Smart Phone Info-Graphic
This is a great image that summaries lots of information about the smart phone apps eco-system. One of the most interesting bits is the predictions as to where this space will be in the future – and it suggests that Android will be only 40,000 apps of the current leader, the iOS. It also does not rate the Windows Phone 7 very highly. I’m not sure this is fair, as once Nokia come on-board in using that phone OS, I think it will pick up at a faster rate. However one of the problems with predictions like this is they miss the huge ructions that innovation creates. Its the issue of ‘unknown unknowns’, that somebody is going to create something that either makes the whole app idea pointless or redefines it in the same was the iOS did with apps for phones. For example, imagine predicting blogging platforms going forward in 2005 – would you have put Twitter there? Doubtful, because if you know enough to place it there, you’ve either be inventing it yourself…
While is is very interesting, I also think some links with the sources of the data visualised here would be helpful too?
An Analysis of Social Media’s Power for Social Change
There is a lot of discussion around trying to understand the power (or not) of social media to achieve social change. This article looks to link to tweet density with on-the-ground social protests in Europe. Its an interesting idea, but without the data behind it, it is hard to say if this is a pattern or just confirmation bias.
By contrast, this article is a very good attempt to try and put a data set to this question. What the author has done is to look at the amount of tweets with certain hashtags related to big social protests over time – but then, most interestingly, looking to see if those tweets orginated either in-country, in the region or internationally. Here’s the results for one such protest movement, #yemen:
So what does this pattern mean? The author suggests:
The evidence from the hashtags analyzed here indicates that, at least in the early days of the Arab Spring, Twitter served primarily as a platform for communication by international observers about the events. There is also limited evidence of a pan-Arabic public conversation within these hashtags, but this is not their primary purpose. Both phenomena are definitely episodic and appear strongly event-driven. As in the Iranian protests of 2009, Twitter seems to fall into Aday et al.’s (2010) “external attention” category of new media roles.
Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Twitter use is politically inconsequential. Attentive global citizens and diasporic populations could, for example, use it to promote action opportunities to sympathetic followers. They may also retweet content from local users liberally, thus amplifying the latter’s voices beyond what the above charts imply. For that matter, local users themselves may find these hashtags useful for sharing and verifying local news at times when they are not swamped by outsiders. Answering questions like these will require textual analysis, and it is unlikely that automated methods will suffice (except for the RT question). I’m envisioning lots of content analysis, translation from Arabic and French, and input from subject matter experts in my future…
The whole article is worth reading as there is much more about the data presented here, its reliability etc. However is does paint a more complex relationship between social media and social change, which was to be expected…
(Also published on the P2P Foundation blog, Hat-tip to Michel for the links.)
Debunking Gladwell’s ‘The Tipping Point’
This is an interesting article that looks at counter-views to Malcolm Gladwell’s best-seller, The Tipping Point, which argues ‘The Law of the Few’ where a select group of ‘influencers’ have a key influence over the trends of society at large. Herb Schaffner’s article argues that Gladwell kind of missed the point – in that yes there is something interesting going on with trends, but no its not the influencers who are the most important point. First off the article looks at Gladwell’s reliance on the 6-degrees idea of psychologist Stanley Milgram:
Gladwell drew on the work of psychologists such as Stanley Milgram who did experiments testing the social chains between people–what is known today as “six degrees of separation.” Milgram found that “sociometric stars” were a key to shortening the chain of connection to your desired target. But Watts staged his own experiment that updated Milgram’s work, and in doing so, uncovered different findings. … [Watts discovered] that highly connected people–the hubs or influencers–played no significant role. People selected the next person in the chain based on qualities such as living in geographic proximity, sharing occupations, and other factors more so than being heavily connected, or having high status.
Another key point is around the definition and role on this mythical ‘influencer’;
Watts points out we all talk so much about influencers, we’ve accepted the term without knowing its definition. Are influencers ordinary people with extraordinary reach? Are they celebrities or “opinion leaders” as they were named in earlier stages of pr theory? Even if we were to exclude bloggers, media, and Oprah from our definition–how then do we measure how an influencer impacts the opinions of others? Watts says some studies measure an influencer as someone whom at least three people say they would turn to for advice. But that scale — reaching people who are three times better connected than others — does not move the millions of people marketers, political campaigns, and brands need to reach. Stripped of the media spin, an influencer’s clout is limited without the amplifying power of the Internet.
