Facebook has just done Google a huge favor

Facebook is rolling out two new features that appear to be a direct reaction to Google+ (and to a lesser degree Twitter). Of course we have no way of knowing how long Facebook has been planning these features, but the timing and similarity to Google+ features certainly makes it appear to be a copycat response to the new Google+ threat. Facebook rolls these features out over time (and without warning), so they may not be on your account yet, but they will be.

The two features are interlinked, in what appears to be an attempt to make Facebook “friend lists” be more like Google+ “circles”.

New Sharing Options

This change started to roll out a few weeks ago and now appears to be  site wide, applying to all accounts.  The status box used to update your status got a few new controls and widgets.

New facebook status box

First, on the left are two new options. The “who are you with” button lets you tag people in your status update. The second widget adds location to the status. Ok, fine.

But the biggest change is the drop down on the right, next to the “Post” button. This lets you set who the status update goes to (sort of). The normal option (the way Facebook has always worked) would be the “Friends” choice, meaning the status update is seen by your friends only. If you specify “Public” your status is visible to anyone, basically making Facebook more like Twitter, where if you want to, you can publish your status updates for anyone to see. Bringing us to another new feature (described further below) where people that are not your friends, can “subscribe” to your public updates, again, more or less the way Twitter works. I think by default, Facebook has made the new default “Public,” so if you don’t change that, your status updates will be visible to everyone.

In addition to the “Public” and “Friends” options, you can now specify that an update should only be sent to friends on a specific list, one of your old “friend lists” (if you ever used that feature) or one of the new “automatic” lists that Facebook calls “Smart Lists,” which are managed by Facebook automatically for you based on profile information – another case of Facebook telling us “trust us, we know what you want.” Time will tell whether people find these automatic lists useful and trustworthy.

Finally, there is another special list called “Restricted” which is for friends that aren’t really friends This is where you put friends when you don’t want them to see your status updates. Friends on this special “Restricted” list will only see your “Public” updates (but I assume they still have access to your photos etc.)

Managing Friend Lists

The other significant change is in managing friends and friend lists. There are new options when you visit someone’s profile:

The new “Friends” widget shown above makes it easier to manage the lists a given friend is on. Every time you visit their profile, you can check or change what lists they are on. For anyone that suffered through the old cumbersome way of managing lists this is much easier than before, but there is still plenty of room for improvement.

There’s also the new “Subscribed” button, which allows you to subscribe to a person’s “Public” updates, so that any status updates they mark as “Public” will show up on your page, even if they are not your friend. This is clearly a case where Facebook wants to be like Twitter.

Why This A Potential FAIL

These new changes are mostly being heralded around the net and in the media as a brilliant move by Facebook. Technically, for being obviously bolted-on, I have to admit they are not that terrible, in terms of the implementation. But here’s where I wonder if Facebook might be shooting themselves in the foot here, and actually helping Google+ (especially) and Twitter (to a lesser degree) which is probably not their intent.

Twitter is essentially still a mainstream failure, with only 8% of online Americans using it. It’s clear that one big reason is Twitter’s complexity and the inability of Twitter to explain what it does and how to use it to mainstream users. It’s too early to tell whether Google+ will reach deep into the mainstream the way Facebook has. One of the points I raised about Google+ is the complexity and that it is too confusing to mainstream users:

Google+ is too complicated and too geek-oriented. When people share something with Google+, they are going to constantly find themselves asking “who is that going to?”  Twitter suffers from being too confusing to people too. But if Twitter is too complicated, Google+ is going to be like a third-semester Calculus class for many people. Only a tiny fraction of Twitter users ever figure out how to effectively manage notifications or “who sees what” on Twitter. Google+ hasn’t made it any easier. If people are overwhelmed and confused with the Twitter options, their brains are going to explode with Google+.

With Facebook now essentially copying the Google+ “circles” model, they have now introduced the same kind of complexity into Facebook that hinders their competitors, effectively removing a major differentiator of Facebook: being easy to understand for mainstream users.

Facebook has just done Google a huge favor.

In essence, by force feeding this change to  its 750 million users, Facebook will be doing something Google themselves may have spent years doing: teaching them how Google+ works. Facebook users have no choice but to accept these new features, and struggle to learn them, which will make all Facebook users more comfortable with the “circles” model, and that level of complexity, ultimately making it that much less painful to switch to Google+.

