iPhone, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile… Oh My!

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

No one cares about the platform, they care about the experience – right?

In days gone by, there was (and probably still is) a lot of talk about the platform itself. However, gone are the days where you should care about the platform. We have moved from a society stuck in our love-hate relationship with the platform to that of desire for seamless delivery of a solution – we are looking for results.

InformationWeek predicts 2009 as “The Year of the Mobile Apps” in their December 22 issue. With Apple stepping onto the scene with the App Store, Apple has moved more than 300 million mobile apps from the store right to your hand. The experience is easy and painless: we get what we want, when we want it, right in our hand – now!

The numbers don’t lie. Apple has successfully captured 23 percent of the market according to a ChangeWave report in December, with Palm and Motorola suffering losses of almost half of their respective market share: Palm suffered a drop from 18 to 9 percent, while Motorola shed 3 percent to crash land at 4 percent.

Windows Mobile slid precipitously, allowing Apple to overtake it in worldwide sales, and oddly enough, there were no numbers released for Smartphones running the new Google Android OS. However estimates released by HTC put initial sales at approximately 1 million units sold as of December 31, 2008.

RIM Still On Top

Still on top however is Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the recently released BlackBerry Storm. The recent launch of its new platform helped RIM edge up 3 percent to perch at a rocky 43 percent market share. This positive number was only shadowed by the fact that Apple continues to gain on it’s rival by leaps and bounds.

RIM took notice, and architected a $19 million deal to by Chalk Media. Chalk Media, perhaps best known for its Mobile Chalkboard application, is seen as a vehicle for helping RIM deliver rich media to perspective business and government clients. What’s the attraction, you ask?

RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) allows organizations, large and small, to effectively manage mobile devices across the organization. Windows Mobile and Apple’s iPhone only have rudimentary controls for the most simplistic of data needs… and no centralized controls from which application deployment can be administered. This is a big drawback for companies wishing to actually manage how their information is accessed.

Oracle and Information Builders have built “enterprise app interfaces” for the iPhone, in the hope this will allow subscribing enterprises to effectively deploy applications via this console, but many companies cite difficulties in working with Apple to deploy software via the App Store.

The Take Away

So the takeaway is that Apple and RIM appear to have the greatest lead in this game for US based sales. Apple demonstrated that a solid, dependable platform with an intuitive interface to purchase apps is a solid combination, but is still truly lacking in enterprise-rich features it needs to gain true acceptance. While RIM maintains a strong lead because of its stance on security and centralized management, figures indicate that only 33 percent of Storm users were “very satisfied” with their experience of the device, as opposed to 77 percent of purchasers of the original iPhone.

These numbers clearly indicate RIM’s BlackBerry has a long way to go before it can consider itself a sure-thing, but it is making plays to remain viable in both the business and consumer markets by latching onto the concept of mobile application development and delivery in hopes of staving off Apple’s momentum.

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Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. To learn more about Ken, visit his about page. You may also find Ken on FriendFeed, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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10 Predictions for 2009 In the World of Tech

Following on to last year's 10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech and the recent results: My 2008 Tech Predictions Look Bad As Year Nears a Close.

1) The Real-Time Web Will Become Critical for News and Information Discovery

Delayed news will no longer be acceptable for early adopters, who will gravitate to the quickest sources of news, wherever they may be. As tools like Twitter Search and FriendFeed real-time offer people to rapidly broadcast their updates, reactions and news with true immediacy, a segment of the population will adopt these real-time sources and favor them ahead of delayed or filtered engines, including RSS, and of course, edited mass media. At the same time, while many of us early adopters may be fairly noisy about this development, we will remain in the significant minority, even as the mainstream becomes more aware of these options.

2) Businesses Will Be Expected to Be On Social Media If They Have Web Sites

In the mid and late 1990s, there was a land rush for domain names, as every company jumped in and procured Web addresses and built out Web sites to establish their electronic home. Although many of these sites were rudimentary at best, they knew they needed to be there to participate. In 2009, it will be expected that brands and businesses will be similarly established on social media, using tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and YouTube.

