Planet Mobile Web

They link to my For a Future-Friendly Web ALA article. That makes me extremely happy.

This post has been a few days in the making.

The impetus was an event I attended in London on Wednesday sponsored by Microsoft “Social Media – one tool amongst many”.

There was naturally a stellar line-up including Catriona Oldershaw, Alan Patrick, Abigail Harrison and Philip Sheldrake.

The title of the event was somewhat obscure, as the event was really about social business.

Chaired by Dave Coplin, the debate kicked off with an attempt to define what we mean when we use the phrase social business. Each panelist had a slightly different take on the concept which provided a fascinating exchange of views, but a common agreement that social business was here to stay and something that would become increasingly important.

A recurring theme throughout was the need to move beyond treating social business as merely another phrase for social media and instead exploring what it meant for business, employees and customers.

One comment from Philip Sheldrake really stuck with me.

Glancing around the room (the event was held at “Bounce” – the home of Ping Pong), Philip remarked that the audience of 40 or so people could resemble a meeting in 2001 about blogging.

His point was that with social business, we are at the beginning of a new journey.

As I was leaving the meeting, I reflected on this comment.

Having been playing with bulletin boards in 1983, websites in 1994 and social media since 2004, I could totally understand what Philip meant.

Lately I have heard the phrase “social business” mentioned more often.

What worries me though, and the thrust of this piece is that those “social media gurus” (and yes we all know the sort of person we are talking about) will transform overnight into a “social business guru”, and start to provide “advice” on social business without actually knowing what they are talking about.

In a way, I have been waiting for the market to evolve to be ready for social business for my entire career.

As my Twitter bio states, I am “Part strategy, part business, part technology, 100% digital”.

My engineering-marketing hybrid training and experience, coupled with experience in actually running companies, as well as working inside large organisations means that I know first-hand how really hard it is for companies to change culture.

Sadly, Social media has never really got past the marketing department for most companies.

I also don’t see or hear many social media “gurus” presenting at board meetings – they never get that far because the C-suite still don’t see the deep business value of social media.

Don’t take my word for it, a recent Altimeter study on social business found that

1. Two Thirds of the companies surveyed were active in social with no real link to business goals

2. Only 52% of companies surveyed agreed with the statement, “Top executives are informed, engaged, and aligned with our social strategy.”

One survey respondent was heard to say “Many of our board members and executive leaders aren’t even on Facebook, so social media is foreign to them.”

If social business is to be successful, initiatives need to be developed, and pitched to the C-suite with compelling evidence that they will directly meet the company’s objectives.

My view is that a “guru” is probably not experienced enough, or has the ability to win over a board of directors to social business.

The new breed of social business practitioners will need have a much broader set of skills and experience than a social media guru.

I tested my hypothesis on a number of my peers this week, and we ended up with a simple test.

Would the person charged will selling in the social business strategy ever get to present to the board? Has the person charged with driving social business initiatives ever met the CEO?

This sounds like a tough test, however if, as I strongly believe that social business will absolutely allow companies to leapfrog their competitors (see a Capgemini study proving this), then a social business strategy demands the attention of the board.

This will leave the social media gurus free to keep suggesting to the Marketing Director that they “just need to get more likes with an integrated real-time social media strategy to drive engagement and drive impressions”.

As an aside, the day of the event, Philip launched an excellent book on social business called “Attenzi – a social business story”. You can read my review as well as watch an interview with Philip, where we also explore the issue of social business gurus.

What do you think?

Am I being too tough on the gurus?

Let me know what you think in your comments below.

If you enjoyed this blog post you may like other related posts listed below.

To receive future posts as you can subscribe via email or RSS, download the android app, or follow me on twitter @andrewgrill.

Related posts

• IBM CEO Ginni Rometty believes big data and social will change everything – how about other CEOs?
• Attenzi – a social business story – new book review
• Why hospitality and social media are such a good fit
• Why are some companies still so scared of social?
• Why are clients still scratching their heads about Social Media?

There has been much interest lately around HTML5 and its readiness for production environments and whether HTML5 apps should be used over native apps. This has been due, in large part, to the high-profile defections of tech behemoths such as Facebook and LinkedIn away from HTML5 to native apps for their core mobile services.

read more

Mobile Marketing looks like it is changing and moving on. But separating out fashion and sentiment from hard facts can be a problem. Take the following statements: there's a massive underspend in mobile (compared with other channels, especially print). SMS, once a hot topic in Mobile Marketing is now more or less dead. One is true, the other isn't.

Our wonderful sponsors for this event, Infobip, certainly know a great deal about the mobile space and connecting people through the mobile medium. With their help we'll be looking at what the emerging trends in Mobile Marketing are, what remains the same, what's no longer true. It seems that we have been saying since the dawn of time that mobile is a personal channel, that it's perfect for having a dialogue and that when you get it right, the ROI exceeds other channels. Did that memo ever got circulated? Even now, it's hard to put your finger on who is using these powerful properties of the medium effectively. There are plenty of examples of mobile being used as a replacement for broadcast and push of canned messages. Amazing that "Do Not Reply" might feature in a channel made for dialogue.