Before this, if a Facebook user went to Google+, they had to figure out how “circles” and selective sharing work using Google+ itself.  Google+ would be their first exposure to this mode of operating. They would have no mental model for it and no prior experience with the ideas of it. Now, a Facebook user will have a direct analog from their Facebook experience – as soon as they hit Google+ they will already have an idea how ”circles” and selective sharing work, removing a huge switching barrier.

Likewise, with the new “Public” and “Subscribe” features, Facebook is teaching those 750 million users how Twitter works too, something Twitter themselves has been largely unable to do. However, I think in this case, Twitter is the loser and Facebook the winner (more on that in a separate post).

But Google+, on the other hand, just got handed an enormously valuable gift by Facebook.

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Looking forward to NetWork conference

I’m looking forward to the Net:Work 2010 Conference tomorrow in SF. The conference tagline says “The Future of Work” and asks the questions “Is it possible to make any organization virtual?” and  ”What will the workforce of the future look like?”

Speakers tossing around terms like “human cloud” “radical collaboration” and “workshifting” can cause one to groan a little.

Over my career, I’ve been on pretty much every side of this, as a remote worker and in employing and managing remote workers and distributed teams. I’ve even done research on this topic and developed and prototyped collaboration tools in support of distributed work groups (more on that another day).

I’ve also worked with organizations on both extremes in terms of their sentiments toward distributed vs. centralized team models. To some degree we’ve seen this pendulum swing back and forth over the last decade (or more). We’ve been hearing that offices would be 100% virtual for years now. I don’t even know what the current “conventional wisdom” is on the subject – it seems like these days it’s more contrary to suggest the traditional “everyone in one place” model than the distributed workforce model – today, that would be far more “radical” and extreme than suggesting the opposite.

So it will be interesting to see what take-aways result from the Net:Work event. I look forward to seeing you there!

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My take on metered AT&T iPhone/iPad data

For most of us, looking at our data usage history, the new metered plans look like they’ll save us some money. But, let me tell you why there’s more to it than that.

First, I’ve heard a lot of people say recently, statements along the lines of “2GB is more data than I’ll ever use.” There was a time when one megabyte (MB, not GB) was a lot of memory, a HUGE amount. There was a time when a 1.5Mbps T1 line was enough for an entire city. And it wasn’t that long ago. Things change.

And bandwidth doesn’t change in a steady, linear way – bandwidth needs tend to change in a dramatic stair-step way, when new ideas get popular. One example was the browser, circa 1991. The iPhone itself is a perfect example of this. Within a matter of weeks of the first iPhone’s release, AT&T suddenly found that people were using about 15 times more data. And they’ve been struggling to catch up ever since.

The iPad may have been the last straw for AT&T. Shortly after the 3G iPad hit the street, AT&T rescinded their promise from a few months prior to provide unlimited 3G access for $30 a month.

Now, on the one hand, there are few services where we pay on an unlimited, all-you-can-eat model, so perhaps, one could argue this is inevitable. On the other hand, an affordable unlimited data plan played a significant role in the success of iPhone and the resulting watershed change in what people expect and how people use their mobile devices. The metered plans AT&T is offering are not completely ridiculous in terms of price, say compared to the rates mobile phone carriers were charging for data prior to iPhone, but the metering alone, at any price, still has a major impact on users… and on the ecosystem.

With an unlimited plan, nobody looks at the bill. Nobody checks usage. Nobody thinks twice before clicking ‘Go’. For AT&T, that may be exactly the opposite of what they want (or think they want) – but for the industry and the ecosystem at large, it’s a good thing – a very good thing.  In the end, as part of that ecosystem, it’s good for AT&T too.  Come on. Where would AT&T be without the iPhone?  And beyond just the iPhone, AT&T is benefiting from the entire wave it has spawned, including Android and every other so-called iPhone-killer now available, and all those to follow.

The average monthly charge for all these “annoying” customers using these new phones is way higher than before, when people just had a voice plan and minimum texting. By moving to these metered rates, AT&T is potentially slowing the kinds of innovations that gave us the web, and the iPhone – innovations that AT&T themselves has benefited immensely from, to the tune of billions of dollars.

Beyond the affect on end-users, an even bigger factor is the effect on developers. As important as any technical aspect of iPhone’s success was a business factor – the thing that caused a major change in the landscape was universal unlimited data being bundled with the phone. Before iPhone (and still true in many cases with other carriers/phones), developers were dealing with an unknown when it came to what data plan a given customer might have, or even if a data plan was available to them at all. This severely stifled the ecosystem. With iPhone, developers knew every single customer had an unlimited data plan – and the result is hundreds of thousands of apps and millions of customized iPhone-specific web sites.

