User Acceptance is the biggest challenge for Location Based Services (LBS)

The promise of LBS is providing useful information and services at right place and right time using demographic, contextual and location awareness via the mobile. Primary applications are mostly in advertising, navigation and social networking. LBS applications have garnered the most hype since the beginning,  and yet, critical mass eludes them.

With the technical challenges more or less resolved, I believe user acceptance, owing primarily due to privacy and security concerns,  is the biggest challenge it needs to overcome. LBS apps face distrust by users owing to the loss of personal freedom and control over the technology e.g. intrusive advertising, commercial pressure, loss of autonomy, etc.

It is crucial for the service providers to maintain a level of trust with users by acting transparently with regards to personal privacy translating into strict application of a code of ethics on the service use combined with clear and simple information for consumers on the usages that could be made of their location data / ensure consumers have the means of controlling what they can and cannot do i.e. right not to be located, not to be disconnected, choose who will have access to his data, etc.

Has Twitter crossed the chasm?

Image by Matt Hamm via Flickr

When I came across Twitter about an year back, I was bewildered. So I can put 140 characters on a web site to tell the world what I am doing at the moment… Who cares? And why would I want to know what others happen to be doing at the exact moment they decide to share it with the world? However, there were quite a few people using Twitter so I decided to investigate Why we tweet and discovered it’s quite valuable both personally and for business. Ever since I have been an avid twitterer.

But something changed recently… all of sudden Twitter exploded in the mainstream, it even made it to the cover of TIME. Everyone from kids to businesses to politicians to governments are twittering. A few examples:

• Governator Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) twittered about an emergency plane landing. Not only did he tweet, but he took a photo of his plane and sent that out too
• Al Gore gets a million followers
• It played a big role in the overwhelming coverage of the #IranElection
• Dell took news confernence questions via Twitter
• The Israeli Consulate out of New York participated in a “citizen’s press conference” using Twitter

More often than not, Twitter is breaking the big story. Much like Youtube became the way to share video, Twitter is quickly becoming our open public wire service.

Twitter is beginning to change the way we communicate through crowd sourcing. By being connected and transparent we can get a sense of how humanity is feeling, thinking, and experiencing our world. It is only a matter of time before Tweeting is as well-known as Googling.

The trigger

I believe it started with Ashton Kutcher publicly challenging CNN to become the first to get a million followers on twitter. CNN of course obliged, thinking they’d use their media muscle to get viewers to follow them to victory. But Ashton had an ace up his sleeve, he went on The Oprah Winfrey Show to evangelise twitter, and as expected, got America’s moms to help him gallop across the finish line well before CNN. The drama during, and after these events, ensured wallpaper coverage in the US media and it wasn’t long before everyone in the US was hooked, with the rest of the world playing catch up.

Do you think Twitter has crossed the chasm?

New to twitter? Here’s a tip; answer “what’s important to me” instead of “what am i doing” – Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Arnold Schwarzenegger Twitpics Emergency Landing (mashable.com)
• CNN Loses Ground to Crowdsourced News (conversationagent.com)
• Tweeting from “the Barricades” in Iran (themoderatevoice.com)
• Ashton Kutcher: King of Twits (manodogs.blogspot.com)

Photo sharing: Facebook leads Flickr by a long margin

Flickr had been the leading Photo sharing site for quite a while but off late it’s been trumped by Facebook. Flickr adds about 3 million photos every day as opposed to Facebook which adds around 30 million photos every day. Social networks, it seems have come up as preferred locations for sharing photos as opposed to the photo sharing services.

Facebook Photos saw over 153 million uniques in Jan '09, while #2 Flickr saw only 66.7 million

Stan Schroeder of Mashable explains

Flickr has many additional features, and the images can be bigger, but ultimately people use Facebook for the same thing – sharing photos with their friends. Add to that the fact that photo management on Facebook is very elegantly done, with some simple editing options such as rotating and tagging added into the mix, and you’ve got yourself a nice, large photo sharing site for not-too-demanding users – and all your friends are already using it

I’d say it makes perfect sense. You’d like to share those moments with your friends, and they’re already there on social networks… why bother with an additional service… so I guess Youtube is next.

What do you think?

Understanding ‘User Needs’ a Mobile Social Network can satisfy

Mobile phone enables real-time feedback from the users and enables him to live in the moment. When you are surfing the Web with a stationary PC at home, you are either accessing information about some past events, or some real-time information about some event a distance away. In contrast, with mobile phone you can take part in the event, capture it, provide comments and share all this with others. Mobile phone therefore provides richer social interaction. The core of mobility is not movement but context. Adding context-awareness to services brings about complexity, but at the same time lots and lots of possibilities.

