Is Facebook 'Home' what users want from a mobile experience?

Last week Mark Zuckerberg introduced the world to 'Home' it's a product that sees Facebook finally get to grips with the shift to mobile platform access, something that analysts  have been looking for ever since the IPO.

So what is it?
Facebook 'home' is an application that will effectively take over the home screen of the user's smartphone – so long as you have an android phone. The product will operate with devices with Android 4 and above only. Zuckerberg stated that this will put a user’s personal interactions at the heart of their mobile experience.

The launch is a bold move, but it's something that as The Register points out, mobile operators have been attempting to do for over a decade with absolutely no success. The issue that the operators have faced is that they've always approached it from the company's revenue generation opportunity rather than from what a user wants from their experience. That means it’s always fallen short with the handset manufacturers.

Is Facebook the Internet?
This user first positioning is where the Facebook play could be so smart. Many argue, probably correctly, that each user is effectively the Facebook product. In reality however, to many users Facebook is the Internet, it's where they go first and where they get a huge amount of their information. So, having it as the homescreen will make sense to a huge proportion of the Facebook community. In July last year the users accessing Facebook via mobile was 543m well over half the base.

Add to that that the amount of time spent on Facebook (estimated at 1 in 7 of all internet minutes) and this adds up to a huge opportunity to launch those users straight into the Facebook environment.

What about our privacy?
There have been deep concerns expressed around the impact on privacy, with many feeling this will simply provide Facebook with the data to track a user’s every finger movement as well as their actual geographical movement. The other obvious objection is regarding the 'user as a product' argument. Home provides a platform for advertisers to place ads directly on to the home screen. This has the potential for users to become hugely disgruntled and advertisers are warning that ads must not intrude on user's experience.

The product launched last Friday and we'll see whether Adam Moressi (Facebook product designer) is correct in building an app that is "...trying to do is shift people's focus away from tasks and apps, and toward people". Or whether Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research, is correct in his assessment that "Facebook thinks it's more important to people than it actually is...for the vast majority of people, Facebook just isn't the be-all and end-all of their mobile experience," he said. "It's just one part."

In the meantime you can take a look at what happened when The Verge took it for a trial run.

"The future is (nearly) here and it's idiotic"

Sometime during the controversial launch of the Samsung S4 smartphone last week I picked up the following tweet, 'Eye scrolling. The future is (nearly) here and it’s idiotic' The tweet related to the innovation within the new Samsung smartphone that means that the interface will now track your eye movements and automatically scroll accordingly. The smartphone has been greeted with mixed reactions, from the tweet above, to some with a slightly warmer embrace LG certainly are taking issue with it, as they feel it may be infringing their patent.

A step too far?
The negative reaction does however engender some questions about the pace of innovation. In a recent discussion with an executive at Imagination Technology the computer chip technology manufacturers that help drive the graphics for mobile devices like the iPhone and tablet computers, he stated that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of technology roll out and that there was an innovation roadmap that went on for years. When we put it to him that this might simply not fit with what consumers actually want he replied 'What are we supposed to do? Stop innovating?' It’s a fair point, but something makes us feel we may be hitting a crossroads.

Unwanted innovation
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Google Glass and on-wrist technology being developed by Apple and indeed Samsung. While these products play well in geekier circles the noise from the average citizen seems to suggest that people just 'won't want it' and as these innovation announcements become more mainstream news there seems to be an increasing backlash. So how should we be approaching new innovation?

There is a tendency in industry to chase the 'new'. But with the new coming like a tsunami and from every angle, business' ability to use it to its advantage is gradually being eroded. Indeed, if we are to assume that consumers are actually getting tired of constant 'new' perhaps it’s time to consolidate our thinking and start looking at pragmatic implementation of technologies so that people can better use what they already have. Let's make apps with a fantastic user experience. Let's make video that works on all platforms.Let’s make websites work on a mobile. In short let’s give people what they want to make their life easier, not what the technologists think might be cool.

The future of mobile is wearable

There's been a lot written over the past few years about the future of mobile. Much of it has been accompanied by ‘Tomorrow's World’ type predictions. In the past year or so however, those predictions have started to gain real credibility. Two projects in particular have been making waves since Christmas.

Project Glass
Project Glass, something that Google gave us a view of in late 2011, has been gaining momentum; both in the rumour-stakes and seemingly in its route to commercial development. Since its first announcement, Sergey Brin has been seen out and about on the New York Subway wearing a pair. Soon after that this concept video was released outlining just what the capability of this wearable tech may be.

There has been understandable scepticism about whether the project is just a scam and if not, whether it's actually commercially viable. However, there is emergent chatter that suggests that not only are they likely to be 'relatively' affordable but that actually, they may be available within the year.

That timescale would be astonishing frankly. Whether the time frame is correct or not, the reality is, the project definitely seems to be on the way. What is certain, as Forbes points out, is that the controlled leaking is a master stroke of market pre-conditioning. What the public appetite is, is yet to be assessed properly, but some are speculating it could be something like this.

iWatch
Last year Nike released the Fuel Band, a wearable interactive band that augments your exercise regime. With its rather nebulous Fuel Points system, Nike say it is able to help you monitor the level of exercise you are undertaking more efficiently and with seamless integration with your social profiles it is definitely the smartest and most human-integrated item in the emergent wrist band market.

More interestingly, it was rumoured that Sir Jonathan Ive of Apple had bought dozens of boxes of the devices to work out how he could make it better. He's already done it with the MP3 player, the smartphone and the tablet so when rumours of iWatch popped up there was understandable excitement.