So, while many people suggest that AT&T is serving itself well by reverting to metered data plans, in the big picture, AT&T is hurting themselves as much as anyone. When people say things like “2GB is more data than I’ll ever use” this is unconsciously framed within a context of the apps that exist today. It precludes the “next new thing” and assumes a static picture of future cell phone use. Developers have to think twice about building apps that could push users over that limit, meaning such apps won’t be introduced, and we all get stuck in a 2010 world.

Thanks AT&T, for shooting yourself in the foot, and hitting us on the ricochet.

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Some iPad thoughts

A little birdie told me that you (all seven of you) have been waiting anxiously for my thoughts on the iPad – the definitive iPad perspective.

Here you go.

First, I don’t have one myself yet, but I have had a chance to play on friends’ iPads. Second, while I don’t consider myself an Apple apologist, some of my friends accuse me of being so. And, finally, before you think I’m an iPad hater, I want to preface this whole thing with the fact that I do believe that iPad represents a step into the future and while I might not be ready to pay $600 for one today, I expect to have a device like this in my household sometime in the not too distant future.

A few jabs… look away if you can’t stand anything negative about iPad

Upon finally getting my hands on a real iPad to play with for the first time, my first reaction was disappointment in the display quality.  I had been pumped up to expect pictures, video and web sites to be “gorgeous” and “stunning”, but for me it was more meh.  Perhaps my expectations were just too high. Some examples:

Video. Maybe it’s just me, but I thought the video in particular was okay,  but not stellar or HDTV beautiful. It looked to me like typical medium-rez PC video, pixelated, blurry, and laced with digital artifacts – granted, on a bright and glossy screen.

Games. I was also not that impressed with games.  iPad doesn’t compare to a $300 $159 Xbox and $150 HDTV. My son is a gamer and he wasn’t impressed at all either.

Web pages. The browsing experience is fast with a nice UI generally. But, as others have noted, the typography could be better.

So how does it change the world?

In what could be characterized as “flame-bait”, Daniel Eran Dilger names 19 things iPad will kill including: Kindle, Netbook PCs, PSP, DS, Flash, Silverlight, MS Office, Windows Media Center, set-top boxes, TiVo, Chrome OS, and Android. While I take issue with some of the history and reasoning in Dilger’s post, I generally agree with the conclusions. That’s a lot of carnage.

But that’s already been said.  Probably every idea regarding iPad has already been said somewhere out there in the Internets, but here are a few ideas I haven’t seen yet.

Does it spell the end of open-computing?

There are a lot of fears that iPad marks the beginning of the end for computers as we know them. That is, the kind of computers that let us download and buy software from wherever we want. I think this is partially true. I don’t think “real computers” go away, but iPad (and its future offspring) certainly change the role of real computers. It won’t happen overnight, but they will be shifting into a niche role, for high-end verticals. For one thing, you still need a “real computer” to develop the software that runs on the closed systems like iPad.  These old-school type machines will still be used for other high-end applications, like professional photo work, video etc.  They won’t go away completely, but over time, “real computers” become less mainstream and most people get all they need from “closed” machines like iPad.

I think there will be room for hybrids, computers that can act like iPads, and iPads than can act like computers. Consider an iPad-pro that is essentially a jailbroken iPad. I think iPad will (or should) become an App on Macs (essentially an end-user version of the iPad emulator we have in Xcode) – sort of analogous to how Front Row makes AppleTV an App on Macs – oh yeah, and Macs will have multi-touch touchscreens.

Does it replace the laptop?

Here’s my take. Yes, for most people… but not entirely.  Or, in other words, maybe my answer is really “well, sorta.”  You see, I think the laptop and the iPad will converge, into a spectrum of machines ranging from, on the low-end, closed devices that look like the iPad of today and, on the high-end, devices that look a bit more like a laptop of today, or more like the tablet-PC type machines.  But these higher-end machines will be more niche, less mainstream.

The iPad type device will be the core device and there will be a range from more phone-like ones, smaller and more portable, to larger, more “coffee-table” ones.

You’ll drop this semi-portable iPad type device on your desk and it will sync up to your bigger HD monitor and physical keyboard (for those that want the old school type PC) and will act mostly like a PC as we know it today.  You’ll do all the stuff people do, web surfing, documents, presentations, music, video, greeting cards (yes it will sync to a printer too) and of course email, chat (and blogging) etc.  For most people, this is all they’ll ever need and the iPad becomes their laptop, desktop, mobile, coffee table, and multimedia home entertainment device. Done.