In a previous post, I had written about a few mobile social networking scenarios. Now before we go designing something, it’s important to understand the user needs that the product will satisfy. Here I want to put forth my take on what user needs I felt a mobile social network can satisfy based on which I created those scenarios.

• Get updates on what’s going on with my social circle whenever I have time or feel the need to check on them.
  
• Conversation is what the whole deal is about. It’s easy to see who’s available to chat right now and a conversation can be started anytime/anywhere.
• Transmit my location to let others know where I am at the moment so they can interact with me based on that
• Find out if there are any friends near my location.
  This would be better executed with a map as user gets a visual reference of proximity of his friends, and can figure out exactly where all of them are easily in reference to his own location, much more powerful than say 10 street addresses. Narrowing down or expanding the field is useful if to get him those friends in range with whom he can interact with at that moment
• Instantly share my thoughts or pics/videos with my social circle and get instant feedback from those who may be tuned in.
• I’m at a location and curious about what others have done at or said about this location, phone can bring up photos, videos of the location and comments entered for the location
• As the number of friends increase, the noise level increases and it’s very tiresome to sort through them on a mobile. If there’s a person or group that user is most interested in at any time, he shouldn’t have to parse through the entire feed, he should be able to get updates just from that person or group.
• All said and done, privacy is a big concern. There are some things I can share with all my friends, others I only want to share with close friends and some I want to share only with family. These concerns must be addressed and user should be put in total control of his privacy settings.
• For a mobile social network to be of any use to me, it must work on my friend’s phones as well.

I feel a mobile social network is best implemented when integrated with the Phonebook. See Finally… Phonebook gets social for why I think so and advances being made on this front.

Finally… Phonebook gets social

I have always believed that mobile phone is the best platform for socializing because the Phonebook already contains all the contacts that you care about, now you might go on binges and vampire bites with your 1000+ contacts on Facebook or MySpace, but those in your Phonebook (and email contact list) are the one’s that really matter.

I believe the best (or widely accepted) mobile social network will be the one which will integrate with the mobile’s Phonebook. I’m glad to see advances are being made in this area by Zyb. What’s important is that it needs to support the phones that my friends use, till then it’s of no use to me. Good news is that guys at Zyb understand this and support the widest range of phones that I’ve seen either directly or via 3rd parties.

Here are a few things Zyb enables:

Where are you

If your friends allow their location to be visible to you, it points them out on a map. It also shows a list of friends near you

What are you up to

Shows your friends’ Twitter and Facebook status. Also shows your Flickr photo updates and blog updates among other things. There’s even an icon that indicates if someone’s available, busy etc

What’s your new number

If your friends change their number or Avatar pic, it’s automatically updated in your ZYB phonebook

This is good, but I want more…

Now if only this could be integrated with the native phonebook on the mobile, and if someone could merge this with my email contacts so I have “one” device independent contact list

Has Social Media changed the rules of the game (LinkedIn Responses)

In a previous post, I had argued that Social Media has changed the rules of the game. I had posted this question on LinkedIn to get a feel from people in the community and received several thought provoking and interesting insights.

I’ve segregated the responses FOR and AGAINST the topic to give you a balanced view.

Yes, Social Media has changed the game

The marketing rules have changed completely.

To keep it very high level, people can get everything they want when they want now. They also can be advertised in a non-invasive, perfectly targeted way. They can be engaged.

People no longer recognize your ability to interrupt what they’re doing… since most of what they’re doing is totally on demand. Standard commercials, pre-roll ads, popups, etc. Totally going to move over the next 10 years to a back-seat. They will still exist in some forms, but they won’t be serious contenders.

So, marketing is changing 100% and MOST of that change is driven by social media. [Founder at Pandemic Labs]

Yes, the rules have changed. The proliferation of social media sites across the Internet is evidence to this, but more so the shift in Web users’ mindsets. Users expect to contribute content to their favorite brand’s website. We want to create a conversation with people and companies we like (and don’t like). We want to be part of the product or service experience.