This looks like it's going to be a wide ranging discussion, I would not be at all surprised if we touched on Apps as an engagement channel, the role of mobile operators, and how mobile marketing and the retail shopping experience are shaping up to be the next big thing.

I know that our chair for this event, Alex Meisl of Sponge, won't take offence at being described as an Industry Veteran! Former chair of the Mobile Marketing Association in the UK and current board member at the Institute for Promotional Marketing, Alex will be joined by an eminent panel featuring:

Rube Huljev - Global Operator Partnerships at Infobip
Ben Scott-Robinson, Sapient Nitro
Gregor Smith, Comscore
Final panellist TBC


Agenda

6.00 pm Doors Open
6.30 pm Panel Session
8.00 pm Networking
9.30 pm Close


As usual the event is free to attend (but registration is required at  http://momolo-2013-06-03.eventbrite.com and as usual it will take place at the CBI Conference Centre at Centre Point.  In a departure from the usual, though, as Mobile Marketing is mostly about personalization, we will try to personalize this Mobile Monday night with some Croatian flavours in the form of great wines and food, straight from the coasts of Adriatic – and no need to bring your passport!

I have just finished reading a new book by Philip Sheldrake that looks at social business. I’ve been a fan of Philip’s writing since his first book, The business of Influence, and this book does not disappoint.

The book was released on Wednesday May 15th, and I was lucky enough to secure an advance review copy which I read in one sitting over the weekend.

It is fair to say that Philip’s book is like no other book on social I have read – in a good way. 

Instead of 100+ pages filled with personal views and predictions, Philip has created a story about the journey of a fictitious kitchen appliances company called Attenzi (complete with a back story), and the personal journey of the company’s CEO Eli Appel from becoming a business, into a social business.

On launch day, I grabbed Philip for a quick interview at the Hospital Club in London.  You can watch the interview in full below.

As I have been saying in my previous keynotes, and blog posts on social business, much of the work required in becoming a social business is centred on the cultural and structural changes required.

Quoting from Philip’s intro:

Attenzi – a social business story shines a light on social business that goes beyond the all too typical homages to social media. It’s a relatively short and easy read intended to help readers explore what social business means for their organization, marketplace, communities and career.

The story is designed to galvanize the organization.

As the tale unfolds, you’ll consider aspects of organizational design, business performance management, marketing, public relations, branding, complexity, and the imminent empowerment of the individuals that make up any and all organizations. In fact, although you’ll likely be reading the book in a professional capacity, you’ll be noting the implications for your other roles in life too.

Perhaps most controversially, the story begins to explore the evolution of the customer-centric mindset that has dominated.

Philip has also created twitter handles for the main characters CEO Eli Appel (@EliAppel), COO Marcus Wallinger (@MarcusWallinger) and @Attenzi.  Let’s hope we see some engagement from these characters when the book is out.

You can see who has pre-read the book by simply looking at who is following these accounts already.

I really like the approach Philip has taken, and he has even woven in some personal pain and introspection from the main character Eli as he deals with his divorce, and how proud he is of his socially savvy teenage daughter, Rachel.

Importantly, the book is not a how-to and it does not suggest sites and platforms to use. Instead, it spends quality time building on the realisation by Eli that his business must change rapidly to stay ahead of the curve.

The subtext that I appreciated was the subtle cultural and organisational changes that are required to get everyone on board for the change required to become a social business.

At just over 100 pages (and many pages contain only a few paragraphs), I easily completed it in just one sitting.

As explained by Philip

I wrote Attenzi – a social business story:

• To convey the essence, potential and implications of social business
• To help organizations pursue social business
• To describe what Euler Partners does

The book certainly does this – and more.

I’ll probably read it again soon, as i am sure I have missed many of the finer points that Philip has embedded in his book.

The book will be available from lc.tl/attenzi from Wednesday 15th May and I recommend that you download and read this if you have anything to do with social media or social business.

If you enjoyed this blog post you may like other related posts listed below.

To receive future posts as you can subscribe via email or RSS, download the android app, or follow me on twitter @andrewgrill.

Related posts

• Will we start to see the rise of the social business guru?
• Why are some companies still so scared of social?
• Speaking at the Mindshare Huddle Nov 8th in London
• Mobile operators are starting to respond to social feedback
• Gamifying the enterprise – how to get your employees using social media

New Site Added to the Wap Review Mobile Directory

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Mobile Link: mobile.thewrap.com
Rating:Content  Usability 
Doctype: XHTML-MP
Home Page Weight: 29-288 KB
Category: Movies

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Description:

Since its launch in 2009, The Wrap has quickly grown to become one of the most respected and popular sites covering Hollywood and the movie business. The Wrap was founded by author and former New York Times Hollywood correspondent, Sharon Waxman who currently serves as the site's CEO and Editor in Chief

The Wrap's mobile version is an adaptive site that uses different layouts for various classes of devices. Their are at least three versions (images below) ranging with page sizes ranging from 29 KB for the lightest version to 288 KB for the richest.

---

Screenshots:

 WAPReview.com Some rights reserved.

Mobile browsers may look like desktop browsers, but their behavior sometimes is different and we need to understand them to provide the right user experience. In this post I’ll show you a trick to notify the user about an update while our website is on a background tab.

