Marci Ikeler

The Problem of Group Management

Visualization of my LinkedIn network, automatically generated through inMaps.

As I have been contemplating SXSW this year, one thing that struck me was that, unlike previous years, there wasn’t a clear “winner” in terms of a new technology or platform. 

The reason for all the attention that the technology and advertising industries lavish on SXSW is due to the fact that, for the past several years, it’s been the site of the popularization of a game-changing technology. Twitter in 2007. Foursquare in 2009 (as a new idea) and 2010 (as a popular, extensible platform). 

In 2011, there didn’t seem to be a breakout app or service, despite the best effort of what felt like thousands of startups equipped with flyers, schwag, and scantily clad volunteers. 

Aside from their over-aggressive marketing tactics, one thing that several of these start-ups had in common was an attempt at solving a common problem: group management.

The way that human beings socialize in real life doesn’t match how software treats us online; I don’t really have 290 equally important friends in my life the way that Facebook displays them. Instead, I have a core group of friends who I socialize with on the weekends, a group of people who I work with, a whole bunch of other groups whom I’ve worked with in the past, friends from college, friends from high school, and family members - not to mention a few miscellaneous acquaintances I’ve met and lost touch with over the years. Status updates that are intended for my friends are sometimes offensive to my devout Christian cousins, and - like many people - I find my self second-guessing what I post, since I know it will be visible to my coworkers and boss.

This is not a new insight. In fact, Facebook tried to solve this problem with its introduction of Groups in October 2010. The project garnered a ton of attention from tech bloggers, but, 6 months later, it’s rarely mentioned (Facebook hasn’t published usage data, but anecdotally it doesn’t seem that many folks are using it). 

Several companies at SXSW gave the group challenge a shot - GroupMe,Hashable, and Hurricane Party all approached the problem in a different ways. 

However, as with Facebook Groups, none of these apps seemed to really take off. Real-life social circles are incredibly complex. Right now, it seems to be impossible for software to handle the fluidity and complexity of social groups without requiring users to manually maintain complex lists of membership rules - which no one has time to do. And even if such magical solution could exist, I’m not sure how comfortable consumers would be with an automated solution to something so important to the way that we socialize. 

So is there a way to manage groups that’s not manual? I can’t think of a solution at the moment, but history is full of solutions to problems that previously seemed insolvable. This will be an interesting space to watch over the next few years.

What’s interesting about the iPhone 4

Based on my Twitter feed, it looks like most of the tech industry isn’t doing much this morning besides hitting “refresh” on the Apple store, trying frantically to pre-order the iPhone 4. While we wait (and remember it’s only 8am in Cupertino folks), here are some thoughts about what’s important about the iPhone 4.

Given the fact that the iPhone 4 was famously deconstructed by Gizmodo a month ago, what was surprising about Steve Job’s WWDC keynote last week was how many surprises there were. Here are the three announcements that have the most potential impact on how we interact with technology and communications:

• Gyroscope - Previous versions of the iPhone have included an accelerometer, which is what allows the phone to recognize tilting and shaking the device as an interaction (used to great effect in many games). Now, Apple is replacing the accelerometer with a gyroscope, which will allow the phone to identify movement in three directions instead of two. I suspect that is one of those additions that is hard to fully appreciate without trying it hands on, but I think it shows how strongly Apple is gunning towards the games market. With rapidly improving processor speeds, screen quality (more on that below), and interactive capabilities, the iPhone is strong competition for the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP.


• Retina display - One of the sexiest surprises is the Retina Display, which essentially quadruples the number of pixels on a screen of the same size, making the resolution equal to print quality. This enhacement supports the play Apple is making with its iBooks app. The Kindle’s screen has been one of the only advantages it has vs. the iPad/iPhone, and this hurts that. I’m fairly certain that all the hardware enhancements we’re seeing on the iPhone 4 will be rolled out onto the iPad in the next year or so.


• iOS - In what seemed like a minor development, Jobs announced that the iPhone OS (operating system) is being renamed to iOS. This makes sense - it was a little confusing that the iPad was running iPhone OS. However, I think that the name change signifies a lot more - it opens Apple to create a series of mobile-esque devices all running the same OS. I think that Apple TV will be reborn with iOS in the next few years.