Companies that are still resistant to this are simply avoiding the inevitable. Anyone can discuss you or your company online now. There are multiple outlets, and this scares some slow-moving people and corporations, yet they do very little to compensate. [VP of Client Services at Vanguard Technology]

Its not really about the rules changing in marketing…its just that the power of expression is all set to be utilized to its fullest…and that’s lethal…you can either spend time building opinion or changing them…but not doing anything is like approaching a dead end at a high speed with no brakes….[Passionate public relations professional, Freelance writer, Livewire, Social media expert]

People want to communicate; businesses want to make money. Nothing different there I think. What social media is doing is looking at making these end-points easier to achieve; this is already happening on the first and potentially so on the second. So social media is not really a business objective in its own right, it is an enabler. A very powerful, democratizing one, but an enabler still.

Yes, it already is changing the rules of the game and I don’t think it is a passing fad any more than the phone, or business computing is. Eventually it will become a commodity and will be something that you must do / have in order to operate in business. [Programme Manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers]

No, Not Really

The essential rules, build relationships and provide value, have not changed. The vehicle moves faster and empowers more people [Founder at Total Success Teams]

The rules have not really changed. Theoretically everyone is now empowered, but for all practical purposes a few people rise to the top of the heap, just as it was before. Perhaps it’s easier to get information today – I don’t have to trudge down to the library and open a book in the reference section – but you still need to know what to do with the information you receive. [Customer-Facing Business, Technical, Requirements Expertise]

Note: These are some of the responses I received. You can visit the original LinkedIn question to view all the responses.

Has Social Media changed the rules of the game

Jay Deragon wrote an interesting piece. He compares Social Media to Autobahn where there are no rules for speeding, you could actually cause an accident if you drove slow, which is against the socially accepted norm of driving within the speed limit and slow is good.

Is The Social Web Like the Autobahn?

In many ways yes. For businesses, marketers and individuals the first mental shift is recognizing that the old rules of the game will not enable you to play the new game. Here is a top ten list of how the game and subsequent unspoken rules have changed:

1. Marketing and PR spin is considered anti-social
2. Being wrong is accepted as long as you admit it
3. Your revenue comes from “Free”
4. If you don’t understand the dynamics don’t engage until you do
5. Doing the wrong things can cost you more than you ever anticipated.
6. Doing things right enables you to earn more than you can predict
7. Empowering people (your customers, employees, suppliers and market) to win is how you win
8. The mindset of the game players is win win
9. The playing field has no boundaries
10. The game time is web time which is never ending cycles of now

One last very important and critical rule. People don’t like playing your game

What do you think?

What I want from ‘Local Search’ on my mobile

Image via Wikipedia

Another one in the “What I want…” series. I’m focusing on ‘Local Search on mobile’ and not ‘Search on mobile’ because people searching from their mobiles will usually be doing so on the go and hence would mostly be focusing on local content like searching for something or someplace close by (or someone, but that’s part of mobile social networking, although I do see a huge overlap between these two).

‘Local Search’ is a space “begging” for attention. There are a few players out there but there’s so much more than can be done to give a better experience to the users.

Study analyzing movement of people

Before we delve into the scenarios, let’s take a look at the findings of a recent study published in Nature which analyzed the movement of 100K people.

One key startling discovery was that “despite the diversity of their travel history, humans follow simple reproducible patterns” which in plainspeak means that people tend to visit the same places again and again.

Does this mean that local search on mobiles is a doomed concept? I tend to believe that there’s scope for services that enable us to interact better with our local environment. And the need for local search/service becomes even more important when people do wander out to new places.

Location brings context and this is what we need to focus on most.

Pre-requisites

• Needless to say, I shouldn’t have to tell the application where I am, it’s supposed to know that. Andrew Grill rightly points out“True transparent local search will arrive when I don’t have to tell the application that I want to be found – it finds me and caches the location ahead of me needing it”
• I should be able to search from whichever medium is comfortable to me (via SMS, Voice, Browser or Native-App/Widget). This will ensure that the service is available universally and not dependent on type of phone (as the tier increases, the experience gets richer)
• Since we are focusing on location, maps will play an important role here, wherever possible, every result has to be mappable with directions to the end-point from where I am right now.
• To enable a ’socially enriched’ experience, I should be able find out what others who visited the location/business had to say about it (or pictures/videos they shared). More importantly, If any of my friends had anything to say about it.

