Category: Apple

Facebook

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With the movie “The Social Network” winning big at the Golden Globe Award maybe it’s a good time to  look at the current landscape in the industry one of the glamor children is without question, Facebook. It’s easy to look at Facebook and see the appeal.  For starters they have 500 million users.   It allows you to connect with people from your past life and your present life. It has the ease of use thing down so any person logging on to the internet can quickly get on to start benefiting from the experience.  Finally it’s fun.  But as always in technology there are bigger things at stake.  Underneath it all is a booming business and an opportunity to define the future of technology.   It has, as I have called it, the velocity of business.  With each wave they come bigger and faster.  We started with Microsoft.  Then Google.  Now we enter the Facebook era.

Like any great business in the technology sector it starts young.  Usually around the college age.  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sounds like a Bill Gates clone.  Teenage computer wiz, goes to Harvard, drops out, makes his first billion.  It’s a pretty simple formula.  The thing that Facebook has so in common with Microsoft and Google is that in its early years, and Facebook is still there, the employees of Facebook are young.  If I joined Facebook (I am 44) I would probably double the average age of the company.  All great technology companies in the early days have that singular focus, from top to bottom.  They come in late and stay late.  They eat like crap.  They have no sense of fashion.  They do not have families to go home to,  They have but one mission, create the future of tomorrow.  Watch ant CNBC special, read any Facebook blog, you name it and you will see Facebook’s culture is exactly that.  Do not worry that these young kids will dominate the world for the next  twenty years, because in twenty years they will be middle-aged.

The great things about youth is it envisions a greater and brighter future for the world.That is part of being young, that desire and hunger to make a difference.  Facebook started simply as a way for Harvard Students to connect with one another and then it spread to other Universities.  As is so often said, big things start small.  Then the young guns started to think big.  We can bring people’s past to the present.  Beyond friends we can link companies, provide news, drive political discourse etc..Was there a successful campaign run in 2008 that did not leverage Facebook to some degree?  the fact that Barack Obama had this huge grass-roots movement started by the youth of America was instrumental in getting him elected and Facebook was a big part of that .  These things don’t happen by accident like people would like to think.  In the background is a small office in the Silicon Valley, that is young and thinking big and driving these changes in how society functions.

So why the fear by so many companies of Facebook?  Microsoft may be an investor in Facebook, but they worry. Google is terrified of Facebook.  One thing is mass.  Today depending in who and what day you listen to Facebook has between 500 million and 600 million subscribers.  A great many are active.  they spend time on Facebook and not just a few seconds to type in a search criteria but to share comments, to upload pictures, view others comments, to say the “like” a particular post, play games, etc..When people spend a lot of time at a particular location on the internet than the obvious question becomes “how do we monetize it?”  With Facebook it now has developers writing games for Facebook.  Facebook has its own instant message client.  Looking forward you can see search being a larger component of the user experience, I think this alone would keep Google executives awake at night.  the more developers writing applications for Facebook, the less time for Windows.  I would assume a lot of applications for Facebook would not reside on your desktop, but would sit out on the internet thus making Facebook a really great cloud computing platform and putting it in the early lead of consumer facing cloud based applications (as it currently stands today Facebook is a cloud based application).

Finally Facebook has taken advantage of current technology trends to extend its reach, specifically I am referring to mobility.  If you look at your Facebook posts today how many posts are coming from a mobile device?  As Apple launched a new era of mobile apps (yes there were application for mobile devices before but to find them and load them was painful and that is being kind), Facebook took full advantage.  Now you see posts coming from iPhones, Android Devices and Blackberry’s.  The beauty of mobility is freedom and Facebook seems to add nicely to that user experience.  Because in the end we want our lives, in particular our social lives to be care free.

Looking forward it is easy to project now that Facebook will be a major force, but as is so evident in technology things continue to change and things our changing faster than ever.  It took Microsoft twenty years to get to Windows 95.  It was a singular focus that drove that vision.  That kind of commitment, that type of time line is a thing of the past.  As  is evident with Google then with Facebook the internet gives rise to new power players in less than a decade.  It’s important to have a long-term  outlook in business but the question these days is how long do you look forward?  If you look too far out some company may pass you by before you get there.  For now the ball is in Facebook’s court, is there a young kid with an idea with a vision that will pass Facebook?  In all likelihood, based on what we know, the answer is yes.   With that enjoy I hope you enjoyed this post which many of you will access from…Facebook.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann,  January 17, 2011

Generating “Buzz”

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With the Consumer Electronic Show just having been completed I think it is a good time to talk about one of those things that every technology provider strives for which is to generate a certain amount of “buzz” around a future product.  It is so very important to the success of any new product that people begin  to talk about it before the product is released.  Certainly out of this years show there was a lot of noise generated around Google’s Android platform, with companies making a big push to showcase upcoming releases of both phones and tablets.  Companies like Verizon, Samsung and Motorola did a lot to push the new releases of Android based tablets, pinning future success on the release of the product.