At the top, Chrome for desktop showing updates on background tabs; at the bottom, Safari for iPad freezing background tabs

While on desktop browsers, we can keep multiple running tabs, on most mobile browsers timers (and all JavaScript execution) are paused when the web page left the foreground status.

If you have an iPad, let’s say you have your webmail open in one tab. When you want to browse to another website, you open a new one. That means your email will be frozen for several hours or even days and you will never get updates, until you go back to that tab.

As developers, this raises an important issue: Is there any way to update the content and notify the user while the tab is in the background? As you can see with an iOS device at http://ad.ag/pdtdpw, I’ve found a solution.

UPDATE: The quick explanation on how this hacks works is:
Safari on iOS freezes inactive tabs, but it honors the refresh meta declaration. After a reload, the tab is alive again while it is still in the background. A kind of “background tab resurrection” process.

Updating a background tab on iPad

After making some research and testing, I’ve found a good solution compatible with iPad to notify the user of an update when the tab is in the background: our old friend, the meta refresh.

While it can be an annoying behavior from a user’s perspective when the page is active, the old HTML mechanism allows us to define a meta tag to reload a window automatically every n seconds. Some browsers, such as Safari on iOS, allow us to use this hack to automatically reload inactive tabs and keep them updated:

<!-- Updates the page every 1 minute -->
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="60">


With this technique, the page will reload on the iPad and the inline scripts and the onload event will be executed in the background tab on every version of iOS. On iOS 5.x no other event or timer will be executed after the onload event until the user goes back to activate the tab. On iOS 6.x timers continue executing even in the background after an automatic refresh.

Refreshing the tab only when in background

The problem is how to remove the reload behavior when the page is the active tab and the user is using our website. Every time we set the content attribute dynamically in the meta tag, the browser starts counting again, so we shift the next reload hit. We can use this idea then to not refresh the page all the time.

To make the trick work on the iPad, we can start a chronometer that will shift the refresh meta tag n seconds on every execution. While the page is still active, our chronometer will be executed and the reload action will be shifted every n seconds. When the page goes onto a background tab, the chronometer will not be fired and the refresh meta tag will trigger, refreshing the page once. From iOS 6.1, after the refresh, the chronometer will continue executing pausing more reloads:

<!-- Updates the page every 1 minute -->
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="60" id="metarefresh">
<script>
// iPad background tab notification trick
var mr = document.getElementById("metarefresh");
setInterval(function() {
mr.content=mr.content; // Shift the reload operation
}, parseInt(mr.content)/2); // Every 30 seconds in our example
</script>

Creating a background notification

iOS doesn’t support the Web Notifications API as BlackBerry 10, Firefox for Android, Amazon Silk 2.0 and Firefox OS.

Unfortunately, Safari for iPad doesn’t make use of a favicon in the tab UI so our only option is to use the title element to update the UI and capture the user’s attention. Therefore we can change document.title to send information to the user via the tab’s title.

Therefore, if we just execute a chronometer and update the title, it will just work after the background reload. For example:

<script>
var count = 0;
setInterval(function() {
document.title = count;
count++
}, 1000);
</script>

In this example, the counter will start from scratch every time we move the tab to the background as it reloads once. We can use sessionStorage to maintain values between reloads.

Chrome for Android supports background execution directly; therefore these tricks are not necessary. Table 12-1 shows the background execution behavior in different browsers.

What about iPhone?

I’m not sure yet if this is good news or bad news: we can use window.alert from a background tab that was refreshed and it works! And this trick also works on iPhone where there are no tabs but background windows. But be careful, it’s a very intrusive dialog from a background tab or window. If it’s an iPad, changing the title for the tab seems like a better idea.

For iPhone or iPod touch we can then refresh the page and generate an alert dialog if there is something important we want to say. However, there is no way to automatic move the active window to ours; so the alert message should indicate that to see what’s happening the user should move to our window.

Change the title only when in background

In this example, the title is being updated all the time, even when the tab is in foreground. To change that, we need a way to separate foreground from background state after a reload. Without Page Visibility API it seems complicate. I have even tried with Animation Timing API, also known as requestAnimationFrame and even in the background, frames are being fired. At the time of this writing I couldn’t find an easy way to differentiate between foreground state and background after a reload state.

If you find a way, just add a comment in this post.

But it doesn’t work on iOS 6.0 and 5.x!

The previous code works perfect on iPad with iOS 6.1+ but on iOS 6.0 and 5.x it’s a different story. Because timers don’t fire  after the reload, we need a different approach. The approach on iOS <= 6.0 is to just update the title when the page is being loaded and leave the meta refresh make its work every n seconds. In the count example, we can just use sessionStorage.

<script>
var count = sessionStorage.getItem("count")||0;
document.title = count;
count++
sessionStorage.setItem("count", count);
</script>

In this case we don’t have the problem as in iOS 6+ and we can update the title only in the background.

Try it yourself

If you have an iOS device with you, just go to http://ad.ag/pdtdpw

This post was partially extracted from my book Programming the Mobile Web, 2nd. edition published in 2013 by O’Reilly Media.