3) Apple Will Introduce A Succession Plan for Steve Jobs as CEO

While Steve Jobs is not likely in imminent danger, the continued unsettled rumors, as well as a good level of common sense will push Apple to present a succession plan for Jobs, which will not take place immediately, but over the space of a few years. One to three names of potential in-house replacements will be named, as well as a timeline, as Steve fades to the background, but continues to wield tremendous power over Apple's vision and deliverables.

4) TechCrunch Will Acquire VentureBeat or Silicon Alley Insider

Mike Arrington's tech blog continues to be the influence leader in its space. Both VentureBeat and Silicon Alley Insider have forged strong brands with a financial bent which would be good additions for the TechCrunch brand as Arrington and team look to extend their umbrella and wrap up what he considers to be the best blogs. SAI in particular would offer an East Coast/financial bent that the Silicon Valley-based TechCrunch is currently not known for.

5) Android Will Have Less than 20% the Sales of iPhone in 2009

While commoditized PCs managed to put pressure on Macintosh and relegate Apple to a small market share percentage the Cupertino company is still trying to recover from back in the 1980s, history will not repeat itself, as Google's Android partners will be unable to knock the iPhone off its perch as the must-have smart phone for power Web consumers. BlackBerry will continue having a significant share in the enterprise, but it will continue to be iPhone eroding its share, not the Android, especially given the unmatched array of applications available for the iPhone which Android will not be able to match.

6) A Major Alternative to FeedBurner Will Emerge As the Service Stagnates

Google's mismanagement of FeedBurner has many people frustrated with how the feed service has been run since its acquisition last year, as the service continues to see slowness, outages, and recently went dark, shutting down their blog and being gobbled up by the AdSense team. Competitors will emerge, enabling bloggers to move their FeedBurner subscriber base and historical statistics to their new platform.

7) FriendFeed and Twitter Will Both Be Independent Through 2009

Despite Twitter's recent dance with Facebook, it will rely on its existing venture capital funding and find revenue that enables the company to stay afloat at least through the end of the year. FriendFeed, similarly, will not be acquired or merge with any other service prior to the end of 2009. The company, if necessary, will instead do a second round of funding, with its own internal sources providing much of the capital.

8) Companies Will Continue Budget and Staff Cuts Through the Third Quarter of 2009

The layoff parade in 2009 will not be limited to unprofitable companies, small companies or practically any category of companies. The doom and gloom that have hit the financial markets, advertising, real estate and almost every sector will continue through the first half of the year, before starting to see a rebound in the third quarter. You will see strong companies like Microsoft lay off thousands, and practically everyone will not be renewing contract positions that have concluded - even Google and Apple.

9) An Extremist Group Will Manage to Take Down or Deface the White House Web Site

America's political climate is extremely polarized, following the conclusion of two extremely divisive terms. As Barack Obama moves into the White House, the very features that make him a "first" will also make him and his administration the chief target for some incredibly angry and hate-filled groups. One will somehow manage to access the WhiteHouse.gov site and manipulate it this year.

10) eTrade, Digg, StumbleUpon, Skype and Yahoo! Will All Be Sold.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. eBay will want to ditch its non-core assets like StumbleUpon and Skype (I made the sale of StumbleUpon a prediction last year too). Digg, losing momentum, will sell cheap. Yahoo! will eventually be purchased by News Corporation, AOL, or even Google, assuming it passes regulatory approval, by the end of the year. Microsoft, still insulted, won't be back to the table.

You Can't Afford to Lose Mobile Readers

By Daniel J. Pritchett of Sharing at Work (FriendFeed/Twitter)

The continued market growth of iPhones, Netbooks, Blackberries and other tools make mobile browser support more and more important.  Here’s a quick thought experiment for you: If you’re running site analytics, look and see how many of your viewers run a resolution lower than 800x600.  Nearly 6% of all visitors to this site are using these low-resolution devices.  Most of them are using the 320x396 screen of the iPhone and iPod touch family.

