WTF is Online

Most of you have seen this chart showing the time, date and moment that the world shifted from an email centric society to a social media standard. Much like the role of David Morse at the end of the movie 12 Monkeys, those who have been around for a while simple took a deep breath to satiate our global (time) killer and continue our lives. (click image for source)

I think everyone can agree that social media and texting has take some of the market share and usage time away from email. So I ask, is it really taking time away from email or is it simply a shift in market and consumer usage patterns toward a more streamlined workflow?

I’m not sure of the validity of the chart below but it does show email still has a lot of love (click image for source) and I tend to think it’s somewhat close.

https://plus.google.com/112418301618963883780/

If our usage of texting and social media truly are a shift in workflow, more than simply the trendy thing to do, then I think sites like Google+ are on to something.  Not because it’s social media, cool or the new kid on the block but because it supports the centralization of our workflow.

Google tried to do this before and failed like with Orkut, Google Wave (which I thought was great) and Google Buzz, which I still use, just a lot less. Unfortunately neither of them stuck and they didn’t really complete solve the problem.

So what makes Google Plus different from Orkut, Buzz or Wave? A better job of centralization.  Think about how and why you use Twitter, Facebook and email and ask why can’t I just use one of them for all of my digital communications.

• Email - still the standard of communication especially for business and more personal or private long-form conversations. It isn’t going to go away but it will likely continue to deminish until it settles into it’s place, likely as a more archival, long-form, personal method of communication, much like the U.S. mail use to be. Keep in mind, this is also the place where most of our real contact records reside. For example; my Gmail contacts list is over 2000, My Yahoo 800, Hotmail about 300 and Facebook is 880. Almost all of the 880 were already in my other contacts lists, except for the high school folks I remember but only really follow on Facebook.
• Facebook – not the first “social networking” site but by far the largest. With over 750 million users, FB is where we have all gone to social network. Why are we here though? Facebook isn’t the best social network, is run by a douche and hasn’t figured out what privacy means to the average consumer? Because everyone is doing it!  I joined because my long-lost co-workers and college / high school friends were starting to pop up. Now we are all there, although I notice that after the first 3-6 months most FB users stop or drastically reduce their frequency. Even when I buy ads on FB, it takes weeks to reach even 70% penetration of a market (at a high bid rate) which means people aren’t logging in as frequently as we think or as FB wants us to believe. I’d love to see some stats on the average U.S. consumer usage after 6 months, I think advertisers and FB-advocates might be surprised. Most of their growth is outside of the U.S., in fact 70% of FB users are not in the states, so when FB says 50% of their users log in daily, I wonder what that percentage is in the U.S. and what the average time on site is for U.S. vs. international.
• Twitter – the social sharing site where you can spew whatever you want to the world as long as it’s within the 140 character limit is a U.S. fun zone. Celebrities, the media, bloggers and the throngs of wanna-be celebs are using it to gain and communicate with their fan base. It’s fast, succinct, easily searchable and has a decent chunk of users.  For those who don’t care about celebs, 70+% blogger audience or media trying to attract new readers with their real-time updates, it is just a wasteland of absurdly abbreviated words and phrases.

So does G+ meet all of these needs and will it take over the reigns as our communications solution (not social media solution because that is simply a form of  contact management and one form of communication).

• As a social network – Google+ works, resolves some security concerns and does what we expect for the most part, it still has room to grow.  It doesn’t have the user-base though and even when Google ties it directly into Gmail, they still only have about 300+/- million subscribers. There will have to be plug-ins to other email or social networks to truly entice people away or to use in conjunction with FB.
• As an email solution – Gmail rocks, is solid and has both enterprise and mass-consumer acceptance. G+ is not (yet) tightly integrated into Gmail and until it is, there is a gap in workflow. I have already found myself wanting to send an email but just posting a direct message to someone on G+ because it’s faster and easier. I look at G+ as the middle-tier between email and twitter (which I’ll talk about next). When I can click a button and drop down a window, then select Email, G+, Huddle or Hangout then my dreams come true.
• As a micro-blog – huddles work, as do hangouts but until there is a search tool, a page with the global stream of consciousness flowing like a river of sewage through our lives and a  massive audience to care about it…who cares?
• As a blog – one area that I don’t see (yet) is the integration of blogging, which Google has a strong foothold on with Blogger / Blogspot. This fills the public form of archival, long-form, mass-communication.

