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The first and highest-profile push application, available after last week's release of iPhone 3.0 software, is the Associated Press' news service application for the iPhone. This application and push service was beta-tested by iPhone developers prior to launch, and is easy to set up. From the iPhone's "settings," it's simply a matter of turning "push notifications" on, and then from the AP settings, deciding how you want to be notified -- with a text alert, with an alarm beep or with badges -- or all of the above.
It works. Over the last few days, AP has sent out several news alerts to my iPhone that came through just fine -- sometimes a few minutes after a news event. It's not as fast as previous ways that worked just as well -- namely, SMS text notifications. For almost each push alert that AP sent out via its iPhone application, CNN's SMS alerts have gotten to my iPhone a few minutes faster.
Still, AP's push application works, is consistent, is effortless to set up and effortless to manage. Why is this a big deal? Because the same technology, applied to heavier applications like ERP (inventory notifications), digital health (medication reminders) and finance (say, alerts on commodity spot pricing), could have significant business implications over time. All developers need to get there, really, is to plunk down a few dollars on an iPhone developers kit, get the SDK, and away they go.
Yes, push has been available for years on the BlackBerry. But 1 million units of which smartphone sold last weekend?
OK, get your laughing or sneering out of the way now. Go ahead. I'll wait. Ok. Finished?
Because Copy and Paste on the iPhone is simply one of the most important advances in that platform since it launched in 2007, and it will have an immediate and significant impact worldwide.
The functionality, added to iPhone 3.0, works as advertised: using the device's touch function, it takes about four touches to copy text from one screen and paste it to another. It's easy, it's smooth. And here's why it's a big deal.
As we enter an era that some are calling the "Link Economy" or economy of "Passed Links" (Jeff Jarvis and Fred Wilson, respectively have used those phrases), the ability to copy, paste and send URLs via text message, email, Twitter, Facebook, or instant message on world's fastest-growing handheld device becomes critical. Now, suddenly, between 10 million and 20 million iPhone users will have this ability - users who never let their iPhone get more than a couple of feet from their bodies at any moment of the day.
Before iPhone 3.0, to share a link from an iPhone to someone else required either simply memorizing the URL, or using one of a few balky third-party applications available, or hoping an information source like USA Today made it possible as a feature in a custom application. Most of the time, bet that iPhone users simply waited until they were at a PC to share a link. Now that's all a thing of the past and sharing data and URLs over the iPhone isn't an issue.
What this means:
- Web analytics engines, many of which have been ill-designed to account for Internet traffic resulting from SMS or smart phone applications, will become even more flummoxed unless developers get cracking and make their software effective at reading it all;
- Google, which has built an empire by aggregating information like news, will face an increasingly rising tide of dis-aggregation from SMS, email, social networks and the like as individuals pass more links as trusted sources to colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and family members in their own individual networks;
- More and more information and transactions will be passed over the Internet by applications other than Web browsers, now that the iPhone platform has made it so simple to do so on its platform.
Business intelligence applications will need to deal with this. Data centers will need to deal with this. Businesses will need to deal with this. With Copy and Paste for iPhone now live, exchange of information and links on non-PC devices will simply change use models and the way things are done.
You can follow Ed Moltzen on Twitter, and send him links from your iPhone, here: @emoltzen
The rate and pace of change that social networking services, led by Twitter, are bringing to the world of business are profound and will only quicken and deepen as time goes by. And it's more than just the typical "customer outreach" or the "you-need-to-have-a-presence" arguments that never seem to have real business implications connected to them. There are real-world, business process and IT changes that are happening because of Twitter, Facebook and others.
It's more than just the fact that Iranians protesting political developments in that country relied on Twitter as a significant communication device when the government shut down cell phone service. It's more than just celebrities using it as a vanity platform to communicate with their adoring flocks. It's about what it means for the enterprise, for the data center, for the call center. Here are just three examples of how Twitter and its competitors are impacting technology in business:
The Data Stream It's changing for businesses. How a company builds a real-time data stream, harnesses it and uses it will be a competitive differentiator. For both internal and external use, a data stream that a company can build through comments from, and interaction with, Twitter followers (or that it can build through its own open-source alternative to Twitter like Laconi.ca) provides challenge and opportunity. "Trending topics" can provide actionable intelligence in real time. Companies like People Browsr have realized this and have created nascent data mining technologies for business.
It's being used now, cheaply, as real-time CRM. Businesses that are early adopters are also able to use data from both the global Twitter stream and from their own lists to make real-time decisions about inventory, staffing levels and service issues. And People Browsr, for example, has combined both data mining from the stream and geo data to provide visual intelligence as well.
Communication Businesses can't do without telephones. They can't do without email. Can't do without a web site. Can they do without Twitter? "We think of it the same way as we think of a telephone," Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, said Tuesday at the 140 Characters Conference in New York. His company uses Twitter for both internal and external communications.
Hsieh says Zappos.com began using Twitter as a way to communicate between employees for social reasons, but soon expanded its use.
Going forward, businesses won't be able to do without a social networking stream. Twitter is an important place to start, because it combines communication through SMS text messaging, the web, desktop applications and smart phone applications. Twitter is where people are, and where they communicate. (Laconi.ca, though still in development and a little raw, offers the same.) And businesses need to speak the language of their customers. Stowe Boyd, a veteran of collaboration technology development, is in the middle of working on the the Microsyntax project - - which is attempting to smooth out that language on 140-character platforms. It's worth following.