More about tabs

On future posts I’ll continue talking about background tab management for mobile devices, including page visibility detection. If you can’t wait to that time, remember my book Programming the Mobile Web, 2nd edition has +750 pages on the topic :) This is a series of posts I’m publishing based on content extracted from that book.

After the Overview of Facebook Home and how to install it on Android, it's time to have a look at Facebook Home from a business and developer perspective.

From a strategic point of view, Facebook Home certainly has the potential to capture Android users, divert them away from Google’s services and draw them closer to the Facebook platform. So it is certainly a threat to Google in that it reduces Android’s flexibility, and therefore the strength of Google’s position.

read more

Recently, Cloud Four dev Matt Gifford built a slick, responsive off-canvas navigation enhancement for a project (we’ll be releasing the core code shortly, so keep an eye out for Matt’s post about that!).

The project followed the off-canvas menu metaphor for handling navigation on narrow screens. The baseline, mobile-first layout keeps the navigation out of the way—initially as footer nav with a button-ish jump link, then progressively enhanced to convert the link into a trigger element for the off-canvas menu—while a media query for wider screens formats the navigation on-screen.

A sketch of this layout adaptation:

In the past we’ve approached implementation of this as:

1. Implement a baseline CSS layout that has a menu button.
2. Use a CSS media query to adapt the layout for wider screens, hide the button, reflow the nav.
3. Use JavaScript, often bound on window.resize, to check media query applicability and adapt behavior accordingly (sometimes alternately handled by looking at the width of the viewport and comparing it to media-query-defined widths).

Bolting on Behavior

Often by the time we get to the behavior implementation of our sites and apps, the process involves bolting on JavaScript as a follower of the CSS-based breakpoints that we’ve generated during the design process. We define the visual breakpoints of our stuff and the JavaScript is expected to use those to indicate how it should behave.

So we bump into things. We want the JavaScript to “know” about the breakpoints defined in CSS, and which media queries are presently active. This leads to heartache, and also some pretty clever hacks. We use matchMedia (or a polyfill to support same) to determine whether a particular, specific media query is active.

Thus: duplicating media queries in two places (CSS and JavaScript), a situation that makes a whole lot of us twitchy. I have definitely fantasized about future CSS module spec revisions that allow for naming and scoping of media queries, to make stuff like this better.

But hold on a minute. What are we trying to accomplish here? Does CSS really hold a monopoly on breakpoints? Should our behavioral components be entirely beholden to the specific formulae of our visual layouts?

(Re-)Defining Breakpoints

But why is the breakpoint for menu/navigation behavioral adaptation entirely linked to a CSS concern? Could there be better indications in the browser that the behavior change is appropriate, beyond a CSS media query or screen width? And, in that case, what does define the breakpoint?

This sort of thing was already on my mind when I started reading Stephen Hay’s excellent new book, Responsive Design Workflow. And Stephen is thinking about these things, too—except he’s already a lot further along!

Stephen’s way of defining a breakpoint is: “the points where certain aspects of a website or web application change depending on specified conditions.”

No mention of CSS there—because the picture is bigger than that. As Stephen continues on to say, “[a]nother reason to consider a more full definition of breakpoints is that CSS is not the only method used to implement changes when a breakpoint has been reached.”

Exactly!

Breakpoint Graphs

To express and plan breakpoints, Stephen advocates the use of breakpoint graphs, an adaptation on bullet graphs he’s invented to communicate both visual and behavioral aspects of breakpoints.

Along the “qualitative” axis (horizontal in these examples), one charts a scale. Often, this is a range of screen width resolutions—the way we tend to think about responsive design and breakpoints.

Using the process from above, we might have a breakpoint graph that looks like this:

Thus, we’ve expressed that we have a breakpoint at 40em that alters the page layout.

But Stephen’s graphs go further than this visual design element. Using qualitative “bands,” Stephen’s graphs can communicate behavior or other aspects, like so:

This is starting to move toward thinking about behavioral changes as well as visual ones, expressing explicitly that we want to adapt navigation behavior, but the breakpoint is still owned and defined in terms of the CSS breakpoint: 40em. So it’s natural that we’ve been creating media queries:


@screen only and (min-width: 40em) {}

and the JavaScript corollary

if (window.matchMedia( "screen and (min-width:40em)" )) { }

Behavioral Breakpoints

Looking at breakpoints in such a clear way inspired me. I’d seen the screen-width-resolution-style graphs before, but the qualitative dimension was new and exciting. In fact, it frees us from tying our breakpoints to a visual or CSS source at all.

What is the breakpoint, in the case of the navigation menu example here?

When implementing the navigation behavior, Matt chose to use the state of the triggering button as the indicator for which kind of menu behavior to apply. Button extant and visible? Convert the navigation behavior to the corresponding off-canvas menu. Button gone? Deactivate the off-canvas menu and use on-page navigation. Matt does this by observing the state of that button and reacting accordingly, not by duplicating or checking on the status of the CSS media query that put it there in the first place.

Building Behavior into the Process

A behavior-centric breakpoint graph for this could look something like this:

where the breakpoint is the state of the trigger button. Yes, the state changes at 40em as a result of a CSS media query, but it’s the state we care about, not the media query (or window width) that did it.

