users are grown up and will model our use to specific situations even more. The circles Google+ launched will evolve to a standard approach – that is more basic than the circles – and smaller social private groups will live next to the temporary ties we have more and more. The shift of users becoming part of the organizations as policy makers and product developers will be default.

The big data movement is developing a bit slower than expected. Google with plus and Facebook with timeline are however paving the road for even more data driven knowledge and the war of the ecosystems with Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon is acknowledged all over the industry and will sharpen. There will however be no real losers (expect maybe a disappointing IPO for Facebook), they will together shape the fundaments for the services we make. And data becomes really data science as nicely shown in this presentation. With the serious steps in emerging smart products the flood of data will be only more and we will see the first ‘profile management’ services appear that can manipulate your data presence.

I have to say that the prediction on Facebook launching a Groupon killer did not came true. In stead of trying to save Places Facebook discontinued the development. The dispute on their privacy and profiling continues as expected last year, and the new Timeline function makes us as users even more the product, that is a widespread observation. A voice function and even phone that was a rumor is still on the shelves. Let’s see what the coming year brings for that. I expect that the focus is on leveraging the timeline to all corners of the service with the connection to the pages. 2012 could be a consolidation year for Facebook, connecting all the dots and deepening existing services over all touch points.

So to sum up I think relevancy will be a leading theme. If Apple introduces the expected iTV this summer (big sport events are always a good moment) it will set a marker for relevant services. I agree with those that predict a TV-experience that will be much more a personal experience (in the context of the family) and combines the best second screen integration with tablets and cloud. Apps for the iTV will be not used on the TV set but on your personal remote, phone or tablet. And just like with iTunes connect to the PC platform, iTV could connect to other mobile platforms. Google and Windows will follow soon and integrate in their ecosystems the second screens and tv-operating systems, but Apple will set the tone in the user experience as expected, and add gesture and voice interactions.

In the mobile context I think we will see a growing importance of Android becoming more hip and happening with the developers too. Apps still rule web apps but in the second half it could change triggered by two important developments; with the market share of Windows growing to 20-25% it is becoming even more hassle to develop for all the different platforms, especially in economic weak times. And highly related with this; the ‘mobile first’ paradigm will rule 2012 and transforming full website for mobile use will be via webappsification of online services.

In 2012 we will continue to evolve in a complete digital inspired lifestyle (post digital so to say) and relevant services are the corner stones in these new experiences. With economic pessimism we will hold on to cocooning social and sharing based services. Another interesting year in prospect.

We see a lot of stories on the success of Foursquare, or better, the lack of success. The tool is popular with 10 million users world-wide, but absolutely per country the use is modest. A Dutch analysis show for instance that only 4,4% of restaurants had claimed their page, and just 1% offered specials. On the other hand, 64% of the restaurants are present in Foursquare, and 71% has also people checked-in. Foursquare is relatively small compared to Facebook check-ins, but also there the use is still low.

So what to make of this kind of findings? I believe it is not so important to look to the services on its own. I think the use will still grow, stimulated with the adding of deals in Foursquare with Groupon and Facebook deals. But it will never be a mass service. A substantial part of the population will never be active in checking in.

What I think is important however, is the influence check-in services have on the development of relevant services. We will see that the services will adapt to the user, but that the user will be in the lead to activate these relevant services. The behavior of giving permission to give relevant offers and adaptive services, is trained in the way we use check-ins tools. We can learn a lot on how these work and what makes them tick. I think the tools will integrate in services in general, will be a tool for service providers and producers to make services relevant.

In that sense it is interesting to use the check-in tools and learn what works. From playful and collecting behavior to the commercial drivers and levels of transparency to make the use acceptable. Let the check-in services pave the road for a future with ad-hoc relevant services.