Respected publisher and all-around media thinker Tim O’Reilly insists that the tipping point has come:  “… if we're trying to get ahead of the curve, we need to think first about the phone, and then think about the PC browser experience as the add-on.”  Google blogger Matt Cutts succinctly demonstrates the worst-case scenario in mobile browsing:  If you’ve got a flash-only site, those iPhone users are just going to surf around you without a second thought.  Can you afford to lose them?  Not for long.How your site could be frustrating mobile usersGreat, so you’re now committed to making your site as mobile friendly as possible!  You’ll need to understand some common frustrations mobile users encounter when viewing sites and how to deal with them.  I’ll list the ones I’ve picked up in my years of browsing on handheld devices:

Load time:  Many contemporary blogs include third-party (such as this site and my own) include sidebar widgets, third party commenting systems, animated subscriber counts, and plenty of other things that load off-site.  You’re also likely to see an image or three in every post because images are known to increase user interest in reading posts.

Readability: Pile all of the widgets into a layout that’s designed to be read at 1024x768 or higher and you’ll find that you’re seriously taxing the bandwidth and processing power of the average mobile phone.

Navigation: Each mobile device has its own sacrifices in terms of navigation.  The iPhone’s multitouch screen makes zooming and resizing easy but iPhone users sorely miss a real live tactile keyboard.  You won’t find many iPhone/iPod users willing to type out more than a few lines at a time.  Other phones like the T-Mobile G1 have real keyboards but no multitouch.  The lowest common denominator of phones (that are going to be browsing at all) is probably something like my Motorola RAZR.  The RAZR lets me flip through lo-fi pages using the equivalent of a five-key keyboard: up, down, left, right, enter.Start making your blog mobile friendly today!If you’re here to learn how to make your blog more mobile friendly, you’re in luck.  The relatively simple format of most blogs – one post at a time in chronological order – lends itself well to the task of adding a mobile layout.  Here are a few of the more common blogging platforms and tips on how to “mobile-ize” them:

• WordPress has a series of plugins that will ease the process for you.  I use MobilePress and WPTouch.  Beware that you’ll have trouble integrating WPTouch alongside the popular WP Super Cache plugin. 

• Blogger doesn’t have the plugin architecture WordPress does, so you’ll have to either work a lot harder or settle for less in terms of mobile supoport.  Intersquash will “iPhoneize” any site that has an RSS feed at no charge.  Here’s the Intersquashed iPhone-friendly version of LouisGray.com:  You’ll notice that Intersquash shows only the latest items on a feed.  This won’t help a mobile reader who comes to your site looking for an older article. 

• TypePad doesn’t seem to have built-in mobile browsing support but there are some tips on providing your own mobile-friendly stylesheets at TypePad support.  This knowledge base article is from early 2007 so there may be some updated information on this front. 

• Tumblr has a dead-simple “mobile” feature – access it by adding “/mobile” to the end of your tumblog’s URL.  Check out the mobile view on Fred Wilson’s tumblog for a nice example.  The only complaint I have about Tumblr’s mobile support is that it strips out any customization you’ve done, such as adding the ability to comment on your posts via DISQUS or IntenseDebate.

Where should we go next? Now that we’ve started on the road towards making our sites more mobile friendly, let’s plan out our next steps.  At my blog I’ve noticed that the MobilePress and WPTouch themes put a great face on my posts, but they ignore a lot of my favorite user convenience features.  My “Share this” widget and the “related posts you might enjoy” plug-in don’t appear for mobile browsers.  It would be great to get more of these features supported by the mobile “face” of our sites.  Maybe I can track down the authors of some of these plug-ins and see what we can do!

Perhaps more important is the question of providing accessibility to the disabled.  How easily will blind or deaf visitors be able to read your content and navigate your site?  They’ll likely come armed with a few tools of their own to aid them in reading your posts but they surely deserve at least as much of your time and consideration as do iPhone users.  I personally have not yet looked into this on my blog, but I feel I ought to make it my next task.  The World Wide Web consortium has a Web Accessibility Initiative to point us in the right direction.  Good luck, and thanks for reading!