Apple continues to be one of the smartest tech companies in terms of futuristic hardware and software, with keen insights into what the barriers are to product adoption among common users. iPhone 4 is another great step for them. In short - I’m frantically refreshing the Apple store with the rest of you.

And a side note: the fact that Gizmodo couldn’t predict the Gyroscope and Retina display based on their deconstructed iPhone 4 prototype doesn’t speak highly for their detective skills, does it? Steve Jobs must have been secretly pleased that the coolest stuff didn’t leak.

Virtual versus integrated realities

While on vacation a few weeks ago, my husband and I drove about 300 miles - over 5 hours - from Phoenix to Las Vegas. We are both fans of audiobooks, and so while we drove through the feverish desert landscape we listened to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. I am ashamed to admit that, although I am a huge science fiction fan, I have never read Snow Crash before. I haven’t yet finished it, but so far I am struck by one of the primary assumptions made by the book.

Snow Crash - like Neuromancer and many other seminal sci-fi works - assumes that the future of technology and information consumption is through the creation of virtual worlds. This conceit was paricularly powerful through the late 80s to the early 90s, when the advent of video games with increasinly advanced graphic technologies made the creation of a 3D, interactive, info space seem inevitable.

From a technological perspective, creating such a virtual world is no longer problematic. Such systems already exist in a variety of formats. In The Sims, players can “play God” with a series of characters (something like dolls in a doll house). The military uses virtual reality stations for everything from flight training to preventing post traumatic stress disorder. And, famously, Second Life allows players to navigate a virtual world and socialize using avatars.

However, despite the availability of the technology, the predictions of science fiction writers - that massive exodus to a virtual reality is imminent - never really came to fruition. Instead, interfaces that are primarily text and image based still prevail. This is because, outside of entertainment and training systems, there is no real benefit to navigating information through a physical metaphor. In fact, physical bodies are detrimental to navigating information - it’s much easier to click a series of links on Google than it would be to walk across a 3D library.

So, instead of replicating a physical reality, we are beginning to see technologies that use our information spaces to augment it. Augmented reality has gotten a lot of press over the past year, but I’d argue that we have yet to see the most transformative examples come to life. General Motors is testing an augmented reality dashboard that would show information about the driver’s environment and route in real-time (think Terminator vision). Contact lenses that show digital data on the eye are being tested on animals. Nokia’s future vision concept video shows how eye movements and glasses could be used to display contextual digital information in the real world.

Beyond augmented reality, we’re seeing technologies that make physical devices easier to manipulate. There are prototypes for a gesture-activated faucet, and hotels are beginning to replace key cards with cell phone applications. Project Natal, the Wii, and the iPhone have gone a long way towards making gestural interfaces not only intuitive but expected (after showing a two-year-old my iPad, he tried to zoom in to a newspaper by pinching his fingers on it).

I doubt this is an original observation, but I believe that the mega trend here is integrated reality - machine-enhanced information and interactions that are seamlessly integrated into real life contexts.

I, for one, cannot wait.

The week of the iPad begins

So, the iPad is coming out on Saturday (the Wifi only version, at least; those of us who are holding out for the 3G-enabled version have to wait until late April), and naturally tons of new information about the device is surfacing.

First and foremost, Apple itself released a series of videos showcasing various applications. For the most part they work just the way you’d expect, although everything looks pretty seamless and the interactions are slick. The Keynote and Pages demos are great places to start, as they show how the iPad could go a long way towards replacing laptops for day-to-day tasks.

The iBooks demo highlights the eBook reader, which is going to be pretty huge competition for the Kindle. They also give us a glimpse of the Books store, which, as predicted, works much like iTunes music. As I’ve mentioned before, the real potential of the iPad is not its technology, but its potential for creating a new ecosystem for media consumption - books are where we’ll first see this play out. Fastcompany is already predicting that the model will revolutionize publishing for smaller companies and unknown authors.