We are entering a new phase in the Internet of Things. It is a promise for years, but it seems that we are heading to a tipping point. And Apple’s new iOS5 could be a accelerator. Tomorrow the new version of the mobile operation system for the iPhone will be introduced, and one of the most interesting speculations on the news is the integration of Twitter deeply in the OS, together with the introduction of iCloud. The real difference of a Twitter integration comes not with the sharing your pictures directly from the tools, but will be the way Twitter will evolve in a notification platform for smart objects via your phone. How does this could work?
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Last Thursday Club of Amsterdam organized the Future of Services evening seminar. Info.nl did partner in the event. Robert Hewin, Pieter Jan Stappers and Lorna Goulden gave great talks sharing their view on the future of services from different angles. I shared our vision on the future of online services, or as the full title was: A future of impulse driven and hyper personalized services. Below you find my slides and a kind of executive summary of the talk.
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In a short post of Matt Webb he pinpointed the new Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is emerging. He refers to another article in the Wired of Stephen Levy were this specific new form of AI is spelled out: not the human brain is duplicated, the own computer generated intelligence is flourished.

I think this interesting stuff. And I like to connected it to a development Jesse Schell coined in one of his recent presentations: the Curiosity Gap. He stated that we develop to a situation where we all have easy access to all the knowledge we need, and the successful people will be defined by the level of curiosity to find the knowledge and be open for it.

Others have coined it the new You-web where knowledge will be relevant and connected to your profile. I use the term Impulse Shaped Services for some time now where services adapt to the context of that one user.

In all approaches you can see that we go from a so-called Artificial Intelligence to an Available Intelligence. Smart people use this available intelligence to relief non-critical tasks and distinguish from non-users. Available Intelligence is used ad-hoc and on demand, profiled. So we can say we will live with Augmented Intelligence.

The smart people are those that know which drawer to pull to use the available knowledge and transform this to value. The trick will be the instant character. The intelligence will be defined by the relevancy and of the knowledge and even the predictive character of it. Services will be providing us with the entrance to these source of instant intelligence. So we have a kind of Instant Available Intelligence.

Well it is that time of year again. Predictions to do. Because it is a tradition and it is fun to do some analytic thinking, just like the last years.

Looking back to the predictions of 2010 I think the developments were slow in some ways. The exploding web as we coined it in 2008 is now fully adopted in the Splinterweb. And functional use of social systems as I expected for 2010 is now widely predicted for 2011. But a lot interesting stuff happened nevertheless. Read the rest of this entry »

In an article on O’Reilly this week I read an interesting discussion on the mobile wallet. Naveed Anwar of Paypal coined the on-demand wallet.

The mobile wallet is necessarily an on-demand wallet, meaning it’s accessible from different devices and platforms and can hold more than any wallet in your back pocket: multiple funding sources, coupons, receipts, loyalty cards, private label cards, and business cards … and that’s just the start.

I believe too that we are moving to a new form of wallet after all and that this will be a service more than a physical thing. A service that can be used from different places and devices. On the other hand I think we need long time some kind of tangible reference points. It is no problem to combine those however.
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This might sounds strange. What is new about talking on the social graph? Well I think there are some interesting developments that can trigger serious steps in the functional use of the social graph.

Interesting for instance is the new function Twitter introduced this week: suggesting friends. For Twitter this is the first service they create out of the knowledge on their profiles. A lot of third parties did stuff before, but you can expect that Twitter should have some advantage with their access to the whole database.

Another interesting new service is that of the Flipboard app on the iPad. A lot is said on that already, but it has certainly a connection to this theme. Flipboard is creating a social magazine out of Facebook and Twitter streams, which is already exciting. I’m still wondering if they do any kind of analysis of my social graphs. It seems so, because I get more stuff than just my stream. I think this will be only more soon.

Of course Facebook and Google are both putting a lot of effort in building the social graph and trying to connect it to our use. The battle of the social graph has just begun. Google seems to place some bets (amongst others) on the social TV experience by making Google TV, while Facebook is about to introduce some location stuff that will shake that market. And Facebook also created their search competitor with their question based service that can benefit highly of the social graph.

The tipping point for the social graph will be in these kind of functional services that are created. You can expect only to see more of this on both sides of the medal: trying to enrich the social graph by connecting it to popular services, and on the other hand popping up of services that use the social graph.