Cellular Phones are Dead; Long Live the Cellular Device

Today (or last night, actually) marks a sea-change in wireless communications: the iPhone Skype application debuted. It is also coming to the Blackberry. Why is this such a disruptive change? Because it represents the final move to data convergence. With the implementation of Skype on cell phones, the voice officially becomes "data." Actually, it has been data since the implementation of digital wireless voice transmission over a decade ago, but Skype represents a transition to cellular communication via Voice-over-Interntet-Protocol (VoIP). With VoIP, a voice call becomes just another Internet connection.

For the short-term, Apple and AT&T are throttling the availablility of Skype to Wi-Fi connections only (not available on EDGE or 3G), but this is only temporary. AT&T may disagree about how temporary it is, but it is temporary. This is because the battle lines have been drawn. AT&T (and by extension, all the other wireless carriers) want to protect their tariffs for charging for voice calls by the minute. The reason is simple; it makes them lots of money. But Skype makes the voice call just another data stream, no different than a song playing on Pandora or a video playing on YouTube. Voice communication becomes bundled with the phone's data plan.

Why this is an issue with the phone company is simple. For the iPhone, the lowest phone plan is $39.99. However, an unlimited data plan is $20.00. Of course, at present AT&T forces you to have both a phone and data plan. Now this is going to change. It is only a matter of time for a company such as Metro PCS to start offering unlimited data/phone plans for a set rate. In the short-term this means that phone plans will decrease in price while data plans increase. In the long-term, there will only be one type of plan--data.

The reason this is a major issue is that carriers make their money off of voice services since they are billed at a higher rate than data. For one thing, they are on a per minute charge (or the user is forced to purchase a group of minutes for a set rate). The carriers like individual rates for voice, SMS, and similar services. For example, of a per minute basis, SMS is the highest cost service on a cellular phone.

With the Skype service, this is going to change--and change disruptively. Already, Skype is the largest carrier of international phone calls. This is not a big deal because AT&T's old Long Lines service has been a decreasing revenue stream for years. Now they are faced with the same thing happening on their wireless phone services. Within the next five years, the wireless companies will be all data services. With this context, it is easy to see why they are looking at metering wireless data. It is their solution to decreasing voice phone revenues.

What do you think?

Netscape Revisited

I wrote a review of Google Chrome--Google's browser entry--back in September, 2008. In it, I described the philosophy behind the browser, and the features provided in the Windows version. With several month's experience and looking at Google Chrome in context with Google's other applications and services, it occurred to me that I was having a deja vu moment. The Google environment reminded me of something similar I had seen or heard about years ago. Then I remembered: Netscape!

Many users today probably don't remember the Netscape browser. However, until a full frontal attack by Microsoft with the introduction and bundling of their Internet Explorer (IE)browser with their Windows operating system, Netscape was the preferred browser for both personal and business use. Indeed, Netscape and their development of HTML seemed to be rapidly making the operating system an afterthought--Netscape would run on a wide variety of operating systems, providing the same user interface and the same functionality. The Internet became primary and the local operating system became secondary. With Netscape incubating this view, it is clear in hindsight why Microsoft took such an aggressive approach to them by developing their own competing browser.

Fast-forwarding a little more than a decade, it can be seen how much has changed and how much things have stayed the same. First, Microsoft won the first battle of the browsers. Indeed, I found an old Web site from 1998 that showed Netscape had 65% of the market while IE had 32%. By January 2002, those statistics had changed to IE 85.8% and ALL other browsers 14.2%. By that time, Netscape was part of AOL and no longer a major force in the market. However, AOL did an interesting thing: They placed the source code for most of Netscape into the open source movement by giving the code to the Mozilla organization. Since it was open source, anyone could use it, work on it, and improve it. With the thousands contributing time, money, and intellectual property to Mozilla, by August, 2008 just before Google Chrome was introduced, IE had 50.5%, Firefox (Mozilla's official browser product) 43.7% and all others 5.8%.
Today, with Google Chrome having been introduced last September, IE has 43.6%, Firefox has 46.4%, Google Chrome has 4%, and all others have 6%. What is astounding about these numbers is that Chrome has gained 4% of the market in just seven months and their browser only runs on Windows. With the release of Chrome to Linux and Mac OS-X later this year, it can be expected that Chrome will grow at an even faster rate.

