Google Goodies

Tonight, Google launched some cool new search features at Google's Search Event. Tech Crunch has been covering the event live, leaking some of the new stuff to be expected from Google in the near future.

One of these things is Google Goggles, which allows users to take a picture of an object and then use that image as a search query. This is obviously a perfect fit for mobile phones - users simply take the shot of the thing they want to search for, and they are then showed the Google results for the product.

According to Google, 2/3 of our brain is involved in visual processing which makes visual search quite an important feature to be considered for the future.

Some of you may know that a couple of visual search apps have already been around for some time now on the App Store and Android Market. Perhaps the currently best know app for visual search is SnapTell, available both for the iPhone and Android handsets. It allows users to take a photo of a book, DVD or video game and then displays the title of the respective item along with a list of the prices for that item on some of the best known online retailers.

 

Nokia also has a similar application for its Symbian platform for some time now but I am not sure it really took off. It's called Nokia Point and Find and you can find details about it at this link or see how it works in the video below.

There was one part in Google's presentation that I found particularly interesting. Vic Gundotra, the VP of Engineering at Google, said search will be possible in the future by sight, by location and by voice. Interestingly enough, these three search modalities are enabled and empowered to reach the mass market by the same device: the mobile phone. It is more than likely than Google will direct more and more effort and attention into the mobile phone in the future. It's strong push of the Droid, along with the increasingly strong rum ours about a 100% Google phone show just that.

Google is already well positioned on all these three new types of searches. Let's briefly consider them...

Search by voice - See the now famous Google Voice app, that caused so much friction in the past between Google and Apple after its rejection from the App Store. As a cool added feature to Google Voice, Mandarin and Japanese Voice Search capabilities have been added and in 2010, the app will also support an audio real time translator.

Search by sight - See the latest Google Goggles


Search by location to be checked very soon in the future.

According to tonight's presentation, Google's mobile homepages will soon have the capability to adjust its search suggestions to consider the user's location. As an example provided to the audience in the Computer History Museum - the venue of the presentation - Vic Gundotra showed how the same Google search for "Re" resulted in different results for one iPhone with the location set to Boston (Google top result: "Red Sox") and for another iPhone set to San Francisco (Google top result: "REI")

Before I end this post, I just wanted to highlight one more goodie from Google Labs, launched some weeks ago, but which I never got to introduce.


 Google Image Swirl is a new way of categorizing searched images by considering both the visual and semantic similarities.

All that is left for me to say at this point is enjoy. And keep searching!

Is more less for the App Store?

Recently Apple announced that  App Store reached 100,000 applications. While some claim this milestone has been reached earlier, it marks yet another stage in the impressive evolution of the App Store. Below is a graph showing the evolution of the App Store until it reached 1 billion downloads back in April. Seven months later, the numbers center around two rounds numbers: 100,000 applications and 2 billion downloads.

 

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/04/23/how-the-app-store-got-to-1-billion-downloads/

As I already debated in a previous post, the question one has to ask at this point is just how much more can the App Store grow? When will applications be simply too many for users to handle? Will this degenerate in app fatigue and backlash at Apple? 

It’s interesting to see how Apple will manage this increased complexity of the App Store, given the historic efforts of the company to keep things as simple as possible for their users.The increasing clutter on the App Store is affecting users, developers and ultimately Apple. Let's look a bit closer at how this happens.


USERS

Now, more is normally better for consumers. More variety means more choice, more competition among providers which might lead to better apps for users, at lower prices. I am not questioning that. However, once the number of application reaches a certain threshold (which remains to be discovered), it is possible that the offer will be too broad for consumers to manage. When dealing with too much choice, people normally tend to panic and desist choice, being simply overwhelmed with the options available. In App Store terms, the discovery of relevant apps might take too much time and effort. On the long run, this might negatively impact the user interaction with the App Store.


Various research focusing on the usage patterns shows that consumes are already finding it difficult to keep up with the apps they install. Consumers download many applications (from 10 to 30) but end up using only 2 or 3 of them. Furthermore, applications have a limited lifespan, with an average of 20 accesses, after which consumers stop using them. And according to analytics firm AppsFire, quoted  by Moconews.net, only around 20,000 apps are being downloaded to begin with.


