Its about attention

As a mobile app development company we need to test the latest apps and learn from the best of what is out there. In terms of attention span, playing games on my iPad and iPhone is incredibly addictive. I’ve just spent over an hour playing Tower Defense and upgraded to the paid version because of the gorgeous graphics and excellent gameplay.

I also downloaded Tiny Wings which two different people told me about, but I didn’t get past the first stage. I might need to try it again, but if its difficult to get past the first stage then it doesn’t build confidence in the user to keep playing with it.

I then paid for Street Fighter 4 Volt. Street Fighter is easily my favourite game of all time and the iPhone version is an excellent translation. Though the controlpad is not exact – you really do need those fireballs and dragon punches to work! My last download was Tapamatic, made by Dinoroar a local Aussie developer which I wasn’t able to understand how it worked.

Mobile competes with PC’s and gaming devices

Its clear that mobile is here to stay and smart phone usage is only going to increase. Its increasingly replacing the other devices that I need to use such as my laptop or PC.

At the E3 conference, the World’s biggest gaming conference held in June, Nintendo stated that their biggest threat was not XBOX or PS3, but the iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices. They are competing for attention span inside the household and outside. People don’t want to carry around a Nintendo DS, iPhone and a Kindle. Granted they all serve different purposes, but consumers want ease of use. Give them one device that can do it all.

Mobile development to become a core skill set

Increasingly, I hear from startups that they need mobile development skills, which suggest that it is in high demand. There is currently a gap in the marketplace between web development skills and mobile skills. There are a lot of desktop crew out there but not a lot of mobile experience.

My brother, a developer who’s created several iPhone apps as an experiment, stated that designing for the mobile web should be easily translatable for web developers. This is distinct from mobile app development skills (iOS and Android) which is a more specialised skillset.

Fred Wilson, a VC based in New York had this to say last year:

“A common thing we’ve been seeing recently is outsourcing the development of a blackbbery app or some other kind of mobile app. Right now, that is still a fairly nascent skill set but we are also advising most of our portfolio companies to bring individuals in house to do that work because it appears that mobile app development will be a key skill set for our portfolio companies for some time to come.”

There is a gap that exists now because of the limited experience out there. If you read the tea leaves, I expect that this gap will close in the next few years as mobile development skills become more critical for startups and part of their core skill set for developers.

I’m currently learning python. As soon as I’ve finished with that, and if I’m motivated enough, I want to learn mobile.

BRICI will cause a surge in mobile web

Its clear that the future is mobile and I’ve written about it here for the Next Digital blog. I read a report from the Boston Consulting Group that BRICI countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, Russia, Indonesia), are jumping straight from having no internet to mobile web. As one of my ex-colleagues, Vincent Yuhico commented, there is pent up demand for smart phones. There will be a surge in mobile web adoption as more BRICI users come on board.

I have no doubt that entrepreneurs will be there to catch them =)

I’m out like the Nokia 5110,

Matt Ho
@inspiredworlds

So I’ve tried to create my own photo app, based on my experiences with these apps. But it pretty much ended up looking like Instagr.am.

Why? Because I really love the UI, look & feel and everything about Instagram. It is just so easy to use, and I have tried to replicate some of the features that I like about it. I believe that elements of it can be used for other mobile apps. The numbers don’t lie, 2.5 million users in 6 months. PicPlz has about 200k users. And hey, they say that imitation is the best form of flattery =)

Wireframe 1: Onboarding of friends

What I really like about instagr.am was how easy it was to onboard your friends. By that I mean how easy to add them to your new social network on Instagr.am. It uses facebook connect, and you can easily see who in your network is using the app. You just touch “add”, and voila!

There’s also an option to select all, but I havent included it. I rarely use any “add all” option. This interface is just so simple, and enticing to just touch the “add button” for all the people you want to include. You don’t have to go to each person’s profile. You already know who they are because you are friends with them on Facebook. Much easier than using a mouse, just tap “add”!

I’ve also included an option to add friends via email that are not in your facebook network of friends.