There are some good historical examples.  The “buzz” generated around Microsoft Windows 95 or the “buzz” created around the Apple iPhone.  In each case you had people lined up at midnight to get the product.  This is great stuff, but there is another type of “buzz” that gets created underneath all that and that is creating the excitement in the developer community.  The people who make the cool apps for the Apple app store or Google store.   Without developers extending and creating a market place an application can have a very short life span

My last role at Microsoft there was a commitment that everyone had to sign up about creating “buzz” in the development community for Microsoft Developer tools .  To clarify for those with no Microsoft background every employee signs up for a “commitment”, which is a goal that will be either fulfilled or not fulfilled come review time at the end of the Microsoft fiscal year.  This determines salary increase, bonus and promotion.  Anybody reading this probably has the same question is what the hell does “generating buzz”  mean?  Being developer land, my first thought was “good luck…with that”.  How are less than 100 people out in the field going to generate excitement around Microsoft Developer technologies, especially when there are so many dependencies? 

To be fair to create buzz goes beyond assigning a few people it really takes a commitment beyond a few individuals, to multiple organizations to external partners.  One of the keys to Apple’s iPhone success was not just the whisper campaign they were generating.  They also had a behemoth like AT&T behind them and they were fully bought in, up to their neck.  Not like the dipping their toes into the water effort they did with the Windows Phone 7 launch.

Another key success factor is just having a product, because it is the end game , it is where you are trying to take the consumer.  When the product launched there is a certain level of satisfaction in having got there.  Sometimes tech companies are guilty of trying to generate excitement without really telling the end customer what to be excited about.  Usually it is to try to get people excited about the company.  Coming from my background at Microsoft the last years seemed to be spent trying to recapture the glory of yester year.

Having a certain level of “buzz” is the difference between having momentum and not having momentum.  When you have the ear of the consumer and the press then a new phenomena sets in, which is “what is next?”  In todays world Apple certainly has tha momentum.  They have the iPod, iPhone, MacBooks,i Pad, Apple Store…they really are in the zone right now here they are setting the industry direction.  Google now is starting to get beyond just being a search company with first Android and next Chrome. Facebook maybe has more momentum than anybody as under their CEO Mark Zuckerburg, they have that “it’s a young mans game” syndrome going.  Similar to what Bill Gate’s had back in the 80’s and 90’s.  It’s the difference between rolling the boulder up the hill or down the hill.

Finally with regards to CES and why it has become what it has. A big reason is that technology is pervasive in everybody’s lives today.  It is not restricted to the “nerd” or “geek” or “hobbyist”.  We all have technology in some capacity of our lives.  It is our cell phones, flat screen TV’s, Tivo, game console’s, Roomba’s, etc.. The Consumer Electronics Show is about showing off how technology is going to further enhance our day-to-day lives in the near future.  Any company participating better not be showing off what is already available.  Attendees want to see the coming years Christmas purchase, not what they already have.  They want the participating companies to wow them.  In short they want some “buzz”.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann January 10th, 2011

The Death of the Word Processor

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The title may be provocative, but there is a reasoning behind it based on current trends I see in the industry.   As I look back on the evolution of one of the very first business applications for the personal computer the word processor, I think we are at a time when the standard word processing application is about to evolve again into a different form (and cheaper) than what we have grown used to with packaged applications that we load on our computers hard drive.

If we look back upon the early days there were a lot of players in the industry WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, WordStar, Wang to name but a few.  But because it had a strong long-term vision tied to the operating system which it owned Microsoft’s Word for Windows would emerge the winner.  The last one standing was WordPerfect, but it would just slowly fade away.  Beyond the Word processor, Microsoft looked beyond and incorporated the spreadsheet and presentation software realizing the long-term vision that many people would use all three and would want seamless integration.  The result was Microsoft Office and the rest was history as Microsoft fought battles on all three fronts while the rest just tried to stay afloat.

As we turned the corner into a new century Microsoft Word basically sat alone, unchallenged.  Every document people opened, every attachment received was in a Word.doc format.  With every new release there were new features, new user interface designs (the ribbon anyone?).  It owned the market. It was a cash cow.  When Open Source came onto the scene it was believed it would challenge Word, but in all reality they were just free copy cat images of Word and did not offer anything new.  I always felt that if they did get any traction Microsoft would open its deep pockets to a bunch of lawyers to file a lawsuit for patent infringement etc..This view is simply based on the fact that if did not seem that these Open Source developers were coming up with a single new idea, it looked like they opened Word for Windows and were intent on creating a copy of the software.

Through this past decade there have been numerous challenges, and in certain regions of the world, some have even gained some traction, but they have never been able to gain any sustained momentum.  With the new business models being driven by companies like Google and the fact that pretty much all of us are always connected to the internet, it brings us back to a fundamental question, “If I only use 10 percent of Words capabilities why do I need to install the rest?” and the follow-up question, “why should I pay for innovation that I never will use?”.

What will the future word processor look like?  In a simple word, Notepad.  If you are running Windows just click “Start”, then “All Programs” , then “accessories” – you will find a little application called  Notepad.  You may say is this all?  No but what I believe could and will happen is for your document application you will be presented with a basic framework that allows you to type and provides a subset of fonts.  Then using the persistent connection to the internet you will be able to surf the web and add accessories to your document framework.  It will look like two things already available in the market.  The Eclipse Framework (developers will know what I am talking about), which allows developers just to grab plug-ins for whatever they are working on  and an online store similar to what most people most are already familiar with, the Apple App Store.  Some of these add-ins will be free, some charged for – but your word processor which for years has been a couple of hundred dollars will now be available to do most of what you want to do for under $20 and in some instances it will be free.

For some companies, namely one, Microsoft, this will be a very painful transition.  Unless they get out in front of the market it will be a missed opportunity that will cost them dearly as more and more end-users spend time outside of the Microsoft software ecosystem.  However like everything else in technology when markets change there will be those who seize the opportunity.  Could you have an ad driven model within a word processor?  Why not?  Could the market for cool ad-ons in the document framework explode?  Sure.  In the end the one thing I am sure of is the one benefit will be a better more affordable experience for both end-users and enterprises a like.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann December 21, 2010

Mobility, Search and Social Networking….the future as it will be

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I was fascinated by a recent presentation I viewed off of TechCrunch as it epitomized to me what I call the velocity of business.  It was done by an analyst at Morgan-Stanley, Mary Meeker.  She titled it “Ten Questions Internet Execs should ask and answer”.  My only comment is why stop at “internet execs” – any executive with an internet business at all should be asking and looking at these questions.  We have been seeing some emerging trends – that have been around for a while but are now accelerating, creating new market dynamics and new business opportunities.  There are three core areas that Mary Meeker brings up as the current and future business drivers on the internet: Mobility, Search and Social Networking

The area of mobility is interesting and if you believe the slides will deliver a world where most internet browsing is done via a mobile device and not the traditional PC.  I don’t find this hard to believe at all  One of the first points made is around “globility” – in some countries there are trends that compete against yours, either directly or perhaps in a way similar but new.  It would be easy to say in the US PC’s are used in one way while in India they are used in another.  However that is an apple to apples comparison.  The difference being one is Gala and the other a Honey Crisp.  The reality in many countries is mobility has changed the landscape of how people live and communicate in dramatic ways..  Microsoft tried for years to create a model in conjunction with country specific banks to create a model to finance the purchase of PC’s.  While all that was going on the local communities were finding internet access a different way – via their mobile phone.    With the launch of the iPhone and its unique web browsing capability that trend has come to the US.  By that I mean more and more Americans are browsing the web from their mobile phones.   It’s hard for Americans to believe innovative trends can happen outside our borders, but they do.  And in today’s world of connectivity it is happening with more frequency.  A poll was done several years back asking, “where will the next Bill Gates comes from?”  Not surprisingly the majority answered India.   It is both exciting and will be challenging, but it’s the way things will be.