Apple has tried to improve the app discovery with the latest version of the iTunes, which allows a faster and more direct access to the various App Store categories. A Genius feature is also being offered - this means Apple analyzes the apps available on the user's device and recommends similar ones. There are also a bunch of websites that offer various algorithms (for ex, one of them looks at users' tweets and suggests apps based on that) to help consumers sort out the mess and find the apps they are interested in. Numerous websites feature periodic reviews of applications, with rankings per category. While these do help users to some extent, the app discovery remains cumbersome.


DEVELOPERS

While for users the increasing number of apps is a double edged sword, for developers it largely means just trouble. More applications means more competitions, longer approval times, fewer chances of being noticed and increased pressure to lower prices.


Competing with 99,999 other apps is not easy. Especially when Apple is keeping a tight control of the App Store and the possibilities of promoting an app are very limited inside the store. Developers normally have to launch websites and use advertising services like the one provided by AdMob to make sure users even hear of their app's existence. The only ones with a different fortune are the lucky few who get selected by Apple and get featured in the now famous 'There's an app for that' commercials.


To add to developers woes, several companies now offer services that make the app development process accessible to non engineers. Companies like Swebapps.com, AppBreeder.com, GameSalad.com and MyAppBuilder.com offer such services for relatively low monthly fees (compared to the costs of developing one app from scratch). That basically means that the App Store is now opening up to people with no clue of Apple's SDK and no technical background, who simply follow some simple steps to create their customized application.


Given this situation, perhaps the fact that some developers have decided to sell their apps on eBay and leave the App Store should not be such a huge surprise. Surely one of the most serious blow to date was the recent decision of Joe Hewitt, the developer of Facebook's application for the iPhone to leave the store, as a sign of protest to Apple's review process.

APPLE

As already said, Apple's recent relationship with developers has been spiny, largely because of its apps review and approval process. The closed ecosystem characterizing the App Store has also been criticized. However, many developers still choose the App Store and its platform in favor of the other app stores and platforms. The increasing competition faced might result in more developers leaving the App Store, since they will no longer be able to cover the costs of developing the app (estimated at several thousand dollars).

Apple may either choose to provide some increased assistance to developers and re-ensure them of guaranteed success on the platform, or decide to stand back and let a natural selection of the strongest apps take place.

Wrapping up...

The App Store is definitely central to the success of the iPhone. I recall the early days of the iPhone and the high number of skeptics of its success. To be fair, the phone did not take off from day 1, and many considered it was too poor from a technological point of view to claim such a price premium and hope to challenge the big guys from Nokia and the like. But then came the App Store. And just like the iTunes store with iPod, the demand for iPhone exploded. And it hasn't stopped growing since. In the process, Apple has challenged and reshaped the entire mobile industry and its full impact is yet to be finalized. No later than this week, Apple became the largest smartphone seller in the world, outing Nokia from its top place. And today, the media was rumoring a possible acquisition of Palm by Nokia. If this will actually happen (many say it will remain just a rumor), we are going to witness more interesting moves in the smartphone arena.

According to a study by Ovum, by 2014, around 18.7 billion million apps will be downloaded (from 491 million that were registered at the end of 2008). These will generate sales of $5.7 billion. This basically means there is a lot of money at stake in this young industry, and so far Apple is by far the best positioned to cash in the largest part of this pie.

Is this market going to become over-saturated? It is possible. Will consumers suffer from app fatigue? Most likely.


However, let's not forget we are looking at an incipient industry (we only started talking about apps in a serious way back in 11th July 2008, when App Store was launched). This is a 1-year old industry, still in its early phase, but quickly burning steps into the growth phase. This means at some point a shakeout will happen. What remains to be seen is what exactly will determine who stays and who goes. In time, consumers will become more picky, forcing developers to come up with more relevant apps and app store providers to reconsider the sourcing of their store to better reflect consumer preferences.

Apple and Microsoft tablets are looking sweeter than chocolate tablets

If some of you are already starting to be bored just by hearing the word 'tablet', you'd better get used to it. Because it looks like this word is here to stay. And along with the word itself, frantically used in the last couple of months, come some pretty interesting devices...

The product category as such existed already, with manufacturers such as Toshiba, HP and Fujitsu trying to grab a piece of this pie. However, the market didn't quite take off, being estimated at a mere 1.4% of the global portable PC market, according to research company IDC. But as it happened before (with MP3 players and smartphones), word that Apple might launch its own tablet immediately drew everyone's attention to this category.

Most were expecting the "iTablet" (the name predicted by many bloggers) to be launched as ready as September 9th, when Apple launched its new line of iPods. However, this did not happen. But according to recent news, there's no doubt an Apple tablet will be launched in early 2010. There are several clear indications of this: Apple apparently developed a multi-touch OS X version some years ago. Then Steve Jobs came back to work, and according to WSJ, the tablet is his number 1 priority these days. And then there are the leaks of selected suppliers, who confirmed that they already received order for components. And there are some nice previews of the tablet online, to complete the picture and satisfy our curiosity.

As you can see from the photos below, there is no clear indication of how the tablet will actually look like. Most observers predict a larger version of an iPod Touch.

 

And then, in the midst of all this excitement, BAM! comes Microsoft. Gizmodo leaks some rumors that the Redmond giant is also launching its own tablet, named "Courier", and it substantiates the rumor with some videos (see below).




Courier User Interface from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

We're obviously looking at yet another Microsoft - Apple showdown (few days before, rumors of Microsoft's own smartphone model also surfaced the blogosphere), which is more than likely going the make this emerging tablet PC category a whole lot more interesting. But what I think is particularly interesting (if most of the rumored features of iTablet and Courier turn out to be true) is that the two giants are following two completely different strategies: Apple is playing the entertainment card, while Microsoft chose the business & productivity card.

Now, mobile entertainment is growing like crazy and the iPhone and App Store's success are there to prove it. Entertainment on the go, available outside one's living room is here to stay. For a while at least. There is a lot of content that is being consumed more frequently in digital form, starting from music and TV programs to books and newspapers. But I think the business segment will also embrace a tablet with enhanced capabilities compared to a smartphone and more advanced that a netbook.

So there's no telling who chose the right strategy. Given the incipient stage of this product category, it looks like there is plenty of room to accommodate both Microsoft and Apple. Especially since the two tablets satisfy different needs and are at most complementing each other, instead of competing against each other.

As a final consideration, I just want to give a thumbs up to Microsoft for finally stopping to step in Apple's shoes and copy it at all costs. Courier seems like a valuable future product, with which Microsoft might take back some credit, that it partially deserves (for having actually invented the tablet concept and dedicated software back in 2001).

Flipping the latest news

A lot has happened since my last post. Apple's iPod centered event took place last Tuesday. As expected, not many huge surprises, with the exception perhaps of the fact that the iPod Touch didn't get a camera like the Nano model did. The blogosphere is still debating as to why exactly that didn't happen, while some users creatively and funnily express their disagreement (see video below)



Today, Microsoft launched Zune HD, along with an improved Zune 4.0 software and the long awaited Marketplace. I already wrote about Zune. It is interesting to see how well this device will do, given the very recent improvements Apple made to its iPod series. I for one will also look for the direction that Marketplace will take, since it was initially anticipated as a platform for mobile applications for the phones using Windows Mobile.

 

 

These days in California, the TechCrunch 50 conference takes place. A lot of the big guys are there, showing some new and cool stuff. But there are also a lot of startups being featured. The full list can be found at this link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/the-list-of-startups-presenting-at-techcrunch50/

According to TechCrunch, they were selected from more than 1,000 applications, so it wouldn't be a surprise to hear from some of them in the future.

Below are the presentations from TechCrunch50 concerning two new features launched by Google and Bing respectively: Google Fast Flip and Bing's Visual Search. Enjoy!

Are digital platforms the future of online business?

Some recent news that I read throughout the last couple of weeks got me thinking about the potential future of online businesses: digital platforms.

To start with, I must admit my idea of a digital platform is a bit fuzzy. I started writing this blog by checking Wikipedia to see what a digital platform really is. So before I go on, let me tell you the way I see it: for me, a digital platform is an environment that aggregates several applications. To put it differently, it's like a plate of food where all your favorite dishes are served.
In the online & digital business, this basically means offering a destination site, software or application that puts together several features frequently used by usrs. 

Platforms are particularly compelling in today's business environment. For most online & mobile companies, finding the right business model to monetize the service is quite a challenge. Platforms usually have high traffic levels compared to other sites, because users know they can find several useful stuff in the same place. High traffic automatically draws an increased number of advertisers with it. The advertisers are also attracted by the fact that users not only visit the site more often, but they also tend to spend more time online, resulting in an increased exposure to ads. Platforms might also enjoy a more loyal user base, since they will probably appreciate the benefits of finding multiple services and solutions in a single site or software. All in all, platforms are good business.