Read more by Daniel J. Pritchett at Sharing at Work

A Reformed Early Adopter Addresses the 3G iPhone Undecideds

By Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits (FriendFeed/Twitter)

I used to be an early adopter, especially with all things mobile. I had to have everything first. From the Treo family (300, 600, 650), Hitachi's monster PocketPC, Samsung's compact Palm, MotoQ, I was addicted to all multi-tasking (mainly CDMA) phones and wasted invested a lot. I blame my Japanese genes, since in Japan, we go through electronics like new parents go through diapers. (That analogy was for you, LG)

Then, I grew-up. I was the cautious consumer for a few years, waiting for feedback before actually purchasing. I controlled urges. The only "new" technology I jumped on was MMS (multi media messaging) and stuck with the same handset for three years. A complete geek faux-paux. Finally, I was no longer an early adopter.

Until 2007.

If you remember, last year was a mobile junkie's dream and worst nightmare. The industry stepped up their phone games launching products and services targeted beyond business users. And it worked. 2007 changed the American mobile industry.

It was almost as though handset makers, carriers, software corporations and various sites and services sat around a round table to strategize a universal goal: convincing the American public, invest in a smart phone. NOW.

And that I did.

On Black Friday, in 2007, I reverted from a reformed early adopter, to the irresponsible consumer sheep enthusiast. I purchased and activated my Triage (at the time): Verizon's Voyager, AT&T's 1st gen iPhone, and T-mobile's BlackBerry Curve 8320. Yes, you read that correctly. I activated three phones, on three networks, and ended up with three bills. Verdict: all three were smarter, but not yet smart. T-Mobile's BlackBerry Curve and the iPhone were my winners and I had two handsets for a while. (Details here). After a few pointless months of wasting money, I came to my senses, de-activated my iPhone and stuck with the Curve. It was the better choice for me but I beat myself up for wasting money and re-reformed.

Please do not judge me. At least I recognize my addiction and can admit: I have a problem. That said, I wasn't interested in the new(er) BlackBerries, the G1 lacked something (something = hardware related, not platform), and sure as heck wasn't going to go back to the iPhone, since the first time around, I didn't have the best experience. With so much product announcements, I was planning to wait a little more before jumping on to the next wave of mobile goodness.

Then, I lost my phone.

I was forced to make a decision - and quick. Holding out was no longer an option. Since I am interested in mobile, I am familiar with the technologies, carrier pricing and differences, to handset features, functions, pro/cons. I have participated in many discussions (offline and online) about user experiences with tech and non tech people.

But one voice in particular was my main deciding factor. This individual and I have debated on the "iPhone vs rest" topic a few times -- with me on team "rest" and him on team "iPhone". He has looked me straight in my eyes and adamantly stated: "The iPhone is the only way to go." but as a "rest" advocate, I would find something, anything, to counter his statements. Though I would never tell him this (he already has millions of fans - literally, as in 2-3 million unique readers, and doesn't need more ego stroking) I especially hold his opinion in high regard. So his statement stuck. Combined with his and Louis' "There Are Two Phones In this World: iPhone and Not iPhone", I did it. I caved. I now own an iPhone.

And I am utterly blown away.

The improvement from the 1st and 2nd generations floored me. All the raves are true. And though it is not perfect, I can admit to myself and to him: "I was wrong. The iPhone is the only way to go." I am so completely enamored by the ease of use, applications, performance... the entire user experience, even when he rubbed it in my face on my Facebook with:


I've got nothing to say in return.
So if you are still undecided, it is ok. I completely understand. You are not alone. But do it. Make the switch. It will completely change your life.

Now say it with me: "iPhone or no phone."

Read more by Mona Nomura at Pixel Bits

TiVo's Mobile Interface Gets Things Recording on the Go

Despite having pioneered the world of set top boxes and time shifting recordings, TiVo hasn't become the dominant business success its many hard-core fans (including me) had hoped it would. While its issues ranged from competing with monopolistic cable companies to rigid payment structures, to being a near zero when it comes to blogs and the social Web, they have eked out the occasional update that has us hoping more is to come. Among them is their new mobile Web site, which launched just last week. (See WebWare and Gizmodo) On the road myself this week, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday, I can connect with our home TiVo boxes using my iPhone and make sure I don't miss any TV I may have forgotten to tell the units to record before leaving the house.

TiVo's mobile application may not be as ground-breaking as their DVR interface is (or once was), but the offering is simple and just works. If you head to m.tivo.com, you gain the equivalent of their Web site, from daily picks and most popular TV shows, to a search option that lets you search for TV show titles, actors, directors and other show-related items.



