Uncool Mobility

Google’s Black-Box Social Network - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Google’s Black-Box Social Network - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com.

Google is is weaving the various components of social networks through its existing services.

This should scare and intrigue you.

Google dumps microblogging, mobile social networking

I guess the bright side is if you made money being acquired by Google your payout is secure even in this economy.

Google can't seem to overcome its size and its prejudice against outside innovation as it ditches some under-developed products which are in very active market areas. You'd think a big profitable company would use the downturn to buy marketshare in high-growth areas. But you'd be wrong.

Google Code Blog: Changes for Jaiku and Farewell to Dodgeball and Mashup Editor.

Palm launches the Pre

Palm unveiled its new device and OS today at the CES tradeshow in Las Vegas. Engadget had great live coverage.

The launch shared some similar points to Microsoft's Windows 7/WM7 demos from yesterday as both Palm and Microsoft seek to emphasize the mobile browser as the entry point for mobile applications and services while creating a unified messaging interface based on the email inbox to present email, presence, social networking status, and photo posts in a single entry point.

The result is that messaging on the device becomes the entry point for cloud services.

The new Palm Pre features both a touch screen and slide-out keyboard powered by its new OS. From a messaging standpoint Palm's new WebOS features "Synergy sync" which automatically manages contacts across Facebook, Google, and Outlook thus becoming the control point for the social address book. The messaging inbox consolidates both email and IM services. Notification updates from applications and new messages from email and IM are surfaced at the top level of the device OS.

While Palm promised rapid and easy integration of third party services and applications it gave no information on whether the OS will be open source or have an SDK opening compenents to third parties. It also did not address how third parties would achieve distribution across its OS and devices. New devices launching today must address both of these topics to gain relevance against the iPhone, Android, and RIM platforms.

Fighting for the social address book

I noticed a nice commentary on Forrester's blog regarding the social address book.

One of the most interesting parts of the rise of social networking, especially mobile social networking, is the battle for the social address book. Email providers are trying to wrap increasing features into jammed inboxes, social networks are trying to integrate messaging as a background transport to content-posting sites, and mobile providers are trying to leverage the device address book to drive communications in real time. Who will win?

One model I'm watching is third-party, standalone services to provide a cross-platform ability to manage messaging across many sites and services. Ping does this from the web, many people use Twitter to achieve this within social networking, and Xumii is an example of a startup trying to provide this as a service across mobile devices. Of course Nokia, RIM, and Apple are all examples of device makers trying to achieve the same thing with different models.

I think Xumii got it right with it's feature for threaded conversations. Threading conversations across messaging mediums is a great use case, but is it a model that can grow virally or does it need to be experienced for the value to be clear to consumers? In this market few startups are willing to spend time on demand generation at that level.

The capabilities to share media files and create private groups are also cool but I would argue those are "deeper" features which will appeal to people who are first sold on the capability of integrating their communication needs from their phone address book--as opposed to their email inbox.

The hurdle for Xumii will be achieving a UI that can match native applications on discoverability, ease of use, and feature simplification.

INQ1: First of many, or last?

I've been noticing the the INQ1 launch in the UK which is the first example of an operator launching a social networking phone. It's a white-labelled service powered by SEVEN (interesting how the email providers are all migrating to the social address book as a messaging platform, but that is another story). Hutch has done a great job of bundling it with a special rate plan and clearly targeting the service.

Supposedly there are 50,000 pre-registrations for the phone. Will this take off? If it does will it signal a new migration to operators optimizing devices and web services for specific customer segments?

After RIM and Apple have been eating market share from handset vendors (especially Nokia and Motorola) and Operating System platforms (Windows Mobile and to a lesser extent Symbian) it would be very interesting if this model was adopted successfully by operators as opposed to device vendors.

Web 2.0 implosion begins; FB Connect signals end of two social networking startups

As FaceBook starts its marketing & PR for Connect, smaller social networking startups (whose ability to post and read across SN platforms was a main differentiator) are folding. FB is aggressively moving to control the social addressbook / social graph and the plunging economy will aid its efforts.