Perhaps the first real online platform was Yahoo. The site still contains today access to a varied amount of services such as: Mail, Messaging, Weather, Sport, Career, Games, Finance, Travel etc. Yahoo is currently struggling to regain its once privileged position among the online businesses. One of its recent efforts was to redesign its home page, making it more intuitive to users.

I will now take a look at the main online and digital players and asses their capacity to center their business around a platform.

Let's start with...

 
In Google's case, the first difficult task is to choose the product that they could use as a base for their platform. In my opinion, they have many options at hand. The first obvious choice could be Google's home page, but the search engine alone, while extended across various categories (web, images, videos, maps, news etc) offers a poor user interface and few catchy add-ons. iGoogle partially reduces this shortcoming, by allowing users to customize their search page and include more useful services, such as mail, to do lists, calendar, weather and news updates, live messaging etc.

Another option could be YouTube. It sounds interesting, because users spend a lot of time watching videos, and they are quite captive while doing so. However, a YouTube add-on can be easily used for a more complex platform.

From the existing Google products, perhaps the best choice for a platform is Gmail. And judging from Google's Wave project, Gmail has been used as the backbone. For those of you who want a full update on what Google Wave is, the video below gives you a comprehensive introduction. For the others, I will just briefly enumerate the key idea and features behind this project.



At its core, Google Wave is a real-time communication platform. It's an in-browser client, integrating several features that allow users to: email, instant message, chat, social network and manage projects, share files, all in real-time, and with several others users.

So far, only developers have had access to the Wave platform, but Google announced that it would send out 100,000 invitations to users on September 30th. If you wanna watch out for Wave or subscribe for updates, check out http://wave.google.com/


Let's move on to Apple...

Apple has a great platform, this time based on a software: iTunes. iTunes had a major contribution to iPod's growth and is nowadays also used by the increasing base of iPhone users to sync their PC and phone and manage their apps. A new version of iTunes is expected to be launched no later than this Wednesday, with many features anticipated by bloggers. Of all the predicted features, the ones that really got me started were the integration of several social networking services such as Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm. Because, as MG Siegler from TechCrunch cleverly puts it, this is a great source of making more money.

"And just imagine if Apple made a feature not only to send the name of a currently playing song to Twitter and Facebook, but if it included a link to buy the song on iTunes as well. That could mean some significant sales." 

From this perspective, iTunes has perhaps the highest monetization potential, since the user account is already linked to his credit card, making the one-click purchase of a song/ movie that a friend posted on his Facebook account extremely easy. iTunes of course lacks other features such as live messaging, emailing, productivity features etc. It is interesting to see where Apple decides to take it, because in my perspective, iTunes has great potential in becoming a comprehensive platform.

Moving on to...

 Facebook has been criticized by many for its incapacity to translate its huge customer base in cash. However, recent product launches show indications that Facebook is finally on the right track in monetizing its 250 million user base. 

First, Facebook launched Pages, allowing companies, organizations, athletes, celebrities etc around to world to establish a direct connection with their fans. This different communication channel is enabling marketers to access and target their audience in a novel and highly engaging way.


Reuters claims that Facebook's vision is that of becoming a "utility" that offers activities to keep people online for hours". And their recent moves show just that.

Recently, Facebook significantly improve its search engine, by also opening it up to search outside of its page. This move not only counteracted Twitter's longly acclaimed search capabilities, but has also posed some threat to the big guys of search, Google, Bing and Yahoo.


Then they went and bought FriendFeed, a service similar to Twitter. Facebook is also considering launching an electronic payments system. According to Reuters, Facebook could pose some serious threat in the future to eBay's PayPal and to iTunes (if they manage to launch their payments system).


What shows that Facebook is no longer interested strictly in the social media game is its recent launch of a Twitter app, which allows users to simultaneously update their Facebook Page and their Twitter account. Mashable makes a good analysis of the strategic implications of this launch and of how Facebook is trying to preempt Twitter's advantage and become a 3rd party Twitter tool.

Finishing off with Microsoft, it can be said that at this moment in time, MSN is pretty much the only platform they have at hand. However, MSN features are highly similar to the Yahoo portal, so it is not so clear how successful it can be on the long term. I for one am interested to see what software will accompany the newly launched Zune HD and how the long awaited Marketplace for mobile applications will look like. They might constitute interesting candidates for a new platform.