Wireframe 2: Uploading photos

What I like about Instagr.am, Path and also Dropbox is that they keep the UI really simple. And it looks gorgeous. Same with Airbnb as well. I think there’s been a renewed focus on user centered design and designing things that just look awesome. I believe that Apple helped pave the way for this.

Here, we’ve kept it really simple. I wanted to keep the layout very similar to the first wireframe. Give it a consistent user experience, so the user does not get confused and knows exactly where everything is.

You hold the phone camera in front of the subject and can select one of these four buttons at the bottom:

1. Share to social network: Facebook, Posterous, Tumblr, etc…

2. Filters: What Instagr.am does is that it makes ordinary pictures look extraordinary by giving it an older or tinted look. Potentially their business model could be selling additional filters. Filters that other people don’t have.

3. Camera icon

4. Delete the current pic

Button 1, 2, 4 cannot happen without taking the photo first. I like to keep the camera icon in the middle, because the user will naturally look for it.

I probably should have put a “done” button in Wireframe 1 in the top right hand corner as well. Its pretty much a save button.

Wireframe 3: View Stream

I actually really like what Picplz does with this. Their grid of pics shows the best pics from the public. Your network of pics on PicPlz is actually vertical. You scroll down, but sometimes it takes too long or you don’t want to see too many of a particular person’s photo. I also like how instagr.am also allows for content discovery of cool pics as well.

I like the grid format because it enables you to view a lot of thumbnail pics at once. Similar to how Facebook albums works, you can view them all and select the ones you like.

I’ve tried to keep a consistent format with top banner and bottom banner with the 4 icons.

That’s all for now. I’d love to hear your feedback on my first attempt to do some mobile wireframes and my analysis.

I’m out like digital cameras,

Matt Ho.

Listen to this interview from Robert Scoble talking to Bill Nguyen (founder of Lala.com) and Peter Pham (founder of Bill Shrink).

Its very interesting. It discusses the future of mobile and their plan to build a new social graph known as the elastic network. I think its clear that Sequoia invested in the team and not so much the idea – though the idea is ambitious. Photos is only one part of the app. Also, check out this post from GigaOm.

————————

Many organisations are banking on the paid subscription model – from music, news, movies etc..whether its the answer is another question.

Clay Shirky understands this better than most people. He explains the paid content model, comparing music subscription vs news subscription model here:

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/why-itunes-is-not-a-workable-mod…

I have also been thinking about the music subscription model today. Apple has a whole ecosystem supporting the music experience. People will pay for this convenience and experience.

In terms of music, lets use Spotify as an example since they are most likely to extract value from the rest of the value chain. Is Spotify profitable?

Spotify has 10million users. News articles suggest they have approx 650,000 paying subscribers (~ 1 in 20 paying).

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/09/15/spotify-10-million/
http://gigaom.com/2010/11/22/spotify-2010-revenues/

MUSIC REVENUES

90% of users pay $10 Euros/month = $120 Euros yearly
10% of users pay $5 Euros/month = $60 Euros yearly

On a revenue basis, Spotify generated $74m Euros last year on music  subscriptions alone.

ADVERTISING + “VALUE CHAIN” REVENUES

Gigaom reckons that Spotify made $58m in advertising. I take this with a pound of salt cause I don’t see how this could be true. My estimates below are based on the low side.

I project the following revenue streams:

- Advertising (PPC): 10m users x 1% of users click on ads x $0.02 x
365 days = $730k/year

- Ticket sales: $5 commission x 10m users x 1% purchasing yearly =
$500k/year. Using the average Posse commission prices.

- Merchandise: $20 tshirt x 10% commission x 10m users x 1% purchasing
yearly = $200k/year

That’s roughly $76m in revenue.

COSTS

The only cost that’s public is music royalties at $30m. That leaves $46m on table.

I wouldn’t think the operating cost of a lean startup business would be any more than 40% of remaining revenues (assuming 20 staff, low overheads). Opex = $46m x40% = $18m.

Total profit is = 76m – 30m – 18m = $28m profit.

So in short, their music subscription model is profitable.

