RIM, PlayBook And More Kindle Fire

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeSleep is good. I've always been a fan though I generally have to make up for my lack of skill with  enthusiasm and a good attitude. Thankfully I slept fairly well last night. That should translate into a little less mental fuzziness today. I can hope so anyway.

On the tech front I wanted to briefly discuss a couple of things before getting ready for work.

First on todays laundry list is a story focused on RIM and their Playbook tablet. You can find the text at the following link...

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/09/30/tech-today-rim-didn%E2%80%99t-know-what-to-do-with-its-tablet/

The gist of the story is that there was internal disagreement over who they were going to sell the Playbook to and over the direction the company was taking. Just a few years ago smart phones with almost exclusively used by businesses and RIM's Blackberry phones were king. Heck, they are still very popular in that space. People tend to focus to much on the fact that RIM's market share is slipping and not enough on the fact that the market for smart phones has been growing rapidly. RIM is a profitable company and will likely continue to be for at least a couple more years. What happens beyond that point is murky though and the Playbook scenario outlined in the linked story explains why. On the one hand you had people in the company that wanted to target sales at corporate customers. The advantage of this approach is that you can price the tablet higher and play to your strengths if your RIM. You're not going to sell as many as you would if you successfully rolled it out to the masses but your margins will be larger and you won't be going head to head with Apple. The other alternative is to try to sell it to everyone. If you're going to do that you need to price it a lot more aggressively.

Either approach might have worked. Sadly for RIM they chose to "compromise" and price it like they were selling to corporate customers while attempting to sell it though mass market channels like BestBuy. The results have spoken for themselves.

Cisco also brought out a tablet called the Cius this year. Haven't hears of it? No surprise there if you're not using Cisco's call manager it's not very useful and they aren't selling it to consumers. It's very expensive relative to the iPad but it isn't meant to compete in that space. It's only been on sale for about a month and I can't find any news stories about how Cisco is doing sales wise but they are following the strategy RIM should have if they wