Communication Analytics

My friend and now entrepreneur, C R Mahesh, pointed me to a Google announcement this morning. The GMail team at Google has created a shiny new toy - GMail Meter. The service looks into your email history, scrapes out metadata from your communications and then presents back to you Communication Analytics (CommAn). Those familiar with Xobni will instantly associate this as an ape – well, somewhat – of that service

But Xobni is a cul-de-sac product – it is destined to hit a wall with no turns in its future unless it navigates into the murky world of alliances (someone I respect said recently – “alliances are naturally unstable”). Google however has downstream assets like Google+ that it can potentially marry this service with. And the key with successful Communication Analytics is the efficiency with which it can be partnered with one or multiple social activities. It is not necessary for builders of CommAns to have a clear line of sight into the downstream activities so long as their architecture is open enough to accommodate and analyze different classes of metadata. For example, an extensible CommAn system should be able to satisfy social commerce serving up specific metadata as elegantly as it does for social self directed investing use cases

CommAns by itself is not the holy grail – it is the means to an end. The end is Social Activity

Bird-Tweeting-Revolution-Creating Fuss

“Sir, we have come up with this new innovative idea and wanted to run it past you. This is something we have moonlighted on for the past six months”. The group of youngsters looked visibly excited and their leader, in a striped shirt and chinos, held a laptop that obviously had some demo version of the “innovative idea”

“Nice”, the boss looked up, setting aside his Blackberry. “Give me an elevator pitch – I have a hard stop in 15 mins”

“Sir, this is something that will revolutionize the way people communicate”

“Hold it just there. We are an ERP company. What’s communication got to do with our business?”

“Umm, sir, we see your point. But if you just for one moment look outside, you will see how social tools like Instant Messaging, Skype, Facebook – for that matter RSS feeds – are changing the way we communicate and build networks. So yes, this is not to do with ERP, but we daresay just as interesting”, the young leader looked a little flustered but he gamely held on to the conversation

“Okay, proceed”, the boss man said, not sounding either entirely convinced or terribly interested

“This is like a communication paradigm where you can send instant updates that can be seen, essentially, by anyone with an Internet connection. So it is like an ocean where everyone pours in their bits of communication. But most interestingly it is possible for a user to create a list – a group if you may – of people who he is most interested in and he will get their updates instantly without having to search them out”

“Oh, that is like a chatroom combined with IM. That problem is already solved”, boss said, “and what’s wrong with email to multiple recipients?”

“But sir, in this you don’t need to know the email ID of people you are updating. They choose to get updates from you. In fact the analogy we have is that of a bird tweeting in the morning. When it tweets it never knows all who might listen to its tweet”

“Have you considered privacy? I may not like someone- let’s say the VP of Product Engineering at a competitor firm to see my updates”

“Great point Sir. So you can stop specific people from receiving your updates”

“Won’t work. They could take you to court because you just said that all updates are available for everyone. And look son, if I want to get someone’s updates I will just connect with him on Facebook. You are solving a problem that does not exist”

“That is exactly why this product is revolutionary, Sir. It creates an Open Facebook. A Facebook where everyone can follow everyone. At will. And similarly one could block access to whoever they don’t want to send updates to. And there is an immediacy of these updates because they must be less than 140 characters”

“What? What do you think you can communicate within 140 characters? Won’t work”

“But sir this could be the novel touch – forcing brevity on the world and..”

The boss interjected impatiently. “Like the world wants brevity. Have you asked, for example, our marketing guys about whether they want to send short messages to our clients?”

“Umm, we did Sir. The response, I am afraid was not very positive. They said they already have a Facebook page and that is where they connect with clients. And they were apprehensive that an open thing like this could be disastrous if there are too many negative things said about our products”

“See, those are my sentiments exactly. Look, the matter of communications is over-solved by the industry. We do not need another channel. My prognosis is that, if anything, there will be consolidation as people will want lesser channels to communicate, not more”

“Research done by sociologists however point that…”, the young leader, quite pushed to the brink made an attempt to recover

“Now look, as I said, I have a hard stop. But I would strongly advice you to not bother with Bachelor of Arts subjects like Sociology and Psychology and rather concentrate on core ERP technology. This bird tweeting in the morning thing is all hogwash”