More importantly, Google Chrome has revived many of the design philosophies of the original Netscape browser. Chrome is the first browser to partition each instance of the browser, whether tab or window. This makes the browser much more stable because instances are independent. It also makes Chrome look more like a user interface tied to an operating environment, one of the original design goals of Netscape. Second, unlike Netscape, Google has developed a broad array of user applications that run in the network cloud and require nothing more than a browser to use. With Chrome, each of these applications can have their own instance of a browser window (or tab) and operate independently. The result is a very sophisticated office system can run in the browser while being operating system independent. Unlike Netscape which had an information portal as its main user application, Google Chrome can support Google Mail, Google Sites, Google Chat, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Sketchup, and Google Apps (Word processor, Spreadsheet, and Slide presentations). The result is Google has created an environment that can provide a consistent interface across virtually any operating system and virtually any device. (While mobile devices are still somewhat problematic, they still have similar access. With the introduction of Android devices and continuing developmental support for Apple's iPhone, the interface will only become more similar.)

What this all means is that while Netscape failed in their original vision, they may have the last laugh on Microsoft. It would appear that Google Chrome is in the right place, with the right product (and a multitude of supporting products and partners developing compatible applications and features), and at the right time. The operating system is becoming secondary to the user interface and the applications accessible through that user interface. With an increasing number of technology companies embracing cloud computing (Google, Amazon, eBay, Salesforce just to name a few), Google Chrome only stands to gain.

What are your thoughts? Your comments and questions are invited.

Death of the Newspaper

I was saddened to see the demise of the Rocky Mountain News which published their last edition today after 150 years in business. This got me thinking and in discussion with friends of mine about the future of the newspaper and news organizations in general.

What happened? First, news organizations lost their way. Somewhere over the past couple of decades, news organizations stopped reporting just the news and started reporting opinion. News was and continues to be who, what, where, how, when. Once the reporter begins to provide opinion, it is no longer news. The problem over the last several decades is just about everything in a paper now has opinion. If I want opinion, I can walk down the street and get it for free. Indeed, if I have the right Twitter friends, I get opinion unsolicited.

Once news organizations moved from providing the simple who, what, where, how, and when, their value decreased. (Understand, opinion is important, but it should be labeled as such and should be segregated from "pure" news.) Second, news occurs real time. Newspapers occur periodically. Therefore, news is not longer news by the time a paper is published. The result is that the newspaper was forced to provide something a breaking news source could not provide--context and opinion. The problem with opinion is you can get it anywhere. The result has been decreasing revenue, particularly when alternative news sources have grown.

Second, social media have taken the place of both news reporting and opinion and editorial. With the advent of blogs, everyone can have an opinion. With newspapers, not everyone has their opinion published. Not so with blogs. It is your blog and you always get your opinion published (even if no one reads it). Blogs also allow individuals (in many cases experts in the field) to write about what interests them. The problem with opinion? First, everyone has them, second an opinion can't be wrong--only agreed or disagreed with, and third, opinions and fact are very different things.

The result is that newspapers (and to a lesser extent, radio and TV news organizations) have found a troubling truth--news can't be owned. News is available to the first individual or organization to find it. This was evidenced by the USAir emergency landing in the Hudson River. The first photo from the scene was a TwitPic posting through the social media micro-blogging site Twitter from an individual with an iPhone. Increasingly, this is seen in a variety of news venues--photos of storms on local TV weather reports, crash photos published across the Web, and Twitter and SMS messages from terrorist attacks. This type of news cannot be duplicated by the print media. In many cases, if the immediate resources are not available, it cannot be duplicated by radio and TV media.

This type of news is an immediate unfolding of the who, what, when, where, and why. Newspapers abdicated this news venue decades ago. What remains to be seen is the development of technologies for evaluating "factness" of news. the Digg Web site doesn't do it. The Snopes Web site lags the event by too much for evaluation breaking news. I predict that this area is the next big development in information management of news.

What is your opinion? We'd love to hear from you.

The Power of the Social Net: Debrief

I'm on my way back from the Dallas Twestival and thought I'd capture my thoughts on the experience. First, I'm getting too old for turning out at happenings. Second, it is good to know that the hippie (son or grandson of) movement is alive and well. Third, there are a lot of people out there that, even though they are in close proximity to each other (meaning within conversation distance), they seem to prefer Twitter. I'm going to have to think on this last one as it may be a future trend.

With that said, the Twestival has to be called a success. The Dallas Twestival alone raised enough money to dig a well, so the donated money was well-spent. Add to that the fact that it was fun, we had good music, and we had a little stand-up comedy, I think it was time well-spent.