TiVo Mobile's Simple Interface
Most importantly, by choosing the "Settings" option, you can choose which DVR is linked to your mobile account, after you have logged in, and you can add shows to the scheduled list of recordings. Either select a show from the daily picks and most popular items, or from your own search results.


Searching for NFL Turns Up a 49er Game
Using the mobile TiVo site via my iPhone, I was able to search on the term "NFL" and find all shows that had the NFL in the title. A few clicks later, and I was able to find the San Francisco 49ers' game at the Buffalo Bills is to be played on Fox this upcoming Sunday at 10 a.m. I could then click to "Record This Episode", determine the recording's priority, quality and whether it would start or stop outside of its scheduled time. Upon completion, I even got an e-mail confirmation to my account to let me know the request had been successful.


Setting the Recording and Getting Confirmation
Some of the characteristics of the mobile site are rather basic, from the links on gray backgrounds to the pull-down menus, but assuming the site is intended for use on a wide variety of mobile phones, and not elite smartphones like the iPhone, that makes sense. Now, if I find myself learning of a new show or one I'd like to record on the go, I can do so just by grabbing the iPhone and heading to m.tivo.com to TiVo's mobile site. Maybe there's hope yet still to keep this tech pioneer alive.

Are We Really That Addicted To Social Networks?

By Corvida Raven of SheGeeks.net (FriendFeed/Twitter)

I think we may be taking social networks a little too far or too seriously. As MySpace underwent rapid growth, we saw one cell company relentlessly market to its audience: Helio. Do you remember the Helio? They were a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) that launched back in 2006. They marketed their phones to those who were serious MySpace addicts. Essentially they offered MySpace on the go, before all the mobile apps were made available to the public. Since then, there have been talks of Virgin Mobile acquiring Helio this past September, but you could esentially call Helio defunct at this point.

Today I caught wind of an announcement for a new Facebook phone. Is this where we are headed, people? Are the Facebook and Myspace apps not enough that we need entire cell phones dedicated to these social networks? Or are people just looking to get rich quickly off of the hype surrounding social networks? And it's not as if these have a record of working - remember Mobile ESPN?

These devices serve the same purpose as the Web site itself! Who in their right mind is going to spend money to access the site on the go via a completely different phone, when they can just as easily get an internet data plan added to their current cell phone to access the site or simply wait until they are near a computer. I'm beginning to wonder what mainstream is really thinking about when they see the hype that surrounds social networks. As much as I'm addicted to Twitter and FriendFeed, I would never purchase an entirely separate device just to access them. What's the point? I sense the beginning of a serious addiction problem for those that take things this far.

What do you think of technology like this? Is it a waste of money for both consumers and the company? Or will they become the next big thing in the future of tech?

Read more by Corvida Raven at SheGeeks.net.

Strands Goes Mobile With New iPhone Interface

Last month, I said I believed there were three major trends in the future of social media: Unified accounts, transparency with connections to the real world, and adaptation to the mobile Web. As more consumers, including me, are seeing an increasing amount of their Web activity taking place on mobile devices, the need to create customized interfaces for all those iPhones, Android-capable handsets and Blackberries is getting ever more important, and those that don't do a good job of it will find their growth stunted.

Today, Strands, the social content discovery service which at times has drawn comparisons to FriendFeed and Plaxo, took a major step forward with the introduction of their new iPhone-optimized mobile site, found at http://m.strands.com.


Strands Mobile, In Action, On My iPhone
Back in August, when I first discussed the lifestreaming site's beta offering, I found myself fairly critical of its user interface, saying it minimized some of the best features, including the actual feeds from your friends' activity. In the last few months, thanks to feedback from its growing user base, the team has doubled down efforts to simplify the UI, and they managed to do well enough that the site works well, even in my 3.5" wide iPhone.


Features Like "Hot Posts" and "Discovery" Are Available On Mobile Strands
As one would expect, the mobile Strands offering operates the same way as its online companion does. You can see most recent updates from those you follow, see "Hot Posts", "Discover" new people who you might not be following, view your list of friends, and even read your in box, which can fill up with people taking action on your items, be it to make a comment, or simply flagging a "like" using their thumbs up. And you can participate by clicking the thumbs up or making comments yourself, right on the phone.