Developer Talent Developers go to where the money is, or where they think it will be. Just ask Microsoft, which has built the largest developer ecosystem in the world based on its market-leading software platforms. And when developers go to where the money is, that's where innovation starts to build, that's where products are built and that's where change begins to take place. Developers have already begun to move to the iPhone platform in staggering numbers (just based on what's available at the iTunes App Store.) A strong and growing number of those applications are focused on social networking.
These areas aren't about marketing, or feel-good business techniques. They are about performance, reliability, scalability, flexibility and investment in IT. If you're a technology solution provider and your customers aren't planning or taking action on these changes, but their competitors are, your customers will be steps behind in the very near future.
Jason Clark, at iMedia Connection, writes:
I guess we don't have to go into how much publicity Twitter is getting these days. Twitter's microblogging strategy is a huge paradigm shift, and the effect on communication is massive. But Twitter's fame and glory is not going to last.
His piece is entitled, "Why Twitter Will Soon Become Obsolete." It's worth reading in full.
Clark draws some understandable conclusions about Twitter, and why it will be a flash in the pan. However, Twitter shouldn't be looked at in and of itself -- like technology writers and social media critics like to do with products or services. It's got to be viewed as part of a greater whole, and in the context of our times. Twitter is only one of several developing technologies, use models and products -- that have grown since the launch of Apple's iPhone in 2007 -- that are feeding off each other and growing along the way.
Which leads us to the iPhone Archipelago, and why it's overblown to claim that any one island in this group of islands will disappear. Over the past two years, since the launch of Apple's first-generation iPhone, a series of separate technologies and products have exploded in usage. Each technology is strong enough in the market to stand on its own, yet becomes stronger when tied to the same ecosystem -- much like islands in an archipelago share the same ecosystem:
- SMS text messaging, already popular when the iPhone arrived, is now off the charts. Carriers, like AT&T Wireless and Verizon, have begun offering all-you-can-eat SMS plans (AT&T's covers families in the same plan) for $30 or less. With the arrival of unlimited texting on easy-to-use devices, it's ubiquitous across the U.S. and the rest of the world as never before. This is the first summer of mainstream, unlimited texting plans. We'll see over the next several months how big a deal this really is.
- Twitter, which was built on the idea of connecting social circles via SMS, has become more than just a social network. Because Twitter opened its API up very early, a strong, growing number of applications are being written to Twitter as a platform. That's why those who try to measure Twitter's success by the number of visitors to its Web page, or by page views, are missing the story. Twitter is now also a cross-device tool: Web browser, SMS, smartphone or desktop -- whatever works best for an individual's usage habits.
In a series of videos posted by PR firm Porter Novelli on YouTube, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone explains that access to Twitter from mobile devices, desktop applications and SMS now exceeds access from Web browsers by a 3-to-1 margin. That's huge. Many popular analytics engines aren't even built to factor in that hybrid access model -- meaning it's difficult, if not impossible, to get an accurate measurement today of Twitter's full use.
- Apple's iTunes App Store is now a critical place to look for developer and marketing talent in technology. Because Apple has set a very low barrier to entry for developers, from a technical standpoint, and because of the potential for significant revenue, it's becoming more important by the day. The App Store and the iPhone software platform are doing to the development community what Windows did in the early- to mid-'90s: It's winning it over. Many of those new applications are for social networking services including Twitter.
- The iPhone did change the game two years ago, and the game continues to change because of it. With the addition of push technology (hopefully with the MobileMe kinks worked out of it), better battery life, video and photo messaging to the iPhone platform, usage models will continue to evolve. In turn, SMS, Twitter and the work developers produce will continue to evolve. We'll start to see it soon, when iPhone 3.0 becomes generally available.
Clark argues that other products on the horizon, like Google Wave, look to be so compelling that people will flock to them, first, and that will make Twitter much less important. But by the time Google releases Wave, its best chance of success will be to become part of the archipelago -- and not an island unto itself. Getting folks to change iPhone bookmarks, stop clicking desktop Apps and stop using SMS replies isn't as easy as getting them to just click on another Web page.
Will Twitter disappear? Well, how about all those doomy predictions two years ago that the iPhone would fail because its battery life stunk and because it wasn't business-ready? How are those working out?
Sales of electronics, computers and software have declined less than cars, food services, furniture, garden equipment and gasoline. In fact, the government's adjusted numbers for March and April of this year show people cut back even more on clothes than on personal technology.
What does that mean? One way to look at it is that while consumers have been cutting back spending in all other parts of their budget -- from dinner out to driving their cars -- they've continued to spend on gadgets, PCs and more. "Saturday night at a restaurant? Can't. The Backup drive for the PC is making funny noises. Gotta race out and buy a new one."
Yes, folks. Baby needs a new Western Digital MyBook.
People are spending on this stuff just as a wave of innovation in user experience has been hitting a stride.
As venture capitalist Fred Wilson writes in his blog, a series of new products have been spurred by advances in technology, including the iPhone, Flip Mino video camera and the video game Rock Band ("everyone can be a rock star for a few minutes").
In most of these cases, the breakthrough product or service delivered a new experience to consumers that they had never had before. Sure there were social nets before Facebook, but none allowed you to run your life the way Facebook does for my kids. Sure there were browsers on phones before the iPhone, but there hadn't been one that you could actually use like you use a browser on a computer.
(It's worth reading all of Wilson's item.)
Happy days may or may not be here again. But just in case, hand me the Flip. It might make a good video.
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