When I can click a button, drop down a window and select Email, G+, Blog post, Huddle or Hangout then my dreams come true. Why? Because that covers the full-span of communication that I use online.

What about Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly, YouTube and other social sharing sites?  Honestly, I use them within my posts and content on all of the above methods of communication, I don’t see that changing. Although, Google does have a direct channel to market and communicate  G+ to over 500 million people because of their ownership of sites like YouTube, Picasa and even Orkut.

What do you think?

I’ve been reading F-Commerce articles (one | another) the last couple of days (f-commerce is Facebook commerce), some with interesting perspectives that may change the way we shop and others with lots of opinion but little perspective of what has worked or miserably failed online.

Most people probably aren’t old enough or haven’t been on the internet long enough to even remember iMall or some of the other “major” online internet malls that were around in the mid-1990s. They all had the bright idea of centralizing the shopping experience in one location, just like our physical malls and assumed people would flock to them spending millions and billions.  Where are they now?  Non-existent.

Who has succeeded?  Those who centralized everything, like a big-box store, reduced prices and (this is a huge one) provided FREE shipping to compete with retail.

Other retailers have done well because they found their existing retail audience and have converted them to online.  Many have generated a new audience online, that they may have never seen otherwise, most of these are successful because they have a unique product, service or customer service model that attracts a crowd or they have a product that is not available in other geographic locations.

I know I’m generalizing here but look at the most successful online retailers and what ultimately makes them successful…DEALS!  Remember that everyone online is looking for a deal, no matter how wealthy, poor or frugal you are, you don’t get online because you want to spend the most on a product.  You get online because you saw those True Religion, Seven or whatever jeans that you want and there has to be someone online who sells them for $0.17. That’s what the internet is, like it or not.  The music and software industry losses hundreds of millions, if not billions every year due to piracy, not because people online don’t have money (don’t we average like $75+K/yr.?), because we’re all cheap bastards.

Fast forward to the Facebook generation…we’re all cheap as WTF, not because we need to be but because the internet has made us this way.  We all spend a large percentage of our day either connected to, waiting on or actually logged in, F(B)ing around. 600 million people and growing are on the site, stalking, chatting, connecting and advising each other about anything from family, to clothes, to sex, drugs & rock and roll. It is a digital high school or college experience all over again but this time without inhibition, boundaries or rules…other than “your mom (children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren or future children) might see what you put on Facebook.”

So what does all this have to do with F-commerce?  Not much, other than every retailer seeing that the malls are less full than they use to be. Where have those people gone, to Facebook? Obviously, since one and one is two, we can deduce that because large amounts of people have aggregated to Facebook they must also all want to shop on Facebook!  SO, let’s build a mall, it will succeed.

Again, I oversimplify but my oversimplification is only to bring up one simply thing, people are online for a deal. If Facebook is going to play mall cop (or landlord) then they better have some killer deals for retailers because the only way that mall succeeds is if I can’t do a Google search and find a better deal. I don’t care if all of my friends are sold, talk about it, “Like” it, love it, endorse it, comment on it or marry it, I’m not buying it if newegg.com, frys.com, ebay or amazon.com have it for $0.25 less and free shipping, it’s that simple. The ‘experience’ can be spectacular, the cart can be immaculate, the customer service can surpass even Nordstrom‘s expectations but I’m still doing a Google search before I confirm my order to see if there is a better deal.  Not because I’m a jerk, unfaithful customer, uncommitted brand advocate or because I’m cheap…because I AM AN INTERNET USER!

Example:  This week I got an email “early notice” from Groupon about the Old Navy deal $20 for $10.  Considering $20 at Old Navy buys you like everything in the store, that’s a killer deal. Within 4 hours of getting the email I saw no less than 10 people posting about it on FB.  Tens, or hundreds of people were getting access to this deal even though they had nothing to do with Groupon.  Therein is the power of Facebook; exclusive products, prices and offers can go viral in a matter of minutes, potentially faster than any other method. Success and whether the store needs to be within Facebook or not is only for the future and new ideas/innovation to tell.

I have personally programmed or managed the development of over 45 e-commerce websites for small to Fortune 500 companies (several) and the one thing I have learned is that the biggest game is in the numbers (deals). Many online companies survive and can have moderate growth through marketing and advertising, don’t get me wrong, you CAN succeed without deals.  BUT, companies see unbelievable numbers when they run that deal that you can’t get anywhere else and those companies that diligently work their suppliers to maintain a steady flow of deals, have a consistent, strong and investment-worthy growth rate. Sustainable is another question and concern…for another post.