Stephen’s book does an excellent job of pushing the notion that behavior needs to be a part of our responsive design processes, integrated and partnered with visual design, not just adjunct to or beholden to it. Breakpoints span various aspects of the overall experience, and I’m glad Stephen helped me really understand this.

Thanks!: my gratitude to Stephen Hay for his personalized help in making breakpoint graphs, Matt Gifford for the off-canvas menu idea that got me thinking and Tyler Sticka for a bit of sketching help and proofreading.

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost three years since the publication of Ethan Marcotte’s seminal Responsive Web Design article on A List Apart.  The ideas and techniques described therein blew our minds while forcing us to drastically reconsider our design processes. Even today, the struggle continues to determine which design deliverables make sense in a post-PSD era.

Personally, I dig Dave Rupert’s idea of “Tiny Bootstraps, for Every Client”:

Responsive deliverables should look a lot like fully-functioning Twitter Bootstrap-style systems custom tailored for your clients’ needs. These living code samples are self-documenting style guides that extend to accommodate a client’s needs as well as the needs of the ever-evolving multi-device web.

The whole post is great, and it got me thinking… along with solid content strategy, design and engineering processes, what steps can we take to insure our “tiny bootstraps” are comprehensive enough to remain relevant and useful long after launch?

Cue Jason with a cool idea: We could document patterns in existing frameworks. A list of what’s typically included might serve as a good starting point, something to measure our client deliverables against to make sure we haven’t overlooked anything obvious.

In which I willingly make a spreadsheet

I combed through a (non-exhaustive) collection of suitably broad or noteworthy links from Anna Debenham‘s list of front end styleguides and pattern libraries, recording instances of observed patterns and adding new ones as necessary. I skipped over anything that seemed too idiosyncratic, and grouped elements of similar intent even if their description or implementation differed.

The results are contained in this handy Google Doc.

Lessons learned

I found this to be a worthwhile exercise. It helped me wrap my head around the elastic scope of a “tiny bootstrap.”

I thought there’d be more overlap between frameworks than there is. I recorded over 160 distinct patterns, none of them ubiquitous. Some came pretty close, especially headings 2 through 4, typographic elements and pre-HTML5 form elements. No single framework included even half of the total recorded patterns (Bootstrap had the most).

Sometimes the most infrequent elements surprised me with how obvious they seemed in retrospect. For example, color guides and font stacks only occur in a couple of places.

The thought of maintaining the document indefinitely makes me queasy, but I’ve already started referring to it frequently. I’d love to know if anyone finds it as interesting or useful as I have.

Facebook Home made a big splash late last month, but early indications show that users are far from considering this a "revolution" despite smartphone users around the world spending 18% of their time on Facebook.

read more

Will you be in London next week? If so, make sure to head over to Tower Hill to join me and tons others for the Game Monetisation Europe conference. I will be participating in a panel on how to...

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In this miscellany: A chance to win a Samsung Galaxy S4 and a book on Tizen, but hurry! Also a link to our last event on BYOD and info about our next event on Mobile Marketing.

Last Event, BYOD, 15th April

We received very nice feedback on our last event, held in partnership with ICT KTN, in which we looked at the security, commercial and societal  problems (yes, really!) of Bring Your Own Device. This is not a question that is limited to large corporates, but they are the ones that have probably spent the most time thinking about it. Most wonderfully chaired by David Rogers, of Copper Horse, our illustrious panel of representatives from Telefonica, BlackBerry, Azenby and Mubaloo examined this topic together with a highly engaged audience.

One of our lovely volunteers, Manfred Bortenschlager wrote a blog post (http://www.mobilemonday.org.uk/2013/04/what-happened-on-15th-april-boyd.html) summarising the event, and a link to the podcast created by the folks at The Fonecast. As an added bonus there are various contributed links to more information on the topic at the end of the blog, which you should check out if you want to know more about this tricky subject.

Samsung Developer Survey

Our friends at Samsung, who we are proud to count as one of our annual sponsors, want to hear from you! They are running a Mobile Developer Survey which takes about 5 mins to complete (I just did, so can vouch for that!) and you get a chance to receive a copy of Tizen for Dummies, if you complete it.

Better still, as an exclusive inducement to the Mobile Monday London community, if you fill in the survey using this link https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/samsung_survey there is a chance to win one of two Galaxy S4s. The survey doesn't say so, but if you check the page title you'll see that it is a special survey for Mobile Monday London. Must say I would like to get my hands on one (I have the S2 and S3 and love them) and Samsung tell me that they too are waiting to get their hands on some, but as soon as they do they will send out to two lucky winners! Get filling out that form, they want to hear from people by Tuesday next week!


Next Event, Mobile Marketing, 3rd June
We're working on the final details of our next event, which will be supported by our new friends Infobip from Croatia. An event on Mobile Marketing is long overdue, and we'll be focussing on emerging trends and things that used to be true, but looks like they aren't any longer. Chaired by the irrepressible Alex Meisl, we also have some interesting twists to the event which we are working on … I'll  leave it at that, for now. More to follow!