You Can Also Check Your Inbox Or Followers Via Mobile
Diehard Strands aficionados will no doubt appreciate the new introduction, taking the burgeoning social network on the go. If you are an iPhone addict, like me, make sure you bookmark their new site, and send feedback if you find issues. You can also check out an introductory video on their blog, here.

Apploop: FINALLY - A Useful iPhone RSS Reader!

By Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits (FriendFeed/Twitter)

FriendFeeders ask time and time again, "Where do you find the things you post?" and "Why don't you ever run out of things to post?" My short answer is "Google", since my methods are quite simple... yet complicated. Discovering this app is the perfect opportunity to elaborate on one of my major resources: RSS.

I am a huge RSS junkie.

I'm all about picture + headline + the first few topic sentences. If all three interest me, I have the option to read the entire article. Most of the stuff I post is pulled from my various feeds. Since my job is computer related, I am always connected to the Internet, my reader is always up, and I'm constantly scanning the headlines. My RSS reader choice is Google Reader, since it gives me everything I am looking for:

1. Headlines
2. Thumbnails
3. Few topic sentences
4. Option to click

The problem = 98% of the readers do not include the things I'm looking for.

I've been on the hunt for a good RSS reader long before I signed up for FriendFeed. Most RSS readers (especially for mobile phones) are plain text with no visuals. Because I am a huge visual person, I don't even bother looking at my subscriptions via mobile, since a highly visual application didn't exist.

Enter AppLoop.

I randomly stumbled upon this company whilst Googling. I was floored. Not only would this simple application solve my problems while on the go, they are also a content provider. Meaning, if you have a blog / website, with an RSS feed, they will turn your blog into a native application for a phone, for any platform, and submit it to the store for you. For free. Holy wow.

Now the latter doesn't really excite me, since it would be kinda sorta mortifying to see a "Mona application" in the app store. I am ultra excited for this app because I'm hoping my favorite websites will hear about it and choose to offer a mobile RSS option using AppLoop, -- such as LOL cats, Gizmodo, Engadget, or Boing-Boing since again, I'm all about: headlines, thumbnails, few topic sentences, AND the option to click. If all my subscriptions published their content with AppLoop, I'll even go as far as to say: I foresee giving up Google Reader -- even when I'm in front of my computer.

Anyway, the demo video is finally up and they JUST launched. So take a look, the video speaks for itself. :)


iPhone Application Generator Demo from AppLoop on Vimeo
And no, I am in no way affiliated with them, just an excited end-user. ;)
So what's your favorite reader? (mobile or desktop)?

Read more by Mona Nomura at Pixel Bits

Update: For more 'techie views' visit TechCrunch: "AppLoop Transforms Blogs Into Native iPhone Applications" and by ReadWriteWeb: "Make Your Own iPhone/Android Apps With New App Generator" and Duncan Riley's Inquisitor's, "AppLoop iPhone App Generator: High Wow Factor"

The Future of Social Media Is Mobile, Unified and Transparent

This morning, I had the pleasure of taking part in a podcast with Wayne Sutton and Kipp Bodnarf for their Talk Social News program. During the conversation, we discussed how to find time to participate in multiple social networks, how today's technology luddites might some day consume information, using RSS, and what the recent economic turbulence means for today's startups and tomorrow's entrepreneurs. One of the questions I've been mulling in my head is the future, and what glimpses we have today, in regards to what tomorrow's social media tools will have, barring the true development of anything dramatic, like teleportation, or bending of the time/space continuum.

Mobile

In my opinion, the advent and adoption of mini-computers masquerading as cell phones is the first big step, and one we are seeing in a big way with the market share growth of the iPhone, the newest Blackberry models, and the potential of Google's Android platform.

Just yesterday, my wife and I brought our twins to her mother's house, and I was able to show my 80-year-old mother in law how, with my phone, I could take a photo, and e-mail it to her, wirelessly. I showed her how I could access all my e-mail accounts, how I could watch baseball playoff highlights in high quality, or access all my bookmarks, so when they were added to my laptop, they would reach the phone as well. And when I told her the iPhone started at $300, she was surprised it was so low.

As iPhones and other "true Web" capable mobile devices become a bigger part of how we consume and interact with the Web, so too will they become a greater part of how we consume and interact with social media specifically. Your social network then becomes less some thing that you interact with just when in front of a desktop or your laptop, but from anywhere, helping to bridge the gap between "following friends" and "real life friends". Consequentially, the mobile interface to sites like Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Social Median, Strands and others will be just as important as the standard Web GUI.

Unified

I also believe you will really start to see a tying together of friends and profiles across the different networks. Many different sites now have ways for you to import your contacts from your many different address books and e-mail accounts, and others integrate with Facebook, so when your friends on that service sign up, you're automatically connected. But it's not as seamless as it could be, and adding the same friends over and over again can get tiresome when new services arrive - not to mention copying and pasting your personal profile and attributes repeatedly.

What should happen, and will in due time, I believe, is that groups like OpenSocial or others, will find a solution by which you gain a friends repository, identifiable by your single user name, which checks against the database and auto-populates your friend base, assuming they have given permission. Similarly, when joining a new network, I should be able to point that network to a central profile I have built, which has all my activity, from Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader and the rest, and would pull my data down from those services, rather than making me add them each one by one.

Transparent

I also believe that with growth of professional services like LinkedIn and Plaxo, and increased awareness of tools to derive a person's background, there will be greater transparency and easier discovery of a person's background. I should quickly and easily know a person's professional profile, and their external online activity, which would take the guesswork out of some initial relationships. While some might say this would be too much a breach of privacy, and that anonymity is a much-treasured aspect of the Web, the Generation Y Millennials have no such expectations, and are all too willing to put their data out there. Tomorrow's tools will capitalize on this and further blur your online persona with that you use at the office or at home.

I don't want to pontificate on smaller technology aspects, such as increased video usage, location awareness, or even real-time language translations, although each will be playing a part in these future services. Those are for the experts in their respective field. But we can see these aspects evolving. The world of social media is going to be unified, transparent and mobile (or location independent). Those that can best capitalize on the unification of data, and avoid the traditional walled garden approach will be the winners.

Microsoft and RIM? I Don't Think So.

By Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits (FriendFeed/Twitter)

There's speculation of a possible Microsoft-RIM marriage. It sounds appealing, but highly unlikely. Steven Hodson points out Microsoft has never been in hardware. I agree hardware is a factor but the bigger question is: can a MSFT-RIM team compete in the Mobile Market?


(Pie chart via jkOnTheRun. Thank You!)
In 2007, the mobile world was heavily Symbian dominated at 57.1% of the share. WinMo was 2nd with 11.5%, followed by RIM at 8.9%. Currently, the leader board is Symbian = 57.1%, RIM = 17.4%, and WinMo = 12%. In just one year, RIM shot past Microsoft with a 126.4% growth rate.

Phenomenal.

If MSFT and RIM merged, they would take 29.6% of the market, and still be only half of Symbian - with two separate platforms. RIM's number one selling point is its push mail and server. As Electronista points out, server integration would be a potential nightmare. With iPhone's increasing momentum, would Microsoft and RIM risk potential loss while the integration takes place? Not to mention, RIM's co-CEOs are heavily involved. I highly doubt they would agree to Microsoft taking over the solid system they built. And even if the merger isn't hostile, would it make sense for Microsoft to obtain two different platforms?

Then, there's the issue of software. Android is Open Source. Linux is Open Source. Max OS X is Open Platform. Symbian-Nokia announced in June they will go Open Source. I'm guessing Microsoft will eventually go Open Source. (Perhaps sooner than we all think, since Gates departed in June.)

BUT

If Microsoft joins the Open Source game too late, RIM and WinMo would most likely be left behind. Why would anyone choose devices that aren't as flexible as Open Source / Platform ones? Would it make sense for RIM to join forces with anti-Open Source Microsoft? Especially since we're seeing tremendous growth rates?

I don't think so.

What I do know is this. The mobile market is changing, and this is only the beginning. Exciting times for us geeks! So what's your current phone? Are you waiting for a particular handset?

Read more by Mona Nomura at Pixel Bits.