I’m sure they’ll have other revenue streams from deals with mobile companies. I think that’s where the real value is for Spotify – the mobile apps. People will subscribe to this. They probably need to get it to 10% – 20% of paying users (currently at 5%). Their push into the US is more likely to build a barrier to competition cause it will prevent other people from moving in.

I’m out like Myspace,

Matt Ho.

Let me break it down for you.

First Foursquare Mayor Meetup in Australia

I participated in #officemayor, where Microsoft were doing a promotion to hand out copies of Office 2010. You had a to be a mayor of a venue and you needed to checkin at the venue in Martin Place to get a free copy. Unfortunately, my phone and Optus didn’t want to co-operate, however I did manage to show them my treasured Mayorships and collect my free copy of Office 2010.

Officemayor at Martin Place

The problem was that there wasn’t much mingling or stickiness about this event. Most people came, saw, collected and left within 5 minutes. What they did though was broadcast the event to their social network, creating a ripple effect about it. Whether these same people are going to twitter/blog/etc… about the use of Office 2010 and to upgrade from Office 2007 is another matter. As a launch event it was not bad. Another issue is that not many people other than the digerati know about foursquare so it was a limited audience as not all connect their foursquare check-ins to twitter or facebook (to be honest I find these updates annoying in these news streams).

Foursquare Day Meetup

I also went to the first Foursquare Day meetup at Bar 333 a few months ago. It was on 16 April or 16/4 to Americans… so 4 Square… get it? Whilst there were a few people mocking me for going and the fact that there were only a few people attending made it hard to find. I actually had to go around and ask a few people if they were there for the event.

I think about 12 people turned up, and I had brought 3 friends along that also use the service. Hey it won’t be long before the rest of the crowd are on foursquare (just like how they joined twitter). All I can say is this – there are people that use it and those that demonstrate their passion for it – we call these people fanboys =)

NBA final badges

Also importantly, I discovered how to get two badges during the NBA finals. If you shouted “Go Lakers” or “Go Celtics” on foursquare, you could obtain the badges. Pretty awesome to have the 4 leaf clover as a badge. And you know I had to get both badges!

Location Based Stickers

I’m not so sold on these foursquare stickers that can be placed on shop windows / doors / walls. It kinda looks tacky. I do like the concept of notifying people physically before you enter that it is a foursquare venue. It doesn’t mean that the restaurant or bar is actually good or whether the special is good value. I prefer those crowdsourced comments.

Though the definition of good is relative, so how can we combat this?

If those comments are from people that frequent those types of venues or restaurants, we can attribute a value or a priority to them.

Robert Scoble talks about this and you look at Quora, the new Q&A service. We should be placing a premium on those that have expertise in a particular subject matter or experience.

I drink a lot of milkshakes, in fact its my favourite drink. I’ve had more than my fair share and I’ve had it all around the world. So my tip on whether a milkshake is good or not in a particular restaurant means a lot more than the average joe. A few years ago, my colleague and I were working at the BNP Paribas building on Elizabeth Street. I stumbled across this cafe inside the building that made the most awesome bannana milkshake I had in a long time. And I told her it was good (TRUST!). She had one sip of it and beamed the widest smile and said “you’re right! Its good!!”. Of course, I know my shakes. Now if you ask me about coffee, I have no idea. I never drink the stuff.

I do occassionally have the odd cappucino when I’m in a cafe, but my tip on whether the coffee is good or not doesn’t really mean much. But my tip on milkshakes, YOU BETTER BELIEVE DAT!

Its like those Zagat stickers you see everywhere in New York. It means its been rated by Zagat. So what? It doesn’t mean it was rated highly. We need to be ranking these crowdsourced tips and leveraging off our social networks of people that are like us. We should be able to vote on those tips to increase that peer’s expertise (and vote down if they suck). The more that they frequent cafes, the higher the value should be. It doesn’t necessarily mean there is a direct correlation, but I would tend to trust someone that drinks a lot of coffee at cafes more than someone who drinks it occasionally.

Next post will be about pre check-in as opposed to post check-in service.