The wrist seems to have been the obvious place for the phone to go, ever since David Hasselhoff started chatting to Kit. Given they appear to no longer be the darlings of the smartphone market it's probably time for Apple to zag, as the industry zigs its way through MWC 2013 and potentially launch a product later on in the year. If it happens, it would be the first significant announcement since Steve Jobs’ death and would most likely smooth the bumps in the share price that have emerged since disappointing iPhone and iPad sales in Q4 2012.

Wrist or face?
2014 could see the biggest battle fought over your face, or your wrist and ultimately maybe it’ll come down to what you’re most comfortable with, or maybe what looks cooler. At this very moment we’re going for Project Glass, but that’s probably because we know just that little bit more about it at the moment.

The web's third age may not include facebook

Before I proceed I should probably explain what I'm defining as the third age of the web. I tend to deliberately avoid using the term web 3.0 as I’ve always felt trying to define the web with software upgrade terms is troubling. I do however believe we’ve entered the third age, or at least the third big evolution of the web.

If the first age was the passive published web and the second age - often known as web 2.0 -  was the interactive web then the third age is immersive, omnipresent and enabled by mobile. For want of a better term we’re going to call it the everywhere web.

Erik Jackson at Forbes argues that the first wave web properties failed to make it far past the dotcom bubble into a brave new web 2.0 world because of the time and way they were conceived. In a similar vein Facebook may have exactly the same problem in evolving from the second stage to the third stage.

Facebook was at the vanguard of creating the ultimate web 2.0 experience, but because they have had to back fill on their mobile experience it would appear that they are struggling to fit into a world where the web is everywhere. The mobile experience continues to be frustrating and fractured when compared with the desktop experience and in a world that is increasingly going mobile the massive focus on timeline implementation seems a little odd.

As we’ve mentioned in previous weeks the lack of mobile innovation at Facebook caused concern in the run up to last week’s IPO and the scrabbling that seemed to be going on with the purchase of Instagram and the announcement of App Centre seemed to suggest they knew it. Last night in a slightly bizarre move Facebook announced the launch of Facebook camera, an Instagram clone that appears to have been in development prior to the Instagram purchase which goes someway to explaining the huge sale price. However, at first glance it lacks many of the really good aspects of its acquisition.

The struggle that Facebook seem to be having with mobile, coupled with some of the criticism levelled at it since its stuttering IPO, about being just another ad funded site add up to problems. When MIT and Forbes are saying that you’re going to disappear and each for different reasons it’s time to start worrying.

1:9:90 - you're so 2006.

Used the 1:9:90 model for participation model recently?

Felt slightly uncomfortable with the figures as intuitively thes figures simply don't feel right?

 Enter stage right Holly Goodier, Head of Audiences at BBC Future Media. She presents the results of an 18 month study of 7,500 individuals resulting in that old model being blown out of the water.

This fascinating talk reveals that the 1:9 element - the much quoted 10% - of the stat is actually now 77%. The talk is 23 minutes long, but if you're interested in the shape of those contributing on the net this provides most of the answers you've probably been looking for.

The danger of the new digital oligarchies

Last week Samsung launched the Galaxy S3. The handset has been almost universally applauded for its innovative feature set and fantastic application of the Android OS for smartphone. What it also means is that it has effectively consigned Nokia, Sony and other former major mobile telephony players to the margins. Many are also saying it sets up a duopoly in the hardware market between itself and Apple with the iPhone.

This trend is becoming increasingly prevalent in the digital world and even more so online. If you look closely at the traffic on the web, there is a monopolistic trend emerging.

Think social networking, think Facebook, which now controls over 1 in 7 online minutes .

Think search, think Google. Think video delivery, think Youtube. Think shopping, think Amazon. Think reselling, think ebay.

This is not necessarily a huge surprise given the prevalence in Palo Alto of these huge web properties. What is more concerning is just how interconnected (or should we say nepotistic) these companies have become and how reliant successful new startups have become on those company connections. This great mashable infographic  shows just how entangled the big companies and the huge start-ups are.

If you take the recent acquisition of Instagram, Kevin Systrom was an ex. Google employee with strong connections to Facebook and the $1bn purchase price had the feel of a deal made over a chat in a coffee shop -  rather than a full due diligence led process that resulted in a realistic market value.

There is no doubt that many of these services are highly innovative and massively valuable. But, as the industry increasingly eats itself, there is a danger that the dream of an open democratic web where all players have their say and an equal platform, is becoming almost the opposite. The fact that companies are now so reliant on Google and Facebook for their future online success should be a worry. It means that companies are no longer in charge of their own online destiny.

The recent switch by Facebook to timeline is a classic example of the control the platform can exert. Companies had no choice but to spend, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars re-engineering their Facebook presence, so that it existed effectively post-timeline implementation. In turn it means that web users start to experience a very limited view of the world as their experience is controlled through a myriad of different behavioural techniques applied by these key players.

So far, so depressing. Of course there's always a positive side and in this case it comes in the form of this very interesting analysis that came to my attention last week tracking the rise and fall of the web's huge superpowers, since its inception 20 years ago.


Via: CenturyLinkQuote.com

While we should be wary of these emerging monopolies,  online empires have already come and gone and as is the case with most things online, it happens far more quickly than in the offline world.

Loving Spotify play button

Absolutely loving the latest development to come out of Spotify.

Spotify are on a real roll at the moment. The new expanding app suite, the integration through Facebook and now this, 'the play button', making it easy to embed tracks straight into your site.

So below, I've added my - ever-changing - favourite playlist 'Middle Class Dinner Party'. If you have a Spotify account then when you click the play button, Spotify will open (or instantly start playing if Spotify is already running) and then start playing the song or play list. You can pause or skip tracks directly within the player interface or control music through the Spotify desktop app.

And if you want to embed your own stuff take a look here to find out how.

Enjoy.