Developer Economics Survey

A closing note that Vision Mobile is working with Mobile Monday globally to survey opinions on matters mobile. They too have prizes and the deadline is likewise Monday next week. Without wishing to turn Mobile Monday into a kind of Eurovision, it would be good if we got some entries from London, we are the pre-eminent mobile centre in the world, aren't we? The link: http://www.visionmobile.com/DS13MoMoLond.

That's all this time, looking forward to announcing the next event. We have quite a programme lined up for the remainder of the Spring and early Summer, but I'll save that for next time. For now keep the evening of 3rd of June free for a Mobile Marketing evening with a Croatian twist!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April has been a month of transformation for many in the tech industry. Many of the trends we have been tracking for the Digital world in 2030 seem to suddenly mature in a month.

 

Firstly, let’s see a list of 15 Ways Technology Is Reinventing Society 

http://www.businessinsider.com/15-ways-tech-is-reinventing-society-2013-4?op=1

This is a good list and includes:

• Self-driving cars are changing how we get around
• Google Glass will turn us all into cyborgs
• Wearable fitness trackers are making us all health nuts
• The Internet is fueling a sharing economy
• Robots are changing the workforce
• Smartphones keep us hyper connected with each other
• Social networks are changing how we interact with each other
• 3D printing is reinventing the way we manufacture goods, while also fueling creativity.
• Nano-filtration technology is helping hundreds of thousands of people produce and drink clean water.
• Gesture-controlled devices are awakening our senses and fueling collaboration.
• Touch screen devices and Wi-Fi in underground transportation systems will vastly improve how we get around.
• iPads and mobile phones are changing our retail experience.
• Smartphone apps are making us the ultimate consumer but also kind of lazy.
• Photo-sharing sites are changing our notion of privacy.
• And the drones are coming.

 

It’s a good list and reflective of much of the disruption we also see in this month ..

Social media maturity, expansion and im-maturity

Social media both matured and im-matured ..

Firstly, There are some fundamental changes in the nature of social interaction.

 

• In the UK, the proportion of time spent on social media slips http://soa.li/itiikhU at the expense of online entertainment services and also new social media services are emerging – With over 200M monthly users, WhatsApp CEO boasts, “We’re bigger than Twitter”” http://feedly.com/k/11apQie
• With claims of losing users to services like WhatsApp- “Facebook says battle for teen attention ‘not a zero-sum game’” http://feedly.com/k/10Wy9EV.
• But social media continues to make a difference to services and disrupt physical services – such as NYC taxi apps – which reflect the increasing battle between new (online players) vs. traditional players like Taxi companies(“Put your taxi apps away, New Yorkers: NYC’s smartphone hailing program blocked again” http://feedly.com/k/10tXgY9 )
• The Boston bombings showed Social media at its best and its worst. The site Reddit became both a source of news for journalists but also became a place for online witch hunts – “Reddit apologizes for ‘online witch hunts,’ asks community to be ‘sensitive of its own power’” http://feedly.com/k/ZixLyg . Sites such as  Twitter, Reddit and 4Chan took on a role of online ‘just in time reporting’ which in some cases exposed innocent people to danger. The BBC reports that the internet detectives got it very wrong for the Boston bombings http://bbc.in/17LE5At  and the news sources like Police scanners (long used by journalists for breaking news – were now available to the people) and “Hyper-connected, real-time news is a good thing — but so is accuracy” http://feedly.com/k/XVOmIF  with news events becoming ‘participatory’. However, no matter how we see it, it’s clear that a seminal change has taken place in reporting with participatory news events here to stay – for better or for worse.

 

Content players – curation + aggregation to creation

There are some major changes for the content industry as well.

Since advertising drives content – we have reached a milestone with “Digital Advertising Has Now Blown Past All Other Media But TV http://feedly.com/k/13hhwjC .

 

Digital advertising now dwarfs newspapers and magazines and is bigger than any other media in the U.S. with the exception of broadcast TV, which hit $40 billion.

The breakdown is interesting also because it shows a rate of growth for many sub segments -

The industry totaled $37 billion for the year, in the U.S. alone.

•       Mobile grew 111% to $3.4 billion and accounted for 9% of total internet ad revenue in 2012.

•       Digital video brought in $2.3 billion, up 29%

•       Search was $16.9 billion, up 14.5%

•       Display-related advertising revenues totaled $12 billion, up almost 9%

 

Retail advertisers spent the most, accounting for 20% of total revenue in 2012. Financial services came in second, contributing 13%.

• Twitter opens up self-serve advertising platform to all businesses http://feedly.com/k/18avZSj

 

There are two major changes in the Content industry

Firstly, the nature of TV/video is changing. This is significant considering the huge $40 billion chunk of advertising revenue with  “YouTube users now watch 6 billion hours of videos a month” http://feedly.com/k/YnPR2u. America Now Routinely Watches 10 Billion Online Video Ads Every Month http://feedly.com/k/12RBGly .  Services like Hulu show strong growth with over one billion streamed videos in Q1 http://feedly.com/k/12XwHzT

Secondly, content players are going from content curation to content creation.