Aside from Apple’s offerings, we’re starting to see screenshots of independent developer apps for the iPad, and they look amazing.

The other big news so far this week is Apple’s rumoured announcement of iAd, a mobile advertising platform that would directly compete with Google’s offering. Rumor has it that the platform would be highly location-aware, which at the moment is a technology that seems to be largely untapped by mobile marketers. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

The iPad vs. iFail - Analyzing the iPad

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past week, you heard about Steve Jobs’ announcement of the Apple iPad on Wednesday. However, the response to the device was less rapturous than anticipated, with journalists and tech junkies criticizing the device while it was still being unveiled.

So was the iPad really an iFail? The first question that has to be answered is how we define success versus failure. In my mind there are two major ways to do this:

1. Is the iPad good for the technology world as a whole?
2. Will the iPad be a success for Apple?

Those are two very different questions with different answers. Let’s break it down one at a time.

1. Is the iPad good for the technology world as a whole?

Device

In defining whether or not the iPad is good for technology, we have to look at a few factors. The first, and most obvious, is the device itself. There are some interesting technical advances in the screen technology, so that it’s easy to see the screen from multiple angles. However, as lots of folks have pointed out, the iPad as a device is really little more than a big iPod Touch.

User Interface

In terms of user interface, the iPad draws largely from the conventions established in the iPhone (they even share an OS). There are some major improvements in individual applications, and the addition of the iWork suite is interesting, but there isn’t a major breakthrough as there was when the iPhone was announced. However, this lack doesn’t mean that the iPad UI won’t be extremely easy and comfortable to use.

Ecosystem

Beyond the device and its interface, there are a few areas in which I believe the iPad is much stronger. The first is the creation of a media ecosystem. The iPod didn’t really come into its own until the iTunes music store was released; same with the iPhone and the App Store. On Wednesday, we got a hint of the iPad’s ecosystem with the iBooks application, which supports book downloads in a similar manner to the Kindle. I can only assume that that marketplace will continue to grow, and will probably replace the Kindle’s (the use of ePub technology is a good sign, although from the prices shown in the demo books on the iPad will be slightly more expensive than books on the Kindle).

However, I believe that a larger opportunity is a streaming television ecosystem. Right now the iTunes Store supports TV episodes and movies, but there isn’t anything that supports free or subscription based streaming. But what about when Hulu and Netflix develop streaming video clients for the iPad, or, better yet, partner with Apple to create a network-agnostic streaming media service? That would be truly revolutionary and might be the final nail in the coffin for traditional cable TV.

Now, this is not to say that the ecosystem is ideal. Like many others, I am concerned about the fact that the all of Apple’s “stores” are closed systems. Apple, and only Apple, has complete control over what types of content and applications we can be exposed to on their devices.

You can do on the iPad only what Apple allows. And if you are allowed to do something, you have to go through iTunes or MobileMe to do it. Apple makes a nice chunk of change on everything you do, but more importantly it gets to play gatekeeper. In OS X, Apple can’t block you from using apps it doesn’t like or competes with. But it famously blocks you from doing so on the iPhone and now presumably on the iPad, which is connected to the same App Store. How long before it blocks movies, TV shows, songs, books and even web sites? Scoff now, but don’t be so naïve as to believe that this isn’t possible. - The iPad’s Closed System: Sometimes I Hate Being Right

Now, this is not a new thing. Apple has never been very open minded about collaboration and experimentation. And, to be fair, thus far I believe that the decisions they have made have been very positive for the vast majority of their users. However, it is certainly a red flag for those of us who believe in data freedom.

New behaviors

This is where I think the iPad really has legs. Its price point and form factor has the opportunity to greatly the expand the number of people who expect to have the internet constantly at their fingertips, even when they’re on their couch. Most of the tech writers and Twitterers (myself included) are already used to this behavior, so it doesn’t seem new to them. However, I believe that it is a revolutionary idea that could vastly change how the average person understands computing and data access, which I think is a great thing.

I think of my in-laws as the typical “non-computer” user. They have desktops (obsolete, underpowered Dells), which they use for internet access, but, like most Americans, they aren’t really immersed in technology. But a device that contains all their books and plays streaming TV too? That’s something they might go for.