I’m out like the Celtics,

Matthew Ho

Nokia's camera phone

Phone Lifecycle vs Consumer Lifecycle

In the world of mobile, the product lifecycle has not really changed much. What has really changed is the consumer lifecycle. Sure phones aren’t made like they were used to like my first phone the NOKIA 5110*.

Our expectations, desires, and wants have dramatically shortened. This has been driven by a culture of consumerism, faster software releases, hardware tweaks and more choice of models backed by multimillion dollar marketing campaigns. Its a culture which Apple has thrived on, by introducing iPods that needed to be replaced every year and I believe this has had a flow on effect to the iPhone.

Hey I’m no different, I’m hanging out to get the HTC Desire. And I’ve only had my HTC Dream for a a bit more than a year. My previous Nokia phone lasted more than several years including several overseas trips. Now I need more heft, cause I want to run Froyo 2.2 and apps that require more processing power. I *need” it because I have an Android blog called GhostInTheDroid. Thats what I tell myself.

I’m out like the 5110

Matt Ho

*This was a classic, no nonsense phone that still works.

Its the idea that I don’t need to be at “my computer” to access all my information. I don’t need to carry around a USB stick, I just sent it to my gmail account. I can access my bookmarks via a bookmarking service like Delicious. I can access these bookmarks from any computer in any location. It is the same with google docs – any document that I make on google docs is available online. Google & delicious has become my computer, hence its so attractive.

2. Conversations eventually move to email – where the heck is Wave?

Recently, a friend of mine posted a status update on facebook. Then I responded to her status update. However, I wanted to talk to her privately so I direct messaged her on facebook and we started talking using that format. She then emailed my gmail account. However, since I was at work I wanted to use my work email – it just made it easier to consolidate the conversation in one place and keep it going

This happened with other peopel as well. We start talking over facebook email or twitter direct message, but if we want to maintain the conversation, it has to go to email. It is just more convenient, i can write longer message and I can search and go back. I don’t always want to have public convo’s or perhaps I want to send an attachment.

What I find interesting is that if someone wants to talk to me, the conversation will eventually move to email.

That is why I cannot wait for Google Wave to arrive. Something that allows for me to converge my social networks and email together.

You can also see that Facebook’s strategy is starting to move away from a gated community. Facebook connect is great little login tool for other websites. You don’t need to sign up to another website, you just use your existing login details. But this is a post for another time.

3. Mobile Banking - I can’t wait for this to become mainstream. On Monday, I had dinner with a few people and I paid for someone as they didn’t have enough cash on them. The next day they transferred the money to my bank account. Another situation occured, where I sold a friend an entertainment book but they didn’t have enough money so they transferred the money later that day.

What would have been awesome is some kind of payment system for banking to occur on the spot. This is where mobile banking can come in. If we are at the dinner table and someone owes you money, they could transfer the money over their mobiles. Now mobile banking does exists via apps on iphone or simply logging in to your bank account on your internet enabled phone. However, it is not seen as secure nor is it widely adopted. Its actually been available for around 2 years, but hardly anyone uses it  - only early adopters.

This is better than smart cards with stored value. Having a phone which can transfer money would enable micropayments to be made. Pay your friend $20 for movie ticket, or $5 for buying you a beer, or split the bill and pay them $40 for a meal. A daugher ask her father for $100 to go shopping. Instead of reaching into his wallet for cash he can zap her the money via his mobile.

Studies show that if you lose your wallet, on average it takes around 2 hours for you to realise. If you lose your phone it takes 20mins for you to realise it is lost. And for those that say its not safe to do phone banking – people said the same thing when credit cards and ATM’s were introduced. It just needs wider acceptance and adoption – and this will occur over time. We are living in a cashless society and this will eventually become the norm.

4. Digital Radio is here but not widely adopted

I spoke to Daniel about this a few months ago and it has piqued my interest again as a contact of mine has started selling digital radios. It will be like digital TV. The signal will be clearer than analogue. Ability to go back and replay the broadcast. Essentially you need, a digital radio to be able to get the signal. You can also listen to radio stations overseas. Also, digital radio will have information that is broadcast with the sound – words, pictures, links, etc… Its a more interactive version of radio.