I was at a social media event this evening and the topic was mobile marketing. It’s funny because I started a mobile application company over 10 years ago and many of the same conversations that were going on then…are being repeated today.

Buzzwords were filling the room, mostly around the long-standing app vs. mobile web debate. Everyone who is ‘with it’ and ‘knowledgeable’ seemed to be pushing the mobile app agenda while everyone else just wanted to know why they need an app when the mobile web already provides the services they use and need?

Nobody has a definitive answer other than the app developers who enlighten us with: “you have complete control” and “because it’s your app, you can design and brand however you want.” My favorite answer is the non-answer, “oh, if you want to be legitimate or taken seriously, you need your own app.”  Are you kidding me? The decision to make an app or not should be based on real business issues or strategic decisions. Not based on the opinion of someone who can’t provide a valid business reason for building an app over mobile web app.

When my company was getting started the mobile web didn’t even have a strong structural base. WAP was just beginning to show up on all mobile devices and many people weren’t sure of it’s power or ability and the mobile browsers where rudimentary at best. There truly was a debate, do you build a full app because WAP + Browser did not = a real app, or did you build it yourself and know that it would work?

Today you have a solid browser that will soon support HTML 5, already supports GPS  tie ins, some video and will likely support Flash or comparable soon. In addition, you have much stronger, more stable environments, faster hardware and operating systems with true scalability.

The debate continues but does it really?

In reality there is a fairly simple decision tree for true enterprise level applications in the mobile universe:

1) Does mobile current support it (Yes, continue | No, go back to work).

2) Is your audience demanding it or do you have strong supporting evidence they will? (Yes, continue | No, relax, sit back and chill for a bit until you see how things shake out).

3) Does your ideal enterprise mobile solution have extremely complex logic or require a large amount of data or graphics? (Yes, continue | No, take your pick either a mobile app or mobile web app will work.  The real decision is how much branding and control you want over the application).

4) Complex logic and massive amounts of data/images or complex data integration with external  sources require a lot of processing.  Will all of your users have top of the line, 1ghz+ mobile devices? (Yes, continue | No, you need to wait or reduce your expectations)

5) With top of the line hardware the question is now the limitation of the mobile web browser. Current mobile web browsers are light and powerful. Even a light browser still will carry a weight on your hardware limitations. So the next question is, does your application require immediate response, under 3 seconds or can it take upwards of several seconds to get a full response? (Under 3 seconds on a mobile device is lofty and will likely require you to develop your own application. If you’re lucky, using their programming language but be prepared, you may have to learn machine language or just wait until the hardware catches up. If you are OK with a wait then you truly have the choice of waiting for the mobile web or saving a little bit of time and controlling the app interface and branding through your own app.

The reality is, and short answer to all of this conversation, mobile is NOT a PC or even a laptop. If you expect your mobile device to perform at the same level as your desktop or laptop, you’re dreaming.

If you are perfectly comfortable with this environment to work in then GO FOR IT! Just remember, your mobile device is about 7-10 years behind your desktop and 4-6 years behind your laptop when it comes to hardware.  So no matter how great the API, programming languages and tools are, you’re still driving a Pinto when you’re away and a Ferrari at home.

To be honest, my phone currently has a 1ghz processor which is just as fast as my desktop processor literally 10 years ago.

Don’t give up though, that 1ghz processor will still make you feel like speed demon compared to your phone just 2-3 years ago.

So you are broke, going off to college, getting married, and probably solving the equation to the dynamics of the Earth’s rotation. You have one HUGE dilemma and short of winning a lottery, you are probably screwed. But wait, social media network can save your life. All you need to be is the sole followee of Conan O’Brien (@ConanOBrien) on Twitter who decided on random to pick one person to follow. Conan picked Ms. Lucky contestant otherwise known as Sarah Killen (@LovelyButton) who was getting ready to go to college and getting married. Now she’s appearing on Good Morning America, receiving a free Apple iMac from a stranger in Florida, and free wedding dress from a designer in New York. Sarah’s life is completely changed all because of one person following her on Twitter. How powerful is a tool that can make one person more lucky that winning a lottery. Now that is power my friend.

So when you kick back tonight and put on your Twitter status that you are reading wtfisonline.com, you can appreciate the power that is behind your fingertips.

tram@wtfissocialmedia.com