What if +1 was named +Godzillion…

Google’s +1 has not been doing well in getting followers to click on that +1 Button. Just passed its half month mark, +1 is only managing single digits where right next to it, the rival buttons are getting 10s, 100s, 1000s of Likes, Tweets and so forth. I’ve written an article today on Bright Side of News looking at exactly how bad (or good) +1 is now. In short, not good. The news vine is also starting to write about this disappointing start. What’s wrong? Is it too harsh to start judging +1 now already?

It’s already tough enough to be doing catch up against the golden boys Facebook and Twitter, much less saddled with a bad start. Adding followers one at a time is not quite going to work. Just imagine how different it could be if only +1 was named +Godzillion right from the start…

Check out my +1 reporting on Bright Side of News here : Is Google +1 Yet Another Social Media Dud?

ps. remember to +1 the articles! Without the power of +Godzillion, Google needs every +1 of you…

Xbox Live = Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem?

Microsoft recently showed a new Xbox Live dashboard that is very similar to the user interface of Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. Add that to their confirmation that Windows 8 will feature “deep Xbox Live integration”.

The intention is to use Xbox Live as the center of entertainment where PCs, Notebooks, Tablets, Phones, Xboxes connect to. Users will be able to enjoy that same games, same content, same app services across different platforms, different devices. Sounds like a cloud to me!

Xbox Live + Windows 8 + Windows Phone 7 + Xbox360 = Cloud Ecosystem?

What’s going for Microsoft in this strategic move to use Xbox Live as the center of gravity is that Xbox Live already has a 35m userbase. The significance is that these are not just casual register-and-forget subscribers, but actually subscription-money paying users focused on consuming games and entertainment. That is a strong powerbase uniquely different from that of Google and Apple. Furthermore, Microsoft’s Xbox360 already has a place in the living room putting that TV screen in its ecosystem, while both Google’s GoogleTV and Apple’s Apple TV has flopped and not (yet) been able to gain any foothold on the TV.

In the war of ecosystem, the headlines have mainly been peppered with Apple vs Google. But do watch out for Microsoft, it´s moves with Bing + Social Media, this Xbox Live integration, shows Microsoft is hardly asleep. With it’s artillery room full of product weapons, all it needs is that right synergy and marketing to center itself again as the dominating cloud ecosystem.

Will you be Facebook-ing on dutch design Sofa?

The saying goes “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”. Everyone knows this. Apply this to company acquisitions, and this is exactly what Facebook has done in buying Sofa, a design-interface-software company based in (i.e. till now) Amsterdam, best known for Mac apps like Kaleidoscope and Versions.

“The Sofa team will be moving from Amsterdam to Palo Alto in the coming weeks – and we’ll make sure to infuse some of our particular flavor of Dutch culture at Facebook” – says Sofa on its blog

The news broke already late last week, especially the dutch media seems thrilled with this acknowledgment of dutch design prowess. I thought and wondered… here’s a team of design talents letting go of its past work, uprooting and shipping themselves across the oceans. There must be more than exciting opportunities, there must be creative space! At least I sure hope so for the Sofa team.

Indeed, the Facebook acquisition of Sofa is not about buying the software products in the company’s portfolio. Products are specifically left OUT of the deal. It’s all about buying the Sofa Team, the team that creates not only great working software, but also great looking software – it’s the experience they create. “Buy a great product; you have a product for today. Buy an awesome team; and you have awesome products for a lifetime.”

“The team will contribute to a wide selection of the products that the design team works on. Typically, each Facebook product has a designer who is a core part of the team.” – says Facebook in a statement

Take a look at Sofa’s past work Kaleidoscope, Versions, Checkout, Enstore and their website / blog. Check out their app/web design style and interface.

With social media as hot as it is, competition from Twitter following right on their heels and Google fuming green with envy, Facebook is upping their game with hyperactivity - changes and new features like Happening Now, FriendFeed, Facebook Lite etc. In a time where User Interface shapes user behavior, this is a truly timely acquisition.

Will Facebook start looking and feeling like Twitter? Will Twitter start looking and feeling like Facebook? Will I be Twittering from Facebook? Or Facebooking from Twitter? Or will I Facebook/Twitter in Google or iOS? The kettle is boiling as we speak and the landscape is about change.

Where will they put their brand new Sofa shipped in all the way from Amsterdam? Or will each and every programmer, developer, marketer and all get to rest their creativity bums on their very own dutch-flavored Sofa? Or will the Sofa simply be left in a corner in the recreation room? Time will tell how much Dutch user interface and design signature we will see.

As a user, I’ll be looking forward to enjoying a Facebook on my dutch Sofa.

Good luck, goede reis en veel succes!

What’s social hierarchy gotta do with marketing?

So you watched the video and had a laugh? Jokes aside, did you notice the pick order of the pack? The obvious ones, The Leader (Google), The Loser (MySpace), The Challenger (Facebook) and the rest.