A few Scenarios

• I’m looking for something to eat/drink and I enter say ‘pizza’ or ‘Chinese’ and I see listing of relevant businesses around me, their specials for the day are listed along with the prices. I call them to check for vacancy or make a reservation. I can check out their menu while on the way and make my choice before I reach there.
• I’m out shopping for say ‘Jeans’, I again get a listing of stores around me with the item prioritized by those who have a Sale on.
• If I’m looking to catch the latest movie, I’m shown the theaters around me with time-slots in which its airing and option to book the ticket from the mobile itself. Alternatively, If I’m interested in a particular theater, I’m shown the movies it’s playing (with ratings) along with the time slots (and the option to buy the ticket, of course)

Interaction Design
Like always, Interaction design will play a key role in enabling the right experience. Unable to suppress the designer in me, I can’t help but list some basic design elements of the main screen of the web-page/native-app

• A text-box with a label “What are you looking for?”
• Options to go to primary categories like “Food”, “Movies” etc which when clicked come up with relevant location-centric results with the behavior specified in scenarios
• Option to check “Where I am right now” on the map

Much more is possible with Context Awareness
Context awareness has the potential to enable much more than local search. Let’s say I’m in Delhi where it’s sunny and going to Mumbai where it’s raining. When I reach Mumbai the app understands the change in environment (via say local weather update) and suggest that I buy an umbrella and lists/displays-on-map nearby shops where I can buy it from.

Note: A few things I mentioned here are not possible currently due to technology/regulatory/infrastructure constraints, but I think those hurdles will be overcome soon.

Related articles

• Local Services For Local People [via Zemanta]
• Richer Local Search Results in Google Maps [via Zemanta]

And now ….. Nanoblogging!

Stumbled upon this post by Josh Lowensohn which talks about a new service in town….Adocu

It’s a Twitter clone. There’s no 140 character limit, but spaces are not allowed, you have to fit everything in one word like “whatingodsnameisthis”.

They call it Nanoblogging.

I’m a bit skeptical about this but then I was skeptical about Twitter as well and look how it turned out. I think I’ll wait around to see if a community builds and go from there.

Couple of voices from Twitterverse

bloggi no, nanoblogging seems to be stretching things a bit too far

lgr I understand what they are trying to do. Don’t know if I would use it, but I did not like Twitter at first

codyrobert I kinda agree with @lgr Didn’t like twitter to start. But really, one word? Would work in chamorro lang.

martinpolley no-it-does-not-people-will-just-use-hyphens-instead-of-spaces-wonder-if-theres-a-character-limit?

sachendra @martinpolly there’s no character limit. I am a bit skeptical but look at how twitter turned out. Its hard to say anything

martinpolley @sachendra Your last sentence is very appropriate -”It’s hard to say anything.” Exactly

What do you think?

What I want from my Mobile Social Network

In a previous post Social Networking and the Mobile Phone, I had discussed how mobile can extend the reach of a social network and open up new ways of socializing. I have gone through a couple of mobile social networks out there and they are nowhere near my expectations. So I decided to list down a few scenarios for you to consider.

Scenarios

• I open the client from phone menu, it opens quickly and I get recent photos/updates from my friends.
• I can easily send updates from main page itself.
• I open a map and my friends are mapped onto their locations in the map, I can narrow down the map by giving a radius of say 1 KM, 5 KM, 10 KM.
• I can easily start conversations with my friends
• I can classify friends in groups/categories and choose how much of my profile is visible to which group
• I can follow updates from a single friend or a group/category
• I am at a location and I can choose to see who else from the network is there, I can see their profiles and nudge someone I want to connect with. If they nudge back I can start a conversation.
• When I post something, I can also send the update to any other networks I’m active in as well, including say Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed.
• I take photos and videos from the camera and select post to <network> from the menu, I add my comments, geo-tags are automatically added and media is uploaded
• I enter (or point to) a location in the map; and photos, videos of the location and comments entered for the location are shown in a map indicating exact positions of photo/video/comment entry.
• My location is automatically updated. I can choose the level of detail of the location i.e. update only city, or just the locality or exact location. I can also choose to go “offline” where my location will not be published.
• If I just want to send a text update, I am able to do so via SMS.

Listed above are a few things I want to be able to do, now here’s something I don’t want to do - Check for compatibility with my phone, download a client etc; it should just be there on the main menu. Social networks that tie up with carriers and/or handset manufactures will be better positioned than those who are not.

This is just the beginning

This is just the “What to implement” part (and that too off the top of my head), what’s equally important is “How it’s implemented”. This is where Visual and Interaction design will play a key role in designing the experience. Making sure interface is clear (as in not cluttered) and visually appealing, user is easily able to do things that he wants to do (as in relevant options are readily available, contextual navigation will play a part here) etc etc. Oh and don’t forget performance….oh yes, engineering has a part to play as well