In a desktop mode, the iPad may physically also serve as the equivalent of the mouse, or i.e. one of the input devices of this “docking station” computer-like setup.  There may even be docking stations that look like a laptop as we know them today. Some peripherals will connect physically. Most will connect wirelessly (finally, Bill Joy’s Jini dream comes to life).

This future is a docking station, cloud-computing, traditional computing hybrid model.  Some data and apps are in the could. Some are local, or cached in a hybrid cloud model. Some computing tasks happen on the iPad “core” device. Others occur within separate CPUs in the linked up and networked peripherals (this already happens today, with routers, network storage, our TVs, Bluray players, etc).

At the low-end (and the largest mainstream segment) it’s a closed world, where people get Apps from approved app stores and that’s fine with them.  For a price, on the high-end there will be more “open” platforms, all the way up to the top of the stack, the platforms used to develop the code for the “closed” platforms.  There will be some layers in between: iPads that are more “open”  as well as traditional-style computers that are more “closed” and some hybrids in between.

So, in the end, I don’t think iPad spells doom and gloom or the end of software innovation. Things are going to change. There will be winners and there will be losers. But I think there will be opportunity throughout the value chain with wealth spread around in a long-tail manner. Yes, the vast majority mainstream users will be on “closed” platforms (by today’s definition) but that may be a good thing, in some ways – and the iPad is certainly not really “closed” compared to, say, a cable TV set-top box. People can still get third-party apps, and (probably) users will still be able to use web apps without Apple approval.

Final thoughts, Immediate uses for iPad

On the coffee-table. For me, the first use is as a living room device, a coffee-table browser basically. This is particularly true of this first generation of iPad that doesn’t have cellular data, so it will only work in Wifi hotspots, making it somewhat less useful as a mobile device. I think before long, we are just going to expect to find an iPad on the coffee table.

Laptop substitute. There’s also the “almost laptop” role.  I’ve tried countless devices over the years for this purpose (including the Sharp Zaurus and Nokia N800) and I’ve always come back to a real laptop. For everything I can’t do on my iPhone, I pretty much need a real laptop, particularly if it involves connecting to external hardware, like flashdrives, printers or VGA/DVI video projectors. For me, the iPad in its current form may not be adequate, sitting in limbo between the iPhone and a real laptop, but there may be some times when it would work for me as a substitute for a laptop. I think for a lot of people, including journalist Larry Magid, the iPad serves this role just fine already, in its current form.

Demos. I think the iPad will be the new hand-held interactive brochure. I don’t do a lot of this kind of activity myself, but I think these will be all over trade-show floors, showrooms, etc.

Contrary to the views of many, I don’t think the iPad, or at least not this first version, will be that huge of an eBook reader… yet. I think it will get there, but I think initially people will use it, especially the first wifi-only iPads, in the above roles more than as an eBook reader.  Nor do I think it will be a big game machine – people will play games on it for sure, and eventually it surpasses PSP, DS etc. – but in the near term, partially due to cost, pure gamers will stick with other platforms/devices.

Any bets on how soon before I get an iPad?  When are you getting yours?

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Some thoughts on Facebook surpassing Google

A recent news item from weblogs.hitwise.com describes how Facebook had surpassed Google to become the most visited website in the US.

March 15, 2010

Facebook reached an important milestone for the week ending March 13, 2010 and surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website for the week. Facebook.com recently reached the #1 ranking on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th. The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame. Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week.

I have some thoughts on this. Perhaps this will all be “well duh” but here goes anyway.

First, this has been positioned as an “either / or” kind of thing. I don’t think Google, or at least the search paradigm in general, if not Google specifically, is going anywhere. It will be here for a long time to come – it’s simply too powerful. It’s incredible how different our lives are in 2010 compared to before such powerful search engines existed. But I’ll come back to that.

I would characterize this as a strong indication that we are heading along the path toward David Gelernter’s “lifestreaming” described in the mid-1990s: “…a time-ordered stream of documents that functions as a diary of your electronic life…”

Instead of going out and getting the information, the information comes to us.  Facebook isn’t a complete transition to this lifestreaming model, but it’s closer.  And Google, even with Wave and Buzz, certainly isn’t very effective at it (at least not yet).

Facebook is not the end of this road. It’s simply a step along the way. More and more, the tools and services we use are going to have to provide filtering and notification, bringing us the information we want, where it comes to us seamlessly, instead of us actively tracking it down.

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