In every group environment, there is a social hierarchy – there is always an unofficial leader and more often than not, also an unofficial loser who seems to be at the receiving end of jokes and yet still does his best to be part of the group. Some of the other common characters are the challenger, the clown, the worker-bee, the thinker etc, many of which I’m sure you recognise .

Now if you think of a particular market space and the various brands / companies in it as a group environment, then there must also be a social hierarchy since brand / company image do interact in the marketspace (press news, user comments, editorial etc). Social media undoubtedly put this interaction on speed.

In the video you see The Leader (Google) gathering his group in an attempt to put down The Challenger (Facebook). The Juniors (Twitter, Foursquare) take stage to sling mud at The Challenger, while the Seniors (Youtube, LinkedIn) watch quietly from the sidelines. Juniors have less to lose and thus are typically more vocal. Seniors because of the weight they carry, tend to remain silent and weigh each word carefully before publicly expressing them. Like in the human world, The Loser always still gets his airtime (oddly, everyone would have preferred otherwise), and predictively would clumsily solidify his position as The Loser. And common sense tells you, being associated with The Loser is not good news for your position - see Gizmodo wince when mentioned by MySpace : )

Every Brand / Company in a market space should take a good look at which position the brand / company has in the social hierarchy. In this way, the brand / company can actively take control of its interaction in the group dynamics. Without that understanding, any interaction would be passive following the group dynamics and seem out of control.

As a new comer into an existing market, it is even more important. The brand / company needs to know who the players and their positions are. Just like a new boy in the class, the newcomer’s position in the group is determined by the group. Played right and positioned right, the brand / company’s every move seem like social magic. Got put in the wrong corner and every action would just come out wrong, there would be just no doing right.

Instead of merely looking at how a brand / company is communicating with its users, we should engage group dynamics.

You might say the video is scripted by people so it mirrors people behaviour. True. But the video is merely a convenient way to illustrate the social hierarchy. Put the video aside, pick a marketspace (socialmedia, tablets, cola, fashion… )and look its social hierarchy. Tell me if you too see the various characters alive and kicking. Have fun.

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Video “The Roast of Facebook” at CollegeHumor
Appearing in the video (did you spot them all?): Google, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Foursquare, JDate, Youtube, Netflix, StumbleUpon, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Flickr, Tumblr, Paypal, Digg, Hulu, Pandora, Gizmodo, Reddit, Friendster, CollegeHumor

ps. did you wonder so where is Apple in all this? Remember in your class, wasn’t there this one guy, independent, walk-his-own-path, odd, aloof, seems too cool or too something to be part of the group, never showed up at the prom, and later in life turns out to be either a hugely successful billionaire or a wannabe cross between pink floyd and andy warhol.

MySpace troubles… It’s in the name, doh.

MySpace barely made the news recently and it ain’t good… Newscorp the owner who bought it for $580m is trying to offload it, hoping to get back $100m, but embarrassingly sources say there’s only 1 bidder (in all due respect that’s not bidding). MySpace was one of the earliest social media site and once was the place to be. But ever since the rise of Facebook, MySpace could do no right. Traffic tanked and continues to tank. A re-make, with facelift and new logo, to re-market itself as entertainment hub, a space for bands and musicians looks good visually, but is still not helping the numbers… traffic still continues to tank. Yes, there has been mistakes, and competition is formidable, but nobody can truly explain how the fortunes of the once almighty MySpace can sink like the Titanic. I guess that’s socialmedia, hot today cold tomorrow, you’re it or you’re not. At the rate traffic is leaving like a tsunami alert, the single bidder could end up being the new owners of his very very own uhm space, literally.

Facebook Real World: wife traps husband with fake profile, or so she thinks…

If you see this 17-year old girl Jessica Studebaker hooking up with you on Facebook, be warned, it’s too hot to be true. It’s the fake profile of an unhappy wife set up on Facebook to lure and trap her husband, as basis for divorce. Much to her joy, husband walks into trap, so it seems. They develop a friendship and husband starts talking about eloping, sharing information about putting a GPS tracker on the wife´s car and, and *you gotta sit down for this* wanting the wife to be “out of the picture” (aka kapish, zilch, wiped out). wow. This is the kind of stuff you see only on TV Soaps… it’s now gone onto Facebook. Does this also make Facebook an accessory to murder (in the event that the murder does happen)?

The soap elements continue… there’s a 360 degree twist. Husband knew all along and was playing to it, to catch the wife’s actions as (you guessed it) basis for divorce. geez. How can he prove it? He’s written an affidavit, stating his suspicion that it his wife and that he is merely going along with it, which he deposited with a notary at the bank, and also made a copy kept at a relative. Apparently he was not too dumb to disbelieve that a hot 17 year old girl would hit on him (37 years old).