A lot of people are complaining that they don’t really need an iPad - they are happy with their laptop and their phone, and don’t really see the gap there. To be honest, I’m not sure the gap is there either. I think that there is a class of people for whom the iPad will actually replace the laptop. No, you can’t code on it. But how many people really want to?

Going back to my family for an example, last year my brother-in-law was looking into buying a laptop. He desperately wanted a Macbook - he loved the form factor and user experience. But, since he doesn’t use the computer for much beyond web browsing, he couldn’t justify the cost. Even if he could have justified it, it would still have been unaffordable. An iPad would have solved all his needs at a price point that works.

Summary

So, my answer for “is the iPad good for tech”, is a net “yes”. Is it as revolutionary as, say, the iPhone? Maybe not. Does it have major drawbacks? Yes, definitely. But I believe that the opportunities for the ecosystems and behaviors make it an overall step forward.

2) Will the iPad be successful for Apple?

This second question is much easier to answer. Based on the possibilities posed by the ecosystem and a new category of consumer behavior, I believe that the iPad will be big.

Apple will make serious bank on the ecosystem they create. Once someone purchases the iPhone, they will be downloading DVDs and books by the handful. This is obviously why they were able to make the price point so low.

This is not to say that everything will be rosy right out of the gate. Success might take some time. Like every Apple release, the first generation will be flawed and won’t have huge sales. But in five years, I am sure this will be huge for the company.

Addendum: A note on Flash and Multitasking

One of the consistent complaints about the device (and the iPhone before it) is the lack of Flash. The fact that people even thought that Flash would be included is absurd.

Let me break it down. Apple will NEVER support Flash. Apple makes its money through its product’s ecosystems, as I discussed above. If Flash worked in Safari, people would program games that never have to go the App Store. People would even charge for them on their own sites. Apple would lose its revenue stream. I’m not saying this decision is morally right, but it makes complete business sense.

Also, if we’re fair for a second, Flash is kinda shit. 90% of the time it’s used unnecessarily. Adobe is even more of a closed system than Apple is. I, for one, am psyched that it is dying out. Don’t worry, we’re not going to lose functionality - HTML 5 is on the way. How will Apple handle that threat to its system? No idea.

Another complaint that has been quieter but more important is about multitasking. Unlike a computer, you won’t be able to have multiple apps open at one time on the iPhone. This is a problem. When I’m reading a web site, I want my Twitter running, IM alerting me to friends’ messages, and Pandora playing. I suspect (and hope) that this might be addressed in a future release of the iPhone OS.

Fun with Google Suggest and what it tells us about how people behave online

One of my favorite blogs these days is Autocomplete Me, an often hilarious site that catalogues funny and bizarre Google suggest queries.

Some of the suggestions that pop up are really baffling. For example, why are people asking “what do you feed a yeti anyway”? Why would someone search for “my nipples smell like sauerkraut”?

As Clive Thompson notes, many of these search queries are actually obscure cultural references. They might be a line from a movie or song, or an internet meme.

However, what’s interesting to me is what the stream-of-consciousness nature of these queries suggests about how we have begun to understand and use Google (and by extension, the internet). I find it fascinating that the internet is the first point of contact for so many people for any question or observation, and that we have become completely comfortable just typing things in (and anything goes) to see what sticks. It will be interesting to see how this tendency progresses as our technology gets even more sophisticated.

Quote by Twitter: I Tweet, Therefore I Am

Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist.

Dr. David Lewis, University of Sussex, in a London Times article.

Although I’ve never been a fan of Twitter, I can’t say I agree with this assessment. Obviously Dr. Lewis doesn’t work in a digital or media industry where it’s important to one’s career to participate in these types of social networks. Academia continues to be rather out of touch with reality, at least in this case.

Via Gawker.

Today’s iPhone Users are Young, Rich, and Technically Savvy

Todays iPhone Users are Young, Rich, and Technically Savvy

Well, now don’t I feel special. 

Via aaronrutledge.com.

iPhone developer SDK at last!

iPhone developer SDK at last!