Dallas Twestival organized this in less than a month. They pulled off a great thing with a lot of great volunteers and some big hearts. They are to be congratulated on being part of a
Future tread in online organization and mobilization for a good cause.

Anyone else have thoughts on the event?

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

The Power of the Social Net: Twestival

There is a lot of discussion these days about social networking sites rapidly gaining in popularity and displacing traditional "post and view" sites that have been around for almost a decade. This "social net"--as I refer to the collective social networks, applications, and tools--could be just the next fade or it could be the next revolution of the Internet. Statistics show Facebook growing faster than MySpace and in the process, gaining a significant user base among adults. That counts because adults buy stuff and generally have more disposable income than the typical teen (disposable is a relative term in these down economic times, but I digress). Social sites such as LinkedIn are seeing an explosion of growth because 1) people are unemployed and are looking to network for that next job; 2) people are employed but don't know for how long; or 3) Boy Scout/Girl Scout-types have no idea where the economy is going and want to be prepared.

On the surface, these sites provide an easy method for people to connect; exchange messages, photos, and interests; and generally stay in touch. In this sense, social networks are displacing the telephone, snailmail, and increasingly, email. However, there is a deeper level to social networks.

Humans are social animals. We like to socialize, to talk, and to do things together. Without it, we are isolated and alone. Social networks address this problem--not as well as in-person activities, but better than alternatives such as the phone or email. And this is where the second level of social networks come in--they are attempting to substitute for some in-person activities. For example, many social networks allow the user to identify connections who are online and to initiate an interactive chat with them. They aren't to the level of Skype, but it's only a matter of time.

Second, social networks are starting to integrate collaboration tools that also enable interactive communication in a number of ways beyond simple chatting. For example, LinkedIn has integrated huddle.com's collaboration tools. As such, it acts an an ad hoc collaboration/discussion board. Both LinkedIn and Facebook have their groups a user can join and become associated with people with a similar interest. Taking a slightly different approach, Google Docs allows interactive viewing and editing of documents. It's as if a group were in a room, simultaneously writing on a whiteboard. While Google's more interactive capabilities have not been integrated into more traditional social network sites, it is only a matter of time.

For a population that has migrated far from their home, these social sites provide the next best thing to being there. With the addition of Skype type capabilities and Google Doc capabilities in the near future, it will almost BE the same as being there.

Finally, there's Twitter, a microblogging service that allows a user to publicly post anything on their mind--as long as it's done in 140 characters or less. Twitter is one of the fastest-growing social networks. While it is technically a micro-blogging service, it is considered a social networks because individuals can subscribe or "follow" people of interest. As a result, the follower groups of an individual tend to form social message interchanges. The network grows because anyone can see the "tweets" or message sent and anyone can follow anyone else. (There are exceptions, but generally this is the way it works.) Twitter has been used to simply let people know what they are doing and to move people to action. For example, a couple of months back an individual was arrested in Egypt and he tweeted for help. The protest was overwhelming and helped to gain the individual's release.

Three recent examples demonstrate the power of Twitter. First, a couple of weeks ago, a passenger plane made an emergency landing in the Hudson River in New York City. A Twitterer on a passenger ferry which immediately diverted to pick up survivors took a picture of the plane and passengers in the water and tweeted it. It was the first on-the-scene photograph from where the plane went down. Over the next several hours, that photo was re-tweeted around the world and picked up by news stations. Even the individual who sent the original tweet photo was interviewed!

Second, Twitter has become so popular that it has its own awards ceremony--The Shorty Awards. Every year, Twitter members vote on who they think are the best tweeters in a variety of categories. The awards ceremony, held this week, played to an overflow crowd and news of the even was again picked up in the popular press.

Third, Twitterers have formed together to raise funds for a worthy cause, clean water worldwide. The gain notice, the cause has taken on a life of its own, now known as Twestival. What started out as a simple fundraising and fun Twitter meetup has grown to organized Twitter meetups in some 175 cities worldwide. Their goal: Raise $1 million for clean water projects in underserved areas of the world. All indications are the Twestival will be a huge success. Even for those not able to attend, people will be tweeting live from the various sites. For the new folks, think of it as a worldwide Rave. For the oldtimers, it's a worldwide happening. Either way, it demonstrates how a social network can mobilize the masses. With that said, I am off to the Dallas Twestival.

What are your thoughts?