To sum up, as an Orange commercial once put it, "The future is bright"...for online platforms.

Game, set, tweet

Most of my friends know that I am a tennis fan. A tennis freak would probably be more precise. Which explains why I've been spending most of my time these days to follow US Open on TV. And while this blog doesn't (sadly) cover sports, this little piece of news gives me the opportunity to talk about sports in the social media context.

The news is that the US Open officials banned players to use their Twitter account during breaks, fearing that the inside information that they provide will be used for gambling purposes. I have to say a big grin appeared on my face while reading the news. I simply cannot imagine Federer or Nadal using their breaks to tweet to the world about whatever. This measure, while extreme and slightly ridiculous, shows however just how big the whole social media phenomenon has become.

I think sports is perhaps one of the best industry to accommodate social media. Sports consumption is largely social and there's no better consumer than a loyal fan. The amounts of money being made just from subscriptions and fan merchandise are there to prove it. And people simply love to talk about their favorite player/ team and debate over which is the better one. And Facebook, Twitter and the likes are the perfect platforms for fans to express their love.

That is why I decided to take a deeper look at the 4 Grand Slams (Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and US Open) and see how they have integrated the social media phenomenon in their marketing efforts.

I started by looking at the usual suspects, Facebook, Twitter, the App Store and YouTube. The results are in the table below:

From a superficial analysis it can be said that Wimbledon seems to have best integrated social media in its marketing. However, if we compare the tournaments with the individual tennis players, we can say that they are a long way behind. Just to give you an idea, Roger Federer currently has 2,882,491 fans on his Facebook Page and Rafael Nadal 2,047,955. Serena Williams has 991,490 followers on Twitter, Andy Roddick 11,779.

2010 will probably tell which of the four Grand Slams will ace the social media game.

(Net) Surfing the winds of change?

Google announced today that it has reached a distribution agreement with Sony. The deal involves that Google's internet browser, Chrome, will be pre-installed on the new Sony Vaio models. The move comes a year after Google launched Chrome in a market long dominated by Internet Explorer. Also today, Opera 10 was launched.

Of course, there is a lot of debate in establishing which of the five main Internet browsers (according to me, listed in the picture below) is the best. I do not want to go in the technicalities that such a debate would involve. Firstly, because, frankly, it is beyond my current technical knowledge. Secondly, and more importantly, because these technical stuff may not matter at all in the end.


Google's bitter tone at Chrome's less than impressive user adoption (see the figures at the end of this post) highlights a key issue in this fierce competition:

"Google executives express frustration at what they consider a lack of interest among internet users about browsers. “Awareness is shockingly low” given how much people rely on browsers, said Mr Rakowski. “It’s absolutely a problem that people don’t know what a browser is, or how to evaluate one." (excerpt taken from Financial Times' article on the matter)

I find this declaration important because, for the first time, another reason other than Microsoft's antitrust issues and imposed dominance is being pointed out as a cause for IE's long standing success in the face of competition.

And I tend to agree with it. People simply don't care that much about their Internet browser's capabilities. If the page loads slowly, it's the internet provider's fault. Or the computer's fault. Or any other cause except the browser. The improvements made with each new browser version are simply too subtle for normal consumers to notice.

From a personal experience, I can highlight another reason for Chrome's and other browsers' difficulties in catching up with Internet Explorer: dear-old habit. People simply get used to their browser. I for one just click the browser icon unconsciously every time I turn on my computer. It has become just another reflex we make in a fast paced world, in which decisions are made in seconds and repeated consequently, for the sake of simplicity and saved time.

I have tried other browsers than the one I am using now and liked all of them. I even made amends to switch to the new browser from the next day. However, I always ended up clicking the old browser icon and the new browser ultimately became a forgotten icon on my desktop.

The point is that it takes a lot of time to convince people to develop new habits. Unlearning to do something can be a very challenging task. And this means that on the medium term, it's not the fastest, most complete browser that's going to lead the market. It's the most familiar one.

To end, just a brief overview of the current market shares, according to Net Applications:

Internet Explorer: 67.7%

Mozilla: 22.5%

Safari: 4%

Chrome: 2.59%

Source: Net Applications, July 2009