What a mess. The whole case is now in court, we’ll have to see what the judge thinks of it all. Every week, every day, Facebook is showing up in very real world situations, very real life places, the good, the freakish as well as the ugly. I’m taking bets on when (not if) we’ll see reality shows (ala MTV Real World) on Facebook… I wonder which name it would be – a) Facebook Real World b) Facebook Raw c) Facebook The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Battle of the Clouds Apple, Google & Microsoft

It’s raining Clouds. These recent days has seen the 3 major movers and shakers of technosumer world (Apple, Google, Microsoft) each busy stealing the thunder from the others’ clouds. Cloud computing is not new per se, it has been a key technology development shaping the professional computing world (data warehousing, corporate services etc). But now it has gone into a frenzy of world domination as each fights to be the cloud that is everything and everywhere for every of you… get ready for the Battle of the Clouds.

So what is this Cloud in the consumer world? It stores all data private and public in a huge common virtual space, where each person’s data is separated only by an ID and password. For common data (eg. music), there is only one copy of it in the cloud and you (and everyone else with access) co-share it with your ID/password access. And since it is in virtual space, any device would have access to that one data via the internet, and would update the same copy. So your phone, tablet, computer, netbook, office computer will all have the same content anywhere, everywhere.

Apple’s iCloud was officially announced on 6 June, coming to you this fall, built into iOS 5. With one sync update every single iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch could be iClouded in no time. Apple promises seamless integration of iCloud in all your existing and new apps since it is built right in the core of iOS 5. Take a photo with your iPhone and that photo will be everywhere in all your devices (Apple of course).

Google’s Cloud (or rather Clouds) is currently a 4-prong force = Google Cloud Music called Music Beta active trials in USA (for all your music everywhere), Google Cloud Print (print to your cloud printer from any device anywhere), Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office (to steal your office documents away from Microsoft’s Cloud), Google Apps Cloud Service (conveniently hip-ping Apps with Cloud). You don’t need to be a weather man to see more cloudy skies at Google – coming soon to ChromeOS for Chromebooks, Android 3.1 phones and tablets and Chrome 12 browser.

Microsoft Windows Cloud is Microsoft’s answer to its rivals. Having the most corporate footprint among the 3, it has already been actively clouding with its corporate clients – Microsoft Cloud Services, Microsoft Cloud Power, marketed with Microsoft Cloud Experience events. But those, as mentioned earlier, are the corporate clouds. In the hype to cloud the consumer world, Microsoft has been the least clear and and least vocal. Windows Cloud seems to be a hastily patched together marketing answer adding Cloud to existing services to [insert cloud icon] Create, [insert cloud icon] Connect, [insert cloud icon] Share with Windows 7 and Windows Live. Microsoft marketers also have to think of how to re-hip the un-hip Windows Live Mesh (seriously which non-tech consumer gets that name) which is essentially a cloud, just not hip. Or wait it out with Windows 8 (recently announced and demo’d), Windows Phone 7 (o dear) and Internet Explorer 10 browser.

Cloud, Cloud, Cloud and more Cloud coming your way. In the Battle of Clouds, music of thunder will roar and flashes of lightning will strike as advertisements, offers, online sentiment swaying and other tactics will come your way to convince and grab you into their cloud. Don’t be afraid, don’t let them cloud your judgment – just pick that one soft white fluffy cotton-like cloud and frolic in consumer content heaven… i.e. until one dominates and then changes the rules (don’t they always do? remember the nice Microsoft as an underdog?). Enjoy the coming happy clouds while you can  : ).

China iPhone iPad iTouch users = 10 million

10,000,000 – that’s the number of iOS users according to sampling by a Chinese software company targetting iOS, as at end April 2011. They go on to further breakdown by the various models iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and data on type of apps and the most used apps in China. There has been little official data published about iOS in China. This report is one of the firsts I’ve seen stating numbers. Here’s some of the figures.

 

iPhone has the biggest share of the pie at 70.25%, that means a cool 7 million iPhone users in China! Given that they cost more than a month’s salary for your average grad with starting job in an office, that’s not a small number. But from another angle, with a population of 1.3b, that’s only 0.005%. Don’t you just love China numbers?

 

The take up of iPhone 4 went fast, already at 63.17%, 3x more than 3GS. Given its position as a status and trend icon, no wonder old models are ditched fast and hard like they are diseased. I myself have seen enough friends / acquaintances do the switch, it’s not so much an upgrade but more of a keepingup(up)grade. If your social circle switches to the 4, you can’t seriously not hurry and do the switch too, can you? or at least that’s how it goes in China. I must say the keepingup happens in Europe too, just not as pressure-cooked as in China – just my casual observation.

 

iPad 2 showed up in the numbers too, even though it is new, a month plus into its US launch, and not officially launched in China yet. So the iPad 2 numbers surely are “imports”. With iPad1+2 at a share of 16.45%, that’s 1.6m users.

 

What do all these numbers mean? That’s a good installed userbase of iOS in China  - currently 10m, translating to 0.007% which means awesome growth potential. Just imagine hitting 0.05% is already a 7x growth! You App developer, yes you… tempted? It seems to go quite unnoticed by everyone outside China and there is not much data on the internet. Which got me really thinking! Wanna think along? Anyway, there are more slides, if you are interested, do email, tweet, comment. Or simply questions? Love to talk/share/chat about app opportunities.