Social and New Media Solutions for a Connected Age
Despite claims to the contrary, new media does not herald the death of old media, not necessarily. When done right, new media can greatly enhance old media. Case in point was the job CNN and Facebook did teaming up to cover the Obama inauguration in a way never seen before. You could watch a live stream of the CNN television coverage and on the same screen be live chatting with Facebook friends. This was an amazing new way to experience a live television event. It felt like a communal experience, even though my Facebook friends are spread out around the world. It was also a textbook example of new and old media blending together, both enhanced by the strength of the other. This was the true power of possibility for the future.
I can imagine lots of other great applications of this kind of blend. How about the Super Bowl? How about The Oscars or your favorite tv show? Can you imagine the producers of Lost getting realtime reactions and feedback from their audience as they show is airing? Want to bring people back to the live show and stop them from watching on Tivo? Make the live experience unique and exciting, something you cannot get on Tivo.
The CNN/Facebook experiment was a watershed event with far reaching implications. I have been very impressed with CNN lately and their progressive use of new meida. They were the first network to use Twitter to interact with their news audience during broadcasts.
No sooner do I blog about Steve Jobs and Apple than the other show drops and Jobs himself announces a leave of absence until June. If speculation wasn’t already running wild, it’s gone completely gonzo now. What it tells me is that Steve is mortal and he hasn’t found a way to clone himself yet. Seriously, here is a short term and long term plan for Steve Jobs and Apple.
Short Term
Jobs should return to Apple as a “chief architect”. This is very similar to what Bill Gates did at Microsoft during his last few years. Basically, someone else is running the show but you are there daily to oversee critical strategy. Lessen the load of daily grinding management may extend your years at the company. In addition, it is a more easy and graceful exit without the jarring effects of just leaving when you get too sick.
Long Term
Also, while serving as chief architect, you are installing the long term solution. Take a look at Disney and you could say as well that Walt Disney was everything to Disney. Where would Disney ever be without his singular vision and passion? How could Disney ever survive without him? But it has. Disney is one of the premiere companies in the world and is as great today as it was is Walts time. But how?
I think the answer is that Walt Disney was able to inject his dna into the company in such a fundamental way that it has stuck all this time. I think people at Disney think to themselves, what would Walt do? Would this make Walt proud? Continuing to honer and stick to Walt’s principals and ideals has kept Disney strong. So it will be Steve Jobs task to inject his dna into Apple in the same way. If he can do this, I think Apple will be a strong company for years to come.
Two of my favorite tools: Twitter Tools for WordPress and Evernote for note taking.
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I’m a big Apple fan and I own lots of Apple products including a first generation iPhone. I was somewhat shocked to read some statements from Apple product head Greg Joswiak about some iPhone features customers have been wanting. As far as copy and paste goes, the article says:
Apple has a priority list of features, and they got as far as they could down that list with this model, Joswiak said
Really? Apple’s priority list of features certainly does not match up with its customers priority list because every iPhone owner I know had copy and paste at the top of that list. It smacks of the elitism that has always been a part of Apple if you look closely. We’ll do what we please and you’ll like it. For the most part we do because what they create is amazing. For all the talk of Open Source and freedom on the Internet, Apple is the most closed, proprietry company there is. So, Apple will give you copy and paste on the iPhone when they are darn good and ready and until then you will sit quietly and wait.
Kara Swisher over at All Things Digital wrote a nice piece about Twitter and how many people she found outside the tech bubble who had no idea what it was. This kind of shock and disappointment is common for people who don’t come up for air often enough.
Last Christmas I asked the members of my family about various aspects of technology. I didn’t even bother with things like Twitter. I was probing mostly about RSS. Some knew of it. Fewer had a good idea of what it did and none used it. They all read blogs directly from the websites, no aggregation. Shocking. The Internet, like the entire Silicon Valley, is a giant reality distortion field. If you don’t check things out from a different point of view, you can get a very inaccurate notion of what is true.
As Kara so aptly points out, while Twitter looks like the hottest thing since sliced bread, when you take off your reality distortion lenses, you realize we’re not even close to being there yet.
According to reports T-Mobile will be first out of the gate with mobile phones based on the new Google Android specification. I am excited to see what becomes of this and I hope Android phones are sucessful. We need more competition in the mobile market when it comes to software. Palm has been left for dead and Nokia is not a player outside of Europe. The iphone has been the only real breath of fresh air in the market in years.
Although many will play it off as such, I don’t see Android as competition as much for the iPhone as it is for Microsoft and Windows Mobile. Google is taking the Microsoft approach, not focusing on hardware at all, but providing a software platform upon which many phones can be built. Apple’s iPhone is a unique experience unto itself and I think it will continue to stand apart. The pressure is really going to be on for Microsoft to make Windows Mobile more compelling.
What all this means in general is that the mobile market will continue to accelerate and companies had better start thinking about how mobile fits into their plans. Already I am disappointed that my bank Washington Mutual has no mobile access to their online banking. Customers will soon factor mobile access into their buying decisions when looking at things like online banking and bill payment.
Synchronization features will also be an important part of any new product or service. Ideally I want my data synced between my desktop, mobile and Internet. Evernote is a new note taking program that I am loving and it does a masterful job of synchronization. All they need now is a better iPhone client.