“Sir, we – and all of us here – understand that while this is a new concept, it could revolutionalize…”

Visibly impatient, the boss curtly cut off the leader. “Revolutionize? Like what – start revolutions? People will start using this platform and start political movements”, he thundered, sarcasm oozing from his words. “I recommend you please go and focus on your core work., young men. Please don’t make me scrutinize your time-sheets for the past six months when you were building this bird-tweeting-revolution-creating product of yours”

This conversation never happened. But it could very well have. This is possibly how Twitter would have been killed if born within the precincts of a large technology company

PS: There could very well be a counter argument to this fictional anecdote. Is there a way this idea could have been pitched – to the same protagonists – to yield different (positive) results?

Amazon Singles: A Gamechanger Once Again

Reed Hastings of Netflix had once argued – correctly – that two types of people get on the internet for commerce. The e-bay types, looking for a good bargain on stuff that is even otherwise easily available and the amazon types, who are seeking convenience and things they cannot find elsewhere. That is, they are looking at the long-tail. For a company that understands the long tail really well, Amazon delivered another winner yesterday with Kindle Singles (By the way, Hastings added to his statement that if you cannot appeal to either of the two types that he mentions you might as well not bother about an e-commerce venture. Spot on)

Kindle Singles are the middle ground between a novel and a blog post. They are 10,000 to 30,000 word write-ups on a focused line of thought, priced between $0.00 – $4.99. Amazon seems to have a collaboration of sorts with TED to publish as Singles what is being called TED Books (interestingly, the curator of TED, Chris Anderson is the pioneer of the term long-tail, in his book by the same name). Like its consumers, Amazon’s sourcing idea also goes to the long-tail. Reports have it that the (erstwhile) retailing giant intends to directly reach out to authors, bypassing the entire publishing ecosystems pseudo gatekeepers. This is great news for creators of content, so long as Amazon does not end up acting like the same publishers it is eliminating. Not only do authors get a chance to directly reach out to their readers, they can do it on a platform that has proven its mettle on the matter of long-tails.  The e-book format suits that kind of length – and viewpoints – that Singles are expected to serve. It is easy on the readers too – and provides them with a way to segment their reading habits (Singles on short flights, full format books on long-hauls and so on).

At another level – is this the solution for newspapers and print magazines too? How many times have we gotten stuck with a magazine that really has just two or three insightful articles. How many times did we have to buy a full newspaper for reading just two great op-eds. Publications lock me in for long term subscriptions whereas what I would really like is to purchase just a piece of an article that I would like to read (socially reviewed and – this is for monetization – “appropriately” priced. That is, an article that twenty of my friends have “liked” is priced at about twice that of something “liked” by only ten. You get the drift)

Amazon singles puts the industry of the intellect firmly on the path of disintermediation, besides of course continuing to play to the consumer-values of readers. I strongly believe this will also change the way some adjacent industries work. After all, the app store idea was born out of the Amazon concept.

PS: My first Single. And five minutes later, my second Single.

Innovation on Mobility

By 2013 mobile devices will overtake PCs as the primary mode of access to the internet. Even if the footnotes to this statement be ignored (like it is about internet enabled devices and not actual access), the truth is quite obvious. Software applications will have to quickly move to the mobile device space to remain relevant in the new world order. This poses both an opportunity and challenge to companies that have built their business propositions around desktop software. Many of these companies are investing in programs – mostly spending their Innovation budgets – to make the transition.

For companies that have had only limited experience in building mobile applications, there a few pitfalls when it comes to thinking about them

1. PORT IT: It is never a blank slate. Companies with desktop or web software assets can never start without reverting to those. The product managers and engineers have had their minds wired around those products and they think – erroneously – that they are maximizing ROI by using legacy assets. The propensity quickly becomes to take what is available and create a mobile avatar of it. Mobility and the desktops are two completely different platforms and businesses must think very differently about both
2. DEAD END v TOP UP: Most desktop applications are of the top-up varaiety. That is, it is possible that the application gets increased functionality, supports more use cases as later versions are released. Mobile applications can sometimes be dead end apps. They are created to establish presence and kept that way and only fed with new content thereafter. Take the New York Times application for the i-pad for example
3. THE “OR” TRAP: Mobile OR Desktop? Wrong question to ask – because users are not going to ditch their desktops (and desktop apps) and substitute them entirely with mobility. The two will co-exist and users will demand experience continuum. This region of intersection is your starting point and if mobile devices do expand presence as predicted, the circle on the left will shrink making your desktop apps more like companions than the mobile apps

I will continue to stay on this theme of Innovation and Mobility for a while so expect some more coming down on this topic.

