Come for the Ride…

Twitter - whether you know what it is or not is the one company (next to Yahoo!) that has been in the news in 2008 for its ability to fail.  What started out as the golden child for social media experts and early adapters now face constant struggles to stay alive.  Let’s face it… when your designers need to get cute with multiple ERROR screens because there are several ways to kill the system - that’s a problem!  Sending out a hot vet assistant telling me my dog has cancer does not make the issue any easier to swallow.  The choices are to operate or to put it down. Note: multiple hot assistants wouldn’t help either.

What irks me about the Twitter platform is that it’s being used as a live communication device.  A few of my friends have subconsciously stopped emailing me and have instead turned to direct messaging me on Twitter to get my attention.  That’s fine for recreational purposes or as updates to their status on a microblog but when things are important or when things need my immediate response, Twitter is still failing miserably at this.

In the last week or so, I’ve noticed overall updates have been down.  Whether that’s people abandoning the platform or Twitter’s throttling their usage, I don’t know.

I’ve noticed with the most recent Twhirl upgrade, Twitter has dropped its hourly API quota from 70 down to 20 requests per hour.  First off, just because you managed to keep your system alive (barely) on life support, doesn’t mean it’s still good or useful for the general public.  If email only allowed 3 gets an hour or if cell phones only allowed access to calls and data within some throttled time blocks during the day, would it still be useful for communication?  Would anyone trust it enough to rely on it knowing it’s in a constant state of cripple?  The answer should be “No” to the above 2 questions.

I’m really baffled as to why Twitter think it’s okay to scale it back to this level of service when its indirectly competing with other forms of communication.  It’s like a rat competing to be the messenger in a room full of pigeons.   Let’s be real here… the only time I would personally accept a delay in live communication to the point of crippling the experience would be if we’re doing live chat with someone who lives close to the Sun.  Being that it takes light 8 minutes to travel between Earth and the Sun, I guess I would have to settle for delayed responses even though I’m sure engineers would try to find a way to make that closer to real time than Twitter’s proposed solutions.

Maybe they need to hire some real startup people - you know, the ones who have built extraordinary things without the luxury of doing so in a funded startup.  I fail to see how $15 million (and more) can’t create a stable system… at the same time, maybe they should just shut it down and start over.  Sometimes it just makes more sense to buy a new car than trying to fix a lemon.

Everyone on the internet is running around like a headless chicken saying video is the next big thing.  Of course, since it IS the next big thing, many ad agencies have been trying to take advantage of viral videos to help boost their clients’ brand into the buzz world.  However, from the many attempts I’ve witnessed and the storyboards that have been presented, most of them have been or would have been huge flops.

In most cases, technology is not the issue.  A viral video is all about the content and in exchange for great content, the viewers are willing to sacrifice quality and post production touchups.  So why is it that a 13 yr old girl can capture a random event on their cell phone and have it be more viral than a professional commercial that cost $25k to produce?  What is it that teens and social media experts get that traditional brands don’t?

The missing element is… the danger zone.

Viral videos for the most part crosses the safety line and bring in to light something that shouldn’t be seen.  Now, when I say “shouldn’t,” it doesn’t necessarily mean a sex tape even though those are pretty viral.

Shouldn’t includes a number of things such as:
- the likelihood of witnessing that in our lifetime is close to nil
- something created that was meant for private viewing
- something so amazing you just had to pass it on so you can discuss how awesome it was
- a new idea or process that invites imagination and wonder
- a train wreck or something so dangerous that you simply can’t look away
- something so stupid you just have to pass on because it made you feel smart
- something witty caught on video that made you smile after you watched it

Unfortunately, the above is where most brand marketers get stuck because they aren’t allowed to cross the safety line into the danger zone.  In fear of offending anyone at all, most brands have chose to stick around in the safe zone when producing videos or worse, they try to take it half a step further by faking the funny or faking the dangerous situation by staging the act, which usually bombs miserably.

Most people can tell a genuine smile from the fake one you do when posing for a camera and that 6th sense is heightened 10 times more when watching it in video form.  So if you’re looking to do a viral (promotional) video of your product, make sure you ask yourself if your video crosses any of the lines mentioned above.  If it doesn’t, you’re probably going to waste a lot of money and time to learn the hard lesson.

Here’s one that was trying to cross into the danger zone.  They were close… but just not quite there.

Summer is here! Well, for everyone who isn’t working in a startup who has had a chance to look outside, summer is here. For the rest of us, this seems to be the time when things slow down, motivation is low and when potential customers are harder to reach as they disappear for weeks on various vacations.

So what do you do when you want to move at the speed of business but business is crawling like a snail? Change things up!

When I worked in the corporate world, summer was the time when all the co-workers wanted to duck out early, go out for lunch, and stay at home on Fridays. Not a lot has changed. If you’re feeling the cabin fever, schedule some networking meetings over coffee or lunch outside and join the rest of the people in the afternoon Sun.

On the subject of scheduling meetings and making deals - avoid Mondays and Fridays. People are busy catching up on stuff from the extended weekends on Mondays and they’re either physically out of the office or mentally out on Fridays. Either way, if you want to be heard, try the middle of the week.

Do you really want to hurry up and wait? Sometimes it’s good (and healthy) to go with the flow and take a break from time to time. Now that we spend our days doing SEO and waiting for responses from various business people, I find on some days I’m busy manning the computer when not a lot is going on. On some of these afternoons, I really feel like going to the pool and just hang out for a bit; and maybe I should.

Burning yourself out when everything is slow is just… bad.

