Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • User domestication

    User domestication was an interesting phrase that I noticed in an essay about the growth of WhatsApp. In the essay the author highlighted a number of factors in WhatsApp’s success:

    • Having a proprietary messaging client that didn’t support industry standards for messaging such as the XMPP protocol supported by Google Talk. (Google later abandoned the XMPP open protocol itself in favour of its proprietary Google Hangouts).
    • WhatsApp had a low learning curve of adoption through to a well designed user experience.
    • The user experience of WhatsApp was easy to learn
    • WhatsApp worked across both Android and iOS devices which helped its adoption through network effects

    This led to a number of things, which the author identified as user domestication factors:

    • A high level of user dependence on WhatsApp
    • No control over the software. (it can’t be modified, it prevents migration to another platform – a la Facebook and people’s address book)
    • Exploitation of ‘captive users’ who would find it difficult to resist

    If all of this sounds familiar, its because it was the Facebook playbook from the get-go. Like organising export of your address book from Yahoo! to Facebook, but not the other way around.

    Messing around with iPad
    Captured attention

    The author makes clear that WhatsApp is just an illustrative example.

    This probably explains why the essay doesn’t seem to match up with the WhatsApp story pre-Facebook. Founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum originally had a nominal subscription model. Acton went on to help set up the Signal Foundation, after leaving WhatsApp post Facebook takeover. His reason for leaving was concerns over the monetisation of WhatsApp by Facebook.

    But I think that there can be little argument that Facebook thought of WhatsApp as a user domestication opportunity.

    The relationship that the media industry has with consumers through the use of DRM (digital rights management) is a similar form of user domestication mentioned in his essay.

    Another example of this ‘user domestication’ in action is the apparent failure of Google’s search choice screen to have any effect on its monopoly market share in Europe.

    It differs from previous generations of technology lock-in exercised by the likes of Microsoft, IBM and Apple in that the costs of these obvious upfront. In user domestication, the costs are less apparent and the value extraction happens on an ongoing basis.

    More information

    WhatsApp and the domestication of users

    WhatsApp founder Brian Action, says Facebook used him to get its acquisition past EU regulators | Techcrunch

  • Golden bull & things that caught my eye this week

    Digital golden bull at Pavilion, Kuala Lumpur & Chinese new year

    The golden bull in question is on the digital screens of Pavilion, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Pavilion is an upscale shopping area and the animation was designed to tie into the year of the ox in the Chinese lunar calendar.

    The golden bull is supposed to be auspicious and is seen to break through the coronavirus that affected 2020.

    https://youtu.be/llFkwcAlFSk
    Pavilion Kuala Lumpur

    The golden bull execution is very similar to an installation done by a Chinese property developer that I found earlier this year. Both rely on corner screens and on understanding the viewing angle of pedestrian footfall streaming past the animation.

    Following on from my post collating adverts celebrating Chinese new year last week, Radii China had some additional suggestions that came out after I had written my original post. Let’s hope that 2021 lives up to the auspicious promise of the golden bull.

    Design & culture

    The Royal Shakespeare Company is looking at using a virtual set for a performance based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. RSC’s Dream will be performed live from March 12 – 20, 2021. It shows how the arts are looking to adapt to a COVID world and experimenting with cutting edge technology.

    RSC – Dream trailer

    My friend Arun has released a COVID inspired track available for purchase from Underbelly Music on Bandcamp. Check out the accompanying video here.

    Coffee Hype x Underbelly

    This weekend I will be watching the latest Adam Curtis documentary series – BBC iPlayer – Cant Get You Out of My Head it’s the only thing that I bother watching on the BBC now.

    Consumer behaviour

    Really interesting drill down into the American middle class by the Brookings Institute that came up with some concerning findings. I am slowly working my way through The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War by Robert J Gordon and much of this Brooking Institute findings fits in with this.

    Brookings Institute Middle Class Monitor

  • Reader service card

    I was looking at old tech magazines online and came across the reader service card. It was a proverbial blast from the past. Occasionally I come across them, usually in my books where a card was used as an impromptu bookmark. In the same way that my Dad still uses old AOL discs as a coffee coaster on his work bench.

    reader service card
    Reader service card from Byte magazine circa 1988

    How did it work?