With Search we are in an area that is evolving quickly before us, even though it may not be as sexy as mobility or social networking.  Google continues to lead in this space and with both Android and Chrome are utilizing search to change the traditional industry landscape.  Though we know that the key to Google’s success was being able to monetize advertising online there is still a lot of innovation to come, beyond just recognizing revenue by keyword searches.  Traditional print and video adverting may be disappearing from our papers or minimized on our television, but they are not going away they are just morphing before our eyes and going online.  With Android Google is really looking to monetize on trend one: Mobility.  Based on the rapid increase in market share for Android based phones they are well on there way to succeeding.  On the Social Networking front they are more obsessed with the big Competitive threat: Facebook.

Finally there is Social Networking.  The hottest tech company on the planet is Facebook, followed by Twitter.  As the presentation points out what is impressive about Facebook and its counterpart in China, Tencent is that they each have over 600 million users.  The ability to market and sell to those companies is enormous.  The fact that so much time is open at these locations with friends communicating together creates unique market dynamics and the opportunity to up sell those participants to other services.  Like Search you can see Social Networking using it’s core business to fund other revenue opportunities.  Facebook’s recent plan around email seems to be a good start.  I seem to remember a company called Netscape tried a similar method as it branched out into “big” corporate email plans as an off shoot to its browser business.

As the title says…the future as it will be.  One thing is guaranteed that the future I write about will come to fruition sooner than we expect and it will come to pass that I will write another article with the same title talking about a different set of technologies, probably different companies that will be shaping the future.  Trends and outlooks that once took decades will come much faster as technology evolves.   That is just the velocity of business we operate in today.  That part of my technology predictions you can take to the bank.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann November 22, 2010

I bought an iPhone…how could I!?!

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It is one of those things that there was a time when the idea of getting any non-Microsoft product was just not part of the equation.  I was there for 18 years during the good and the bad, we had a pretty deep relationship.  But on the very day that Microsoft launched its evolutionary Windows Phone 7, I walked into my local AT&T store and purchased my first Apple product ever.   Even though the store had a nice display and the AT&T rep even gave me a quick walk through of the Windows Phone 7 (and some slick Android devices), my mind was set.  I was breaking ranks.  I was on a mission.

How does such a loyal soldier become a deserter?  I mean have I really lost all my faculties?  Living a life on the run cannot be all that much fun.  Well to those who question my motives I shall take you to task with but one statement…mid-life crisis.  I am over 40, rapidly heading towards the middle part of that decade. I mean it has to be,  doesn’t it?  Luckily there are more factors to consider.  Some obvious.  Lingering bitterness over how my time at Microsoft ended? Sure, I would be a liar if I did  not allow my stubborn pride to show through just a little bit.  A desire to step  out of my skin and do things differently?  You bet, but that is also my nature to want to experience new things so it’s not much of a stretch.  If I have a flaw it is a desire to want to see, learn and experience too much in life.  It’s a flaw I am willing to live with.  Getting back to my midlife crisis, just because I am getting older it does not mean I have lost my desire to be hip or cool.  But getting back to my iPhone decision let us move forward.

Kevin Turner, Microsoft COO, would often get asked by internal employees, “Why can’t Microsoft be cool like Apple?”. He would always reply, “I would rather have 90% market share than be cool”.  All I can say is its dangerous to use the past to justify the future.  It has been an interesting twist of events to get to this point and by all accounts great product execution by the folks at Apple.  It shows a certain innocent stupidity on Microsoft’s part to not realize the necessity of making technology make people  feel good about themselves.  When people feel cool they tend to feel good about themselves.  The second mistake made by Microsoft was not realizing the power of the younger generation.  They completely ignored them, and they made the worst criminal offense, they did not listen.

A few comments regarding my iPhone.  I have the 3g with the new 4.01 OS.  Since I was really going to the store to add  minutes to my plan and since I could get  the “honor” of extending my contract I could get the phone for $99 (A 4g would have cost $199).  As far as the phone goes I shall make this not so much a review as most people either have or used the iPhone.  The brilliance of the iPhone is an idiot could use it.  The user interface is colorful and intuitive.  Finally and probably most importantly is, it is fun.  Since fun is a form of addiction in the sales and marketing world, that is a good thing…for Apple.

Moving forward with my technology purchases I can’t say what my next thing I need will be (ok..it will be a 42″ Flat Screen…don’t tell my wife).  Do I feel bad about moving away from my Windows Mobile Phone after having had every iteration there was through v6.5?  Not really, they were not all that good.  Have I left the Microsoft mother ship, no, but it’s not my mother either. I am just trying to get by and enjoy life and in the end isn’t that what matters?  Even if Apple does profit off of it.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann Nov 9, 2010