We see this in many areas

Flipboard – “Flipboard is a giant iceberg lurking in the path of the media” http://feedly.com/k/10InN6k

Yahoo through its many acquisitions and properties (mainly in mobile) – summly, Astrid (“Yahoo acquires to-do app Astrid, to continue service ‘as is’ for 90 days” http://feedly.com/k/10tWOcz ) , weather -  Yahoo’s Weather App Is A Big Hit! http://feedly.com/k/18awQ5l

Netflix – with shows like “house of cards” – Netflix is becoming a content creator – like HBO (Sopranos) but on the Internet(vs. Cable). Netflix Says Its “House of Cards” Strategy Worked, and Wall Street Agrees http://feedly.com/k/11iERQf . The future of TV, according to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings http://feedly.com/k/10AnsYc   says “TV is fundamentally changing from a linear delivery model to a world in which apps compete with each other, and Netflix is spending billions to be part of that future and Netflix is seen as one of the driving forces behind a transition from linear television to a world of internet-delivered on-demand content.”

There are also changes to the existing TV monopolies. Two Tiny Startups Are Exploding The $60 Billion Broadcast TV Industry http://feedly.com/k/12Arg8m  - Aereo, which offers a cut-rate TV subscription for consumers by capturing broadcast signals over thousands of antennas at one time.

And  Dish Network’s ad-eliminating video recording device called the Hopper. Both the Hopper and Aereo take advantage of changes in how TV viewers get their shows (time shifting, streaming, multiple devices etc).

Meanwhile if TV is becoming into apps – apps are migrating to TV – Is TV the future of apps? Draw Something app to be reinvented as Channel 4 quiz show http://feedly.com/k/10Q0rwO

And in another key trend – “A Prominent Silicon Valley Investor Is Talking About The End Of Ownership” http://feedly.com/k/170BiC2   including ownership of content ex Zipcar,  NetJets, Seamless(takeout delivery service) and  Spotify

Meanwhile, there is another interesting test case for legislation around the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act ) safe harbor provisions for audio recordings created before 1972 (

Recording industry threatens YouTube and other music services after copyright law snafu http://feedly.com/k/15TrZ94  )

 

Mobile industry – seminal shift

The mobile industry also sees major seminal shifts

Firstly, the worst PC sales drop in history http://cnnmon.ie/17rwczX  leads directly to a mobile revolution.    Shipments of PCs fell 14% worldwide last quarter, according to IDC. It was the worst yearly decline since IDC began tracking the data in 1994.

There are many factors for this trend especially Tablets - Mobile device price drop sees tablets outsell PCs http://www.telecoms.com/133811/mobile-device-price-drop-sees-tablets-outsell-pcs/  -

“While there will be some individuals who retain both a personal PC and a tablet, especially those who use either or both for work and play, most will be satisfied with the experience they get from a tablet as their main computing device,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.

“As consumers shift their time away from their PC to tablets and smartphones, they will no longer see their PC as a device that they need to replace on a regular basis.”

Tablets Are Dominating Mobile Commerce http://feedly.com/k/16erfM0 – Tablets will drive 65% of mobile commerce sales in 2013, even though smartphones still make up the majority of connected devices in the U.S., according to eMarketer.  Tablets overtake smartphones on BBC iPlayer   http://soa.li/sQTO2WO

Meanwhile, Global Mobile Apps Market will Reach $20 Billion in 2013 http://wp.me/p15SGl-2MM

Global Mobile Apps Market will Reach $20 Billion in 2013. The rise of apps and smart phones go together.  For first time, smartphone sales top other mobile phones in first quarter http://feedly.com/k/11u1cKS . This leads people to create apps which are becoming commercially successful  “Writer Teaches Himself To Code In His Free Time And Now Has One Of The Hottest Productivity Apps” http://feedly.com/k/13p1x38

Apps are transforming industries – ex tourism – The Mobile Tourist: How Smartphones Are Shaking Up The Travel Market http://feedly.com/k/13y2QN9  and advertising – Online Ads Can Now Follow You Home http://feedly.com/k/18awZG3 (Online Ads Can Now Follow You Home. Firms Are Helping Brands Like Expedia Serve Ads to Users Across PCs and Mobile Devices)

Meanwhile, the world of Operators sees some major changes.

In a wakeup call for Operators! Chat apps surpass SMS for the first time, study finds http://feedly.com/k/12c3KMX

But Operators are counting on video

“Verizon: Video accounts for 50% of mobile network traffic, and it’s only growing” http://feedly.com/k/11VLXwJ . This is significant because it is ONLY data traffic on the air waves (as opposed to WiFi for example). LTE is a major driver for video and also specific techniques for LTE such as LTE-broadcast . This is also reflected on an emphasis on Small cells – How Small Cells are Transforming Mobile Networks http://wp.me/p15SGl-1dw

Meanwhile, carriers are also changing price plans. Verizon dives deep into the budget end of mobile with a new $35 plan http://feedly.com/k/ZPTzM7   and O2 UK moves away from handset subsidies with decoupled Refresh tariffs http://feedly.com/k/17v4JgN

Carriers in Most of the World to See Flat Revenue While Emerging Markets Take Off http://feedly.com/k/10ZDW5U  . The rise of smart phones is making a difference in emerging markets with health care apps  http://feedly.com/k/12KXvTM  and mobile phones are making a big difference – for example by  redrawing bus routes (Mobile phone data redraws bus routes in Africa http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22357748) and mobile banking in Bangladesh http://dthin.gs/15e5YkV

On the devices front, phones that have cameras which don’t need to be focused are in focus ..