The radio sets aren’t cheap – they retail for about $280+ and none of them look particularly visually appealing. At the moment, its more for early adopters. This stuff is standard in Europe though.

It actually only went live in May 2009, so watch this space.

5. The possible uses of social media on B2B relationships: This is somethign I will explore in another post. TBC.

I’m out like software on your computer,

Matt

Location based information is the future.

Information by itself can be useful. But information in context is so much more powerful. Having information readily available, when you need it and tailored for where you are located significantly increases its relevance.

A device that is powering location based information is the availability of the internet on mobile handsets. I recently discovered how useful this was when using some new apps on my android phone. A little light bulb went off in my head.

Here are two examples.

1. Quickpedia: Essentially this is a wikipedia client for my phone. It allows me to quickly look up information. One really useful section or tab in the app, allows me to see information about the area I am in. It uses my GPS location and grabs wikipedia information about the landmarks near me and the general surrounding area. That is incredibly fun and useful.

2. Places directory: This is an app made by googlers in their 20% time. based on my GPS location, it tells me about the following that is nearby – bars, restaurants, ATM’s, hotels, cafes, etc… It also gives me the reviews and ratings of these places, approximate distance from where I am and a one touch button to call the place! Amazing stuff. It pulls in all the information from google maps.

Location based social networks

I believe that having social networks down to the granular levels of location e.g. neighbours talking to each other will be the next step. It is a logical extension of what happens in the real world. Though you may not really talk to your neighbour in real life, you may be more willing to converse with a neighbour who might still be viewed as a stranger online.

Whilst its great to talk to people on twitter, facebook, et al from Sydney, Melb, USA etc…I would have also have a use for information about my neighbourhood from locals about where to buy the best coffee, what people think about the drycleaner, walking in certain streets may be dangerous, etc…

Whilst large online communities are popular, we’re seeing a move to smaller microcosms of activity like Ning. People forming their own social networks based on common interests. Locality will be one of these interest groups. For example, an online community for Bondi residents, North Shore, Paramatta, Geelong, etc…

I’m out like your local neighbourhood watch,

Matt

Check out this video. It shows off the qwerty keyboard with predictive text and corrective text. 

[viddler id=c1d129fe&w=437&h=332]

The release date is 1 May 2009  for the UK and they are accepting orders for it now. There’s been a lot of chatter about it on blogs, tech and gadget websites, and video demo’s are popping up everywhere on youtube, vidder, etc…

Why am I excited about the Android? Because the platform is opensource so it opens up to the possibility of more applications. And you know developers can come up with some crazy apps! It will be superior to the iphone. 

At the moment, the release date is set for the following countries and this is what they are getting:

UK – White version

Germany – black version

Italy – black and white version (why?!!!)

Spain – white version

HTC Magic - Google Android phone

The obvious question is – when will it be released in Australia?  There are no plans at the moment. I couldn’t find anything on the internet. Why am I not suprised? I checked the vodaphone website in Australia, they don’t even list HTC phones on there!! Optus is still flogging off the G1 (first version) aka the HTC Dream. According to ZDNeT:

“As with the Dream, HTC will be announcing the Magic for different countries only after it has secured operator partnerships. Vodafone will be selling it in Europe but there have been no announcements for Australia yet.”

#vodaphoneaustraliafail

I’m out like the G1, 

Matt Ho

In short, Yammer is a text messaging application similar to Twitter or Facebook status updates. I’ve spoken about Yammer previously on this blog. It is geared more towards organisations / corporates because it allows for closed networks. Whereas Twitter is open to the world.

Much like Twitter, it allows you to write a short message and have a profile page. But the advantages of Yammer is that it is a closed group only open to those you invite or on your company’s email domain. For example, our Yammer is only open to Sydney employees of Next Digital. The advantage of Yammer is that you can broadcast to the group and get responses immediately. You can obviously do this over email as well but often there are too many emails flying around and some people are included and some are not. Also, its hard to keep track of conversations. Yammer groups the conversations together, and you can see the replies in a threaded view.

