It makes sense to start this category with warning. Marshall McLuhan was most famous for his insight – The medium is the message: it isn’t just the content of a media which matters, but the medium itself which most meaningfully changes the ways humans operate.
But McLuhan wasn’t an advocate of it, he saw dangers beneath the surface as this quote from his participation in the 1976 Canadian Forum shows.
“The violence that all electric media inflict in their users is that they are instantly invaded and deprived of their physical bodies and are merged in a network of extensions of their own nervous systems. As if this were not sufficient violence or invasion of individual rights, the elimination of the physical bodies of the electric media users also deprives them of the means of relating the program experience of their private, individual selves, even as instant involvement suppresses private identity. The loss of individual and personal meaning via the electronic media ensures a corresponding and reciprocal violence from those so deprived of their identities; for violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence.”
McLuhan was concerned with the mass media, in particular the effect of television on society. Yet the content is atemporal. I am sure the warning would have fitted in with rock and roll singles during the 1950s or social media platforms today.
I am concerned not only changes in platforms and consumer behaviour but the interaction of those platforms with societal structures.
I started posts on the Facebook acquisition of Instagram a number of times but got nowhere, so I thought I would collect up some of them thoughts and put them here. So here are some of those random thoughts:
Instagram and Facebook are very different types of social network. Instagram seems to tape into a latent passion for us to be creators, it came up with an application that flatters us into thinking that we may have a good eye for photography. Facebook is much more about gathering and sharing humint with their loose network, a poorly designed address book and an event organisation platform
Instagram and Facebook have very different design philosophies. Instagram is much more of a traditional web 2.0 firm. It’s product does one thing very well and makes the complex simpler for the consumer. Facebook’s user experience is well shit. This is probably for a number of reasons:
Facebook has a culture were engineering trumps design rather than the two disciplines been seen as equal partners like say Apple
Competition – Facebook has evolved from its original mission adding additional features as it was threatened by different platforms: notably Twitter. But the user experience hasn’t scaled as well
Monetisation – Facebook has been working hard to monetise its business with its advertising units, but you need content to advertise against. Much of the design is about wringing content out of consumers (and then having the opportunity to sell inventory against it)
Privacy – In order to get the humint to share with audiences, Facebook needs to strike a balance keeping the law and privacy advocates at bay whilst making it sufficiently difficult that consumers don’t lock down their data and consequently constrict advertising opportunities
An extension of the design difference between Instagram and Facebook makes me wonder about how long the Instagram talent will actually stay at Facebook beyond any lock-in period? I am making assumption that the deal was at least partly motivated by the Instagram’s team expertise in mobile service development and that would be dependent on retaining the talent.
Talent retention is also critical if Facebook acquired Instagram as a defensive play like it did with Octazen. In this case Facebook would be looking to lock up talent for as long as they could.
1 billion dollars in shares isn’t as expensive as 1 billion dollars in cash; consequently the cost is probably relatively cheap for Zuckerberg. Think of it this way – how real is the money that you make when the value of your house goes up or down until you actually come to sell the house? Cisco was a past master at large share-only purchases when it was a hot stock. This hasn’t impacted Facebook’s cash-flow, but it has shaken the institutional investors looking at Facebook’s IPO. Again this doesn’t really matter to Zuckerberg because Facebook shares will sell anyway because of the heat around the company. Zuckerberg has less to lose than the Cisco team did because of the way that Facebook’s voting stock is structured allowing its CEO to retain power
It used to be that there were a number of start-ups whose business model was to sell themselves on to a large dominant industry player. Over time the industry player changed: Cisco, Microsoft, Google but the business model remained constant. I expect the new target acquirer to be Facebook as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists dream of a quick buck rather than building something great
10 years from now, I still don’t know whether we will be looking back on the Instagram acquisition as being a similar folly to Yahoo!’s purchase of Broadcast.com now looks in hindsight. On one hand I feel confident because of the deal structure being in Facebook shares, and the price being small in comparison to the current notional value of the Facebook business. But for the reasons I have outlined above I am less convinced in terms of long-term fit with the business and relative importance of Instagram
Instagram were right to say yes. The timing couldn’t have been better, on the one hand in the short term Instagram is growing fast; its move on to the Android platform previously being an iOS-only application. In retrospect, this looks like Instagram moving from early adopter usage to early majority service users. At the same time a number of services are now integrating Instagram-type filters into their mobile applications, one of the examples I use is Tencent’s Weixin (WeChat) application, so it could be rapidly becoming a feature rather than a reason for purchase
Bob Barker is a client that I worked with on nascent digital work for RFI Studios. Bob worked as the CMO of Alterian. Alterian started off in customer experience management, they did a series of acquisitions when I worked with them including Mediasurface the CMS company. The company was acquired by SDL and some part of it was sold on to private investors.
Flip video camera
Bob decided to delve into social media and understand it as a marketer. The Flip Video camera which includes basic software inspired him to do video content. Bob had a ‘Gorilla tripod‘ for the Flip and the lighting was just done with daylight. I did an interview with Bob Barker for his blog last week, you can read his take on things on his blog.
I realise that we talk through a number of social platforms, so here is a list of what I use:
iMessage – though I have found it to be flaky
Skype
Fastladder.com for RSS feeds. I am currently experimenting with FavShare as a Fastladder client on my iPad and iPhone which started after my interview with Bob
Pinboard.in for social bookmarking
IFTTT to syndicate content
Microblogging: I use the Twitter client on my Macs at home, and m.twitter.com on my iPhone. I use Weibo’s iPhone client and WeiLark for the Mac to post on my Sina.com Weibo account, rather than Sina’s sluggish web interface
I use Kakao Talk and Tencent Weixin (WeChat) social messaging clients on my iPhone. The international versions of these tools don’t have all the features the local ones.