Put simply, influencers are only that because of the media amplification afforded them. Which means it is less about their influence and more about the broadcasting of their ideas. With that definition, then anyone can be an influencer, all you have to do is re-broadcast what they say. This article takes the ideas of trends and places them firmly back in the crowd setting and away from a perceived band of elite people.
(Also published on the P2P Foundation blog, Hat-tip to Michel for the link.)
I listened to the really interesting Guardian Technology podcast, where the guy from Microsoft was on talking about their strategy and plans for Windows Mobile 7 and its updates. Microsoft stuck to the same line around sales figures (i.e. not saying much) but did talk about the new features they added in a software update. The one I found most interesting was the idea around trying to break down the walls between different communication streams, so email to text to twitter would seem, well seamless. This is not a million miles from the idea behind Google’s now discontinued Wave. While it has issues as an idea, I also think its a powerful tool that would give Windows Phone 7 the identity it needs.
This, I think, is where Microsoft’s recent purchase of Skype comes in. There has been much speculation about why Microsoft spent a huge wedge of cash on Skype – but when you’re trying to make your smart phone software smarter than the competition, they being able to lever in the largest VOiP network going is a huge advantage. I think there is a strong chance we’ll see Skype steadily integrated more and more into Windows Phone 7 until it s part of the system itself – and the boundaries between one form of communication and another, which in the digital realm become less and less meaningful, further dissolve.
Games Brief: Know your gaming buzzwords
Interesting post defining some key terms… For example:
What is gamification?
It is not about making games. It is not about brand extension. It is about encouraging and rewarding users for doing the things that you want them to do.
A loyalty scheme where you “level up” for taking more flights is an example of “gamification”. An answers website which gives users badges and achievements for providing helpful responses is an example of gamification. Games purists sometimes refer to gamification as pointsification, deriding it as not being about making games. They are right.
But that doesn’t matter. Gamifiers are not trying to make a game. They are not trying to take the best bits of games and apply them to your website or product. They are trying to take many of the lessons that game-makers have learned – about showing users what to do, about offering rewards, about using psychology to encourage behaviours you want – and applying them to other fields.
Apps as a Digital Bridge: Apps vs Mobile Web Pages
I had a conversation with somebody on a train about apps (how fun) and the issue of if it is worth doing an app, when most phones can access the Internet – so why not let users simply look at the information via a web-page. Which is a fair point, but for one important detail; that apps are a digital bridge between the app and the user. Our phones (and iPods) are very personal spaces, we hold personal contacts, images and materials on them. When we install an app to them, we are in effect inviting that app (and by extension whoever commissioned and created it) into our personal space. The establishes a 2-way link, for while as the user I can run the app anytime – it can also interact with me, via messages and updates. You don’t get this relationship via a web-browser.
With an app, there is an ever-open bridge that can be re-used. By updating the app, one can renew interest in it. A new version of the app can point to can be used to guide the player to new items of interest, thus the build of audience can become cumulative. But as with any 2-way relationship, and one where the app is invited into such a private place, respect for that place is needed by the app developer. For example by using wisely and sparingly the ability of an app to message/update the user directly, even if they are not running the app.
Interview with Me on Horror Video Games
Horror News Network: Do you feel added pressure in making this game knowing that Call of Cthulhu is such a popular RPG?
Tomas Rawlings: Huge pressure. The game is beloved and popular for all the right reasons – it’s an amazing game. You don’t get to be one of the best paper RPGs for 30 years now without doing lots of things right. However video games are a very different medium and its simply not possible to port the game over as is. Paper RPGs are guided by the imagination (and acting) of the players, so they work well when players come up with crazy schemes and mad solutions to problems. However in a video game the Keeper is the game-engine and it has restrictions from the hardware and software on what can and can’t be done. Some games, like the PC/Xbox ‘Dark Corners of the Earth’, use Call of Cthulhu as a setting and make the game about the action. I’ve got this game and enjoyed playing it, but we wanted to take our game in a different direction. I’m a huge fan of turn-based strategy games (XCom, Fire Emblem) and felt that their turn-based nature fitted a game based on the RPG quite well. As a result, this is the direction we’re taking.