Squaring up Google Squared

Another extension of the search metaphor. They have been coming thick and fast in the past few weeks. Wolfram Alpha, Bing and now Google Squared. G-squared is the latest entrant and given its pedigree, deserves to get a closer look.

G-squared is essentially a search aggregator, presenting results in a spreadsheet like format. It is like business intelligence reports graduating from being row based to cross-tab. The format lends itself very elegantly to comparisons, and the suggestions put out by Google lead you down that path. The grid is expandable by adding rows and columns, each coming with Google’s own suggestions. Considering each cell in the spreadsheet as a single search, the aggregation definitely boosts search productivity. The quality of the output of the cells is very questionable though. And for once – and I thought I will not live long enough to say this – Big G gets the context of the rows members wrong very often. For instance when I tried “Indian films”, this is what it returned

All results in the rows are not films. Satyajit Ray is a film director, while Juhi Chawla and Raveena Tandon (neither merit a place in the same grid as Satyajit Ray, who was a legend) are actresses. Agreed that G-squared is yet in the Labs but hasn’t Google set our expectations right up there?

Google squared allows one to build a grid from scratch. This is particularly useful if you know what you want in the grid and do not need a search to tell you that. I tried building a grid to check out the competition of Thomson Reuters, my employers. I was disappointed at what turned up but was ecstatic when under FactSet’s financials is said “Not healthy enough to buy yet” and was bemused when the same against Bloomberg said “Forecast? More Bull? More Bear?” (I wish it dropped the last question and terminated the second last one with just one full-stop). Is this Google’s way of countering the easter-eggs of Wolfram|Alpha?

The question is bound to pop up. Is Google Squared the answer to Wolfram|Alpha. I think not. There is a difference between search (and its aggregation) and a artificial intelligence driven computational engine. Perhaps Google will encroach upon the Walpha territory, but time shall tell how that pans out.

Yours visually

Wireframing a product or enhancements is a great way of validating customer propositions. Given the choice, customers and prospects will any day choose an html prototype over powerpoint hyperbole. Thus it is sad that html prototyping remains suboptimally utilized in the product development cycle – overused at the begining and consigned to the trash bin before it has yielded all it could.

I am no genius figuring out why a touch-and-feel prototype is more effective than paperware. The commercial/sales guys figured it out much earlier. The zeal to sell (or to just awe the audience) leads down the slippery slope of over-jazzed visual prototypes getting in front of customers. Overpromise. When the rubber hits the asphalt things start falling away. Engineering cannot deliver to the wireframe in the committed time or without overhauling the architecture. Underdeliver. A tool to elicit, refine and enhance requirements has been relegated to a cheap selling trick.

Html wireframes are much derided within the engineering fraternity as mickey-mouse. The prototype quickly dies off and after a while no one even as much remembers where the code is. What a waste. With some thought, practice and process, it is possible to extend the wireframe into the development stage as a bona fide artifact. Preserving the spirit, content and visual signature of a wireframe right throughout the development cycle is more guaranteed with this extension. Product Managers and Usability folks should retain some oversight into the engineering process to ensure minimum deviation from original state.

On the side try this. Ask Usability or engineering to give you a flash version of the wireframe. Put that on the thumbdrives of every salesperson in your organization. Trust me, leaving a “live” version of the product with a prospect is times better than leaving dead-tree version collaterals. The sales folks will love you. The flash and html versions will come in very handy when you are running subsequent marketing campaigns and want your prospects to see and play with the product over the web before they sign up for a trial.

Wireframes are not use and throw. Rather used as flow and grow they can return a staggering return on investment for the product in question.

Update: Seth Godin has a brilliant post on measuring ROI on design. No, he doesn’t give you the spreadsheet you are looking for. On the other hand, he leaves you with enough food for your gray cells. Quintessentially Seth.