I use a mix of technology:
MacBook Pro
Dell 22 inch widescreen display
MacBook Air
iPhone
iPad
Samsung feature phone with dual SIMs
The video is on YouTube so may not be available to all readers. You can find Bob’s video channel here.
Ferdinand A. Porsche, 76, Dies – Designed Celebrated 911 – NYTimes.com – Butzi Porsche dead. Butzi Porsche came from a family of engineers. His grandfather led the original team behind the Volkswagen Beetle. His father had been part of that engineering team and went on to found what we now know as Porsche. However, Butzi Porsche wasn’t engineer but a designer with technical chops. After an infamous meeting of the Porsche family, no members were allowed to work at Porsche. Butzi Porsche didn’t get to do more after he designed the 911. Instead Butzi Porsche started Porsche Design. Butzi Porsche did product design for other companies. Porsche Design also came out with its own products with Butzi Porsche designing watches, glasses and more. Butzi Porsche resigned from Porsche Design in 2005 due to ill health.
Why Are So Many Americans Single? : The New Yorker – single living was not a social aberration but an inevitable outgrowth of mainstream liberal values. Supported by modern communications platforms and urban living infrastructure: coffee shops, laundrettes
Kraft break-up yields marketing shift: Warc.com – the break-up is ironic when you look at the trouble they went to, in order to buy Cadburys and then break their business down broadly into Cadburys + Jacobs Suchard vs Kraft US.
HK’s rich hesitate to have babies | SCMP.com – interesting takeaways: didn’t want the emotional commitment, time poverty, financial stability / too small a living space and concerned about the local environment not being suitable for children. It was interesting that the education system was given such a hard time, given that it’s better than the UK system (paywall)
agnès b. | VICE – great interview with French fashion designer agnés b
Marketing
Fueling the hunger for The Hunger Games – The New York Times – really interesting comment: …during the 1980s you bought the poster and once a year went to a convention and met your people for something like Star Trek (and Star Wars). It misses out the fact that you are likely to have had real-world friends that you would have talked about it with as well – marketers now seem blindsided to the real-world
Gore-Tex Under Siege from Waterproof Fabric Newcomers | OutsideOnline.com – interesting how Goretex waterproof fabric stranglehold mirrors Microsoft’s position in the technology sector. Goretex was historically under threat from a number of systems that had varying degrees of impact. Hipora is a silicon coating structure invented by Korean firm Kolon, Schoeller’s C change which has temperature dependent venting, SympaTex commonly used when you see ‘no brand’ 3-layer laminate, usually lower price products that would lose margin paying for Goretex licensing. Lowe Alpine’s ceramic coated triple point fabric, but managed Goretex to survive and Lowe Alpine didn’t. There are other competitor products including I suspect that the other fabrics will become niche pieces unless they sort their marketing out. Goretex is primarily a branding exercise, that sets minimum standards such as taped seals. Much of Goretex intellectual property has been voided or circumvented.
Marketing is where the Goretex difference lies now, but it is known for a confrontational relationship with partners.
Kwok brothers arrested by HK watchdog – FT.com – Sun Hung Kai is Hong Kong’s largest property company. Surprising that they are involved as the big firms there generally keep their noses clean (paywall)
I decided to write on my story onAndroid differentiation after careful consideration. On one hand I didn’t want the companies involved to suffer because one executive had a loud mouth. On the other hand it raised interesting questions about the state of the Android eco-system. So I decided at the time to thinly veil the identities of the different parties.
March 14: I was sat down in the main dining room of the JW Marriott in Seoul having breakfast and minding my own business when I found myself sitting the next table along from a rather loud discussion of a proposal that a US start-up (Flipboard) wanted to make to a major Korean Android handset (Samsung) and tablet manufacturer in a meeting scheduled that day for 2pm.
The crux of the pitch was around Android differentiation opportunities. The major Korean manufacturer (Samsung) has a need for something to provide a clear space. The start-up can help the Korean company sell more devices if they pay for the start-up to develop their software. The software currently is a prominent RSS and social network aggregation as magazine-type reader on iPhone and iPad. The startup wanted funds to develop it specifically for the Korean company’s Android devices.
Samsung should also spend a bit more to offer on a new phone or tablet – a three-month free subscription to a publication like The New York Times, Vanity Fair or People magazine – given the media connections that the start-up partnership development person had: they could broker the deal to make this happen. Would the glorified subscription model be
I also gathered that a similar pitch had already been made to a Taiwanese handset manufacturer (HTC); but not much progress had happened, though this may change as they had a good idea that the start-up was in discussions with Samsung. HTC were apparently keen to talk to Flipboard again.
Now ignoring the lack of common sense in having this discussion in a public place with colleagues when your voice carries across the room I was struck by two things regarding Android differentiation:
The economics of major applications on Android seem to require major financial incentives if this guy had flown half-way around the world to pitch this offer at the same time that SXSWi was on in Austin
Android device differentiation / hyper-competition is becoming an issue, if the head of marketing at a large corporate would spend time to do this meeting and seriously consider the start-up’s proposal. The market must be seriously commoditised and there must be little ‘value-add’ benefits between devices
Now I don’t think that a free three-month subscription is going to move the needle that much, particularly if one looks at how Nokia’s Comes With Music initiative failed to arrest the decline of the world’s largest phone maker. And the implication about the economics of high-quality Android application development was something that concerned me, particularly when I look at the increasing demand for mobile work from clients. More related content here.