Nokia Investing In Camera Tech That Could Change Phones Forever http://feedly.com/k/11UYCOp

These cameras are based on plenoptics (a fixed, square array of tiny lenses in front of a digital sensor) and flexible displays are coming soon – Frog Predicts: Flexible Displays Will Soon Changethe World http://feedly.com/k/18aalNR

Finally, of all the places – Mobile Phones Are Booming In North Korea http://feedly.com/k/12RBTFi  thanks to a growing underground economy.

 

The Internet of Things becomes mainstream

This month a few announcements also herald a major uptake for Internet of Things

“Belkin’s internet of things dreams extend to energy and water management” http://feedly.com/k/ZVaxx7   and we are now speaking of the rise of the Industrial Internet -

http://radar.oreilly.com/2013/03/industrial-internet-report.html

SAP believes that the Internet Of Things Will Transform Everything – http://feedly.com/k/11UUazh  and IBM launches an appliance for the ‘Internet of things’ http://feedly.com/k/100CFLe  and then there is Google Glass which could potentially revolutionize many areas such as healthcare “Marc Andreessen Describes How Google Glass Will Revolutionize Health Care” http://feedly.com/k/Yi1h7M  and Jawbone Agrees To Acquire BodyMedia For $100M, Opens UP Platform For Developers http://feedly.com/k/18aaErS

AT&T launches its internet of things effort and it’s pretty big http://feedly.com/k/ZQTyZD  and Google purchases Behavio, a startup that aggregates smartphone data to make predictions http://feedly.com/k/YQOiIw

 

Identity

Identity will play an increasing role as two announcements indicate – Airbnb Now Wants to Check Your Government ID http://feedly.com/k/18awwU6   and the AP Twitter hack prompts fresh look at cyber security needs http://feedly.com/k/11u1rFE

Estonia is run like a corporation, but its president believes government must play a crucial role in areas of digital policy such as secure ID – Estonia – A lesson in public e-policy http://feedly.com/k/17cr6ou

 

Internet governance

Like SOPA, CISPA also did not go too far in the legislative space – CISPA Changes Show Power of Internet Advocacy http://feedly.com/k/12RBqmA

Meanwhile, a very insightful article discusses the contradictions in Internet Governance.

“An Internet ‘free from Government Control:’ A worthy principle” http://feedly.com/k/17zVhZJ

The U.S. has been deeply enmeshed in this contradiction ever since the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003-5, when it fended off criticisms of the U.S.-controlled ICANN while claiming to oppose ‘government control.’ In the meantime various US government agencies have (largely unconscious of or independently of the Internet freedom rhetoric) cast global shadows of hierarchy over various aspects of the Internet, seeking extraterritorial domain name takedowns, ACTA, restricted online gambling, cyber-weapons, and so on.

 

Disruption

The ongoing interplay between social media and politics continues with a Pew report – All politics isn’t social just yet, but it’s getting there http://feedly.com/k/14eFoZo   . A new report from the Pew Research Center breaks down civic participation and social media.

 

Open systems

Open systems underpin many of the trends we see and yet Open systems are not a straight forward approach. We saw that with the Twitter vs. PeopleBrowsr settlement http://feedly.com/k/1806qTH  for the Twitter firehose (data stream). Twitter has been scaling back access to its data for a while, and most developers found they had little recourse other than to accept the social network’s decisions. In that sense, PeopleBrowsr is one of the few companies that has successfully fought back.

As Mapping Costs Rise, Waze’s Volunteer Army Will Give It an Edge (Video) – crowdsourced content can give a commercial edge  http://feedly.com/k/Znf6Qz    and Twitter is in the news again for a contradiction with developers “Dear Developers: Play by the Platform Rules, or Expect a Smackdown” http://dthin.gs/10MVnrD

Finally, when it comes to Siri vs. Google now – Google now could have an edge because it has the advantage of tapping into Google’s massive trove of data to bring you the answers you’re looking for http://feedly.com/k/16eqHFH

 

Miscellaneous

“Patent troll Lodsys sues 10 mobile game makers, despite Apple’s intervention” http://ars.to/YFnoDv

Advertisers and developers ask FTC to delay new children’s protection laws http://feedly.com/k/ZnfzC2

“Florida poised to become first state with anti-drone law” http://feedly.com/k/Z930Mf

Gene wars: the last-ditch battle over who owns the rights to our DNA http://gu.com/p/3f9pg/tw

“Ouya review: can an indie console take on Sony and Microsoft?” http://feedly.com/k/13UpuDL

Porter and Kagame .. Why President Kagame Runs Rwanda Like a Business http://feedly.com/k/17eHzeG

The $5.1 Billion Future Of Crowdfunding Is More Than Kickstarter http://feedly.com/k/14Buq0C

Image – Google/Google Glass