"Facebook Connect--the service launched last spring that lets members log on to other Web sites using their Facebook profile--appears to be entering a new phase. The New York Times, in a big-picture story Sunday about the social network's plans to extend its reach across the Web, notes that the Facebook Connect service is gearing up for expansion: In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni, and the online video hub Hulu"

The reaction:

Pownce closed, team members are going to blogging provider SixApart

TruTap, a UK mobile social networking aggregator, lays off 80% of staff while looking for exit

Boston-based startup OnePIN's CallerXchange Social Address Book Getting Momentum

A startup out of Boston is having success selling white-label social networking services based on mobile device address books. I believe this startup is correct in identifying the address book as the battle ground for the next generation of mobile services.

OnePIN's CallerXchange Social Address Book Solution Gains Global Momentum - WebsiteGear News.

The challenge for OnePIN and similar companies will be to extend services deeply enough to provide revenue-generating value while FaceBook (with its Connect strategy) and established players rapidly add similar features.

Tabber - Home

Here is something cool you don't often see. Tabber has significantly revamped itself by narrowing its focus and removing some features. Well played!

Tabber - Home.

The summary from Mashable: "Profile aggregator Tabber has been completely redesigned, and is looking a lot like FriendFeed. Tabber has actually slimmed own on some of its features, making its service as simplistic as possible. It’s a rather drastic change from what we’ve seen previously from Tabber, and marks a major shift in recognizing and adhering to what looks to be the new standard of profile aggregation.

The new main options for your Tabber account are to see your network activity, your friends’ activity, and their accounts. If someone is your friend, then you’ll automatically follow their stream, and as this is still a profile aggregator, you also have the ability to incorporate life streams from friends that aren’t Tabber users."

Social networking transforming to mobile social address book?

This article about the lack of true solutions for how business users actually use their mobile address books and manage contacts has attracted a lot of attention. I think he gets it right in his "key features" list.

I love this quote from the article: "Facebook is working on something in this area, but won't say what. Yesterday at the GigaOM Mobilize conference in San Francisco, an audience member pointed out to a panel that a phone's address book in fact is that person's social network. Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya responded with: "That's a great observation. Stay tuned." That sounds to me like Facebook will be announcing something in this area soon."

Visto launches white label social networking app for operators

Visto is announcing a new version at CTIA which includes email, social networking, SMS, IM and photo sharing.

" Featuring an innovative "living address book," VISTO Mobile 6 offers end users expanded push mobile email and mobile social networking capabilities. This living address book combines favorite contacts from multiple sources, including social networks, into a seamless user interface. VISTO Mobile 6 utilizes VISTO's patented push and synchronization technology to keep users constantly up to date in real time on their messaging and social networking activities.

In addition, VISTO Mobile 6 provides end users the ability to filter updates from their list of contacts; meaning each user has the control to see only the updates they truly care about. This eliminates the clutter of unnecessary updates and requests."

Visto will target both small business, SOHO, and consumers with this offer. For operators Visto will emphasize the ability to federate many solutions through one client application and control data costs through Visto's NOC and data compression capabilities. There are no announced operator customers yet.

Visto's product positioning:
"VISTO Easy Setup(TM): End-to-end self provisioning with pre-installed clients, enabling mobile email users to set up their service from their device in a matter of seconds

VISTO worklife.freedom(TM): -- access email from the most popular portal email providers and social networking sites including Yahoo!, AOL, Google Gmail, Hotmail, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and Photobucket

VISTO ConstantSync(TM): instantly pushes data right to the phone so the end user is always up-to-date - alerts, emails, status messages - everything is always current. -- get notification of new pictures, posts, and other important events from social networking and photo sharing sites from your favorite contacts pushed to your phone -- share photos from your phone to multiple photo sharing sites. Support for multiple services: send and receive messages from work and personal email and social networking accounts, each with its own inbox, with full attachment handling"