I’ve read a multitude of blogs out there in the last day about how people were incredibly disappointed in what was actually shown at the 2008 WWDC yesterday. Whereas I can understand the disappointment for things like dual cameras for conferencing on the phone, I also understand that most wireless networks do not yet have the infrastructure to handle this sort of bandwidth. Let’s say you start selling 5-10MM more iPhones around the world and these people start to take advantage of this feature on a daily basis, whereas in the US we might be able to ramp up the necessary bandwidth, I hardly believe Denmark, Malta, Peru or Madagascar could handle this out of the box. Out of the box, everything works is Apple’s bread and butter. They understand that people will suffer with a few less features for a user experience not plagued with slow of buggy features (the Windows Mobile Task Manager is a perfect example of the sort of hack Apple has a knack for avoiding).

With all that said, what was shown was absolutely mind blowing. The developers who demoed their products simply blew me out of the water. I recall developing games in Microsoft’s MFC development environment in high school and simply being stonewalled at the obscurity and limiting nature of a development environment. I then look at a combination of what’s in the SDK (I downloaded it shortly after watching the Keynote video) and what was shown and I’m almost ready to delve into trying to create an iPhone app TODAY. The 3D game shown was nothing short of astonishing. The music app, Band, sold me when they got to the “Blues Music Keyboard” and seeing all the Modality Apps made me want to become a doctor. It may sound dumb to you, but this device is more than Apple’s next big money making scheme, this device really can enable the dreams of others (to quote Randy Pausch) by allowing greater flexibility in their day to day life. From presenting information never available to the public in such a rich manner (again, Modality apps) to keeping track of all your information in a centralized location with no fear of losing the data (MobileMe) to sharing your life  and everyday adventures with the easy of taking pictures and blogging through the iPhone 3G, I’m floored and almost ready to be one of the idiots in line on day one for these phones.

This phone is right now for the bleeding edge customer. The power user. We know what we’re doing and we use all features of the iPhone on a daily basis. However, the average user like my Mom, my Dad, my Fiancee and my Brother are simply going to be overwhelmed by a phone with many more features than it has. Apple is slowly allowing people to test and try the iPhone and get used to a PDA that works for the average person. Society as a whole is still getting used to the mobile enabled citizen and if they’re going to release a product that lives up to what we expect from Apple (ie. Perfection), they’re going to need more time to ensure that both the product works flawlessly and people are able to use this in such a way that their cited 90% satisfaction rate isn’t tarnished.

But that’s just my take on it, and though I always want more, I also want time to learn some of these features from a developer’s perspective before some more of these great jumps in mobile awesomeness.

I know I usually write about entrepreneurial stuff and in this case, the fact the new iPhone 2.0 software will support enterprise mail will be something very useful for startups and corporate users - Not to mention the iPhone in itself is pretty innovative which is why I’m a fan. However, somethings felt like they were missing from yesterday’s WWDC announcements… somethings that left me leaving unimpressed. Here are the top 4 things that should have been included.

1. Camera upgrade/Front facing camera. A number of people have mentioned that other phones in the industry carry a 5 mega pixel camera as the standard for their phones. If the iPhone 3G is supposed to the be the new standard, and if Reuters is adding an app that lets you submit news directly to them - then why are we still stuck with a toy camera? Maybe the pre-event hype got to me, but having two cameras on the phone, one for pics and the other for video chat should be the new standard. Having two cameras is not even something that’s really new, but allowing people to video chat over their phone would be a huge WOW factor. Also, most cameras have a mini mirror for people who like to take self portraits. Can we at least get the convexed Apple logo put on or something?

2. More storage! If various iPods are already hitting the 80+ gig mark and if the iPod Touch already has one at 32 gigs, why are we still stuck with a 16gig model as the top end model? If this truly is supposed to be a phone that will last us between now and the end of the Apple Care warranty, wouldn’t you want to offer a larger option especially if we’re now supposed to be installing apps, GPS stuff, possibly record video through apps, etc? Why make the mistake that Microsoft did with the Xbox 360 by only putting out 20gig harddrives to start? It just doesn’t make any sense.

3. Gimme some more for the $10 data plan hike! Okay, so it has been whispered that despite the cheaper purchase price for the iPhone 3G, people will end up paying for it through other means, like the mandatory 3G data plan which costs $30/month instead of $20/month. Seriously, yikes! First off, now that I think about it, I’m not even sure why I’m paying $20 for the existing data plan. EDGE is painfully slow which means I probably transmit all of less than 2mb a month on the at&t network. The majority of my browsing has been under the wifi umbrella which I already pay for through other means. So now that we may actually tramsmit data through the at&t network, we have to pay another $10 a month? If you want your users to pay for the network upgrades you’ve been working on, at least throw in unlimited texting into the plan or something to wow us. While we’re all fans of Apple, a lot of people are still holding out because the phone is tied to at&t. Maybe this change of heart will turn some people around - I know it’ll make me feel better about signing another 2 year contract.

4. More colors? Alright, I know this item is pretty weak. In all honesty, the iPhone 3G is pretty great and if certain features are missing, I’m sure a lot of it can be made up through software updates and applications. However, instead of treating the iPhone 3G as a computer and limiting it to the Mac black and white, why not treat it like the rest of the iPod’s and give users choices in colors? Again, not a huge change, but just enough to wow.

Even if we don’t get any of the upgrades mentioned above for another year or more, I’m hoping someone who has a lot of clout will at least push for a petition to get unlimited texting in the new data plan. While I am certainly not one close to hitting the texting limit, I just don’t like to feel like I’m being taxed every time I use it.