You can call me MC Yammer

Yammer kicks ass because it reduces email clutter. It enables conversations to develop and it keeps responses short (KISS principle in full effect). While twitter only allows for 140 characters, Yammer has no limitation. You can also add attachments to Yammer posts, using browse function or you can drag and drop.

Other cool advantages of Yammer:

• Ability to create subgroups: We have a group for basketball team, and this is where the real action happens. We discuss practice discussions, admin, jerseys, who’s playing, etc..It allows for collaboration and dynamic discussion.

• Follow and unfollow people: Yammer actually will suggest to you who you should follow. You don’t have to follow everyone in your company’s network. By following certain people, those conversations will be prominent and reduces all the clutter/  spam out there in the Yammesphere. The suggestions from Yammer will get smarter over time, but they are supposedly based on the organisational hierarchy and reporting relationships, and who your colleagues are following.

• Create a profile: similar to a company intranet, you can fill out your bio like education, career history, who you report to and who you work with. Not many people in my company have filled it out, but hopefully that will change.

• Desktop app: Yammer is web service (like Twitter or facebook you can login). But those cool cats out there like myself have downloaded the desktop app and I keep it open all day. I guess its similar to Tweetdeck for Twitter or MSN browser. It uses Adobe Air, which is very slick.

• The conversations are searchable and taggable. If you use a hashtag before a word e.g. #basketball , it will recognise that as a keyword and will tag that conversation. I can choose to follow all conversations that have #basketball. This is quite useful if you have a bunch of people talking about a specific client or an activity. Conversations are easily searchable using Yammer’s search engine.

• Sync it with google chat in gmail. So if I’m using gmail, and I want to post something, I open the Yammer chat box and post from there.

• Send posts & recieve posts via SMS – I have set it up but I don’t want to pay for it and I’m not sure if I want work stuff sent to my phone. But the option is there.

• Creating a more open and collaborative culture within the workplace. People are posting one to many conversation points, and getting more opinions. I think its less inhibiting than sending out a group email. A lot of times, if I’m sending out an email to the whole office, I ‘ll look at it several times, edit and think will this be ok? Whereas a post on Yammer is a microblogging service, 140 characters is not going to kill me. I’m going to get a lot more useful suggestions asking an office of 30 people in the open then a small select group of people.

The Yammer Formula

I believe that Yammer has taken Twitter’s model and corporatised it. It could be one of the few Twitter type services that actually can make money. I don’t see how Twitter itself can make money off the service it provides. But Yammer charges for customisation, secure domain access using https (hypertext transfer protocol over secure socket layer) thus encrypting it like a bank website, full admin access, etc…. It charges something like $1 per user, but larger groups are offered as a discount.

I think Yammer will work effectively in our office because its not that big. We have roughly 25-30 employees and only a 1/3 are active users. Once more people start getting more active, it will be even better. It will be interesting to see how it run in a much larger environment like say our Melbourne office which as 150 people. In general, experiments like this work better on a smaller scale and there is inherently less clutter to begin with and you know everyone on the network relatively well.

The role of the Yammer Evangelist

I’m still yet to get a really good definition of an evangelist that sticks in my mind. But I believe the purpose as described to me, is to encourage adoption of Yammer, become the guru/troubleshooter and answer people’s question, and lead in it use. I also have started sending out posts on how to optimise its use as well and to stay up to date with what’s happening by reading the blog/website/other sources and participating in external discussions.

Bringing the balloon pants into fashion

I’ve actually read everything on the Yammer website as well as all the blog posts, so that part shouldn’t be hard. I’ve also commented on TechCrunch’s article on Yammer’s $5m capital raising as well as an article in the NY Times blog. You get a lot of interesting feedback from other users in external companies. For example, someone said you should encourage staff to post 2-3 times a day, and its a good way to see what everyone is up to. I might see someone working on a particular project which I read about last week, and then if I have a question I will shoot them a yammer post or IM (instant message them).

I’ll post another update in a month or so and discuss further developments.

I’m out like email clutter,

Matthew Ho.

p.s. Yammer also won TechCrunch top prize in 2008