Full interview is here. To follow the progress of this game: Twitter @redwaspdesign or Facebook http://on.fb.me/redwaspfb or see Red Wasp Design.
Scientific Journalism aka Open Source Journalism
Open Source Journalism, or as Wired called it in their ‘Jargon Watch’ column ‘Scientific Journalism‘ they define as:
Journalism that publishes a reporters source documents and other background data with the final article. Promoted by Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, it apes the data transparency of scientific publishing.
Yes it is about verifying the original, but I call it Open Source, as the idea is that you publish the source with the article. Thinking about it, that is only part of the question. By calling it ‘Open Source’ I am also applying a copyright layer suggesting that others can write new articles or re-write (and expand) the existing one based on the source, much as a programmer would join a open source project and build on the existing code-base. Its an interesting approach as it can branch in many ways; from just putting to source with the original so others can validate your article from the data. It can suggest that others add to the original article to expand upon it, bringing new perspectives and expertise to it. It also suggests new article could be written from the source, compiling new new views of the same subject. The open source also suggests that the condition of leaving the source is that if another adding/writes new then they should also leave their source behind too.
A while ago I co-wrote an article for The Independent on Wiki-technology. As with any article, we had gathered lots more source information that was in the final article. I was keen to publish all of the email conversation, drafts etc with it – in a wiki format. Also to invite others to use the same source to write their own articles too. Sadly the Indy did not go for it. Perhaps now they might?
Music Industry Goes Data-mining
This was an interesting article from The Economist about how the music industry is moving to turn-to rather than away from the the web and networked technology:
Yet music companies do not expect Apple or any other technological behemoth to save them. Few believe recorded music is about to rebound, despite healthy digital sales for two singers, Adele and Lady Gaga, in the past few weeks. To stay afloat, they need to drive down costs without crippling their core business. Quietly, technology is allowing them to do this, too.
Online music outfits such as iTunes, Spotify and YouTube bring in much less money than CD sales. But they produce far more precise, timely data. Every time a track is uploaded to or played on YouTube, every time it is sold by iTunes, streamed on Spotify, shared on a pirate network, liked on Facebook or tweeted about, it gives off a digital signal. A cottage industry has sprung up to process these signals and feed the results to the record companies.
This is already shaping strategies. Universal, the world’s biggest music company, is developing its own data-crunching tool, known as the Artist Portal. Data from the portal have proved what many had suspected: that the decades-old practice of releasing music to radio weeks before putting it on sale feeds piracy and saps sales. So, earlier this year, it stopped the practice for many releases.
Like biology is turning to data-flow to power new advances, so it seems is the music business. This is not surprise, as technology has long offered it a chance to re-interpret its relationship with fans:
Because peer-to-peer networks lower the cost of moving large files to a fraction of what they are with the client-server, central-index networks, they dramatically expanding the ability of ordinary people and noncommercial entities to speak in the digital age, to distribute video and other content in new and innovative ways.
As humans, We All Have Our Blindspots
I was reading Scott Barnes’s blog Riagenic, which had an interesting post on why he felt Microsoft did not get the mobile market and its phone was not been making huge in-roads as yet (but we don’t really know as Microsoft have not put out any figures yet). But in the midst of all the tech-speak, this bit struck me as a bit off:
Consumers are morons, and are easily tricked if you have a brilliant strategy. Urban legend of Colgate guy wanting to increase toothpaste sales that tried everything but in the end all he did was increase the diameter of the hole in which toothpaste pours out of by 3mm in the end sent sales through the roof (given we used more toothpaste unwittingly). It is a story I was told in my days of Marketing 101 training, but it stuck with me for obvious reason(s) – hopefully.
Well Scott, you are a consumer too. Sure when it comes to technology you’re a savvy and knowledgeable one – but what about DIY? Gardening products? Kitchenware? Financial products? My guess is you have areas that you’ve not as savvy as you are with technology and so behave there, well, I’d say more on autopilot than moronic. This is really well documented in the excellent book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (hat-tip to Games Brief for the recommendation). What it shows is that we have to make desisions on so many things, so often and where there are so many variables – and unless we developed proxy means to help us decide what to do, we’d get nothing done and be stuck in a state of paralysis. Marketing people can take advantage of this to sell things to us. That’s not the same as us being morons, just people.
A Great Becoming... 