    The principle behind the reader service card was really simple. Email and messaging was only used in academic circles or within a company, with no external connection. For external communications there were:

    • Letters
    • Telephone
    • Fax machines
    • Telex machines

    All of these cost money and took time. Back then your company might have had a strictly enforced telephone usage policy. So ticking a box for each advert that you’re interested in seems easy. An ad opting into the scheme would have text at the bottom would go something like ‘circle 93 on inquiry card.’ That explains why reader service cards were often nicknamed bingo cards.

    The cards would be collated by the publisher who would send a list of addresses and relevant information to the advertiser. The advertiser would then send you a brochure and keep you on their mailing list.

    My Dad had files full of product sheets from card requests and brochures that he would reference on a regular basis alongside parts catalogues. He knew them folders inside out.

    This was the web, before the web. Hewlett Packard were moving to printing brochures on demand in the mid-1990s in parallel to them building out their first website pages with relevant product information.

    More related content here.

  • Ahistoric technology & things that caught my eye this week

    Wired magazine had an interesting article on revisiting old technology magazines. The idea was that while in some ways technology has progressed. In other ways, good ideas got bypassed. There are a number of Good ideas that might have more currency now. There is a contrasting ahistoric technology view held by some Silicon Valley luminaries.

    The ahistoric technology viewpoint ignores things that are right in front of us. Fuzzy logic and early machine learning (based on software neural networks) desktop software do much the same things (with less computing power and network bandwidth) that Google and Apple do now.

    Bret Victor gave a presentation ‘from 1973’, showing the fallacy of the ahistoric technology viewpoint. These ideas will be of more relevance to the audience of programmers, but you can grasp the gist of what’s going on.

    One of the reasons I stuck with the Mac platform was that small development houses and lone programmers built useful software based on similarly niche concepts.

    Now these software applications, alongside web services that have been developed in a similar way, like Newsblur and Pinboard are a key part of my workflow.

    McDonalds Japan have a reputation for doing localised products to appeal to Japanese consumers. The flavours and the marketing are grounded in Japanese culture. They have tapped a well loved manga Touch (published during the 1980s) for an advert to promote the 30th anniversary of the chicken Tatsuda burger.

    https://youtu.be/vFJE_7atc30
    McDonalds Japan

    More on Touch here.

    The Oxford Union is trying to keep its programme of speakers going via online sessions. Including Hong Kong exiled dissident Nathan Law.

    Oxford Union

    Finally Asian Boss appealed to viewers for donations as they are struggling financially and are likely to shut down soon without money. This raises questions about the effectiveness of monetisation on YouTube, even with a lightweight structure media organisation like Asian Boss.

    Should you wish to do so, you can donate directly to Asian Boss here.

  • Gray house

    The gray house phenomenon is a fascinating microcosm of urban development. Gray because its a specifically American phenomenon, rather than grey. But some of the aspects of it will be equally familiar to city dwellers elsewhere.

    Gray House
    Photo by massmat

    Quick fix

    The act of painting a brick house is a quick fix by developers, rather like body filler on old car:

    …it’s a cheap, easy way to refresh a brick facade. Many rowhouses in the city are a century old, or close to it, and “you probably don’t want to risk [damaging] hundred-year-old mortar by power-washing,” notes Kevin Wood, a realtor with Slate Properties. Left as is, old brick may appear dingy—especially if the house dates to the era when coal was burned in D.C.—or it will have gaps between courses where the mortar needs repointing, a painstaking repair job. New paint can hide a multitude of small flaws.

    Grayed Expectations | Washington City Paper

    This causes anxiety among people who want to preserve an areas character with soot stained natural brick finish.

    Flip house gray

    Grey was chosen because it was an inoffensive neutral colour that was designed to blend in. Think norm core for house exteriors. Neutral colours are recommended on websites that provide advice to people looking to refurbish and resell a house. But it has come to mark out a home that was painted to sell it, or as one article put it ‘flip house gray’. It stands out in neighbourhoods and provides a visual marker for gentrification. The gray house is either for sale, or a house were people have moved into a neighbourhood.

    More jargon related content here.

    More information here

    Grayed Expectations | Washington City Paper

    What Are the Best Paint Colors for Selling a House? – House Flip Central

    Sherwin Williams Light French Gray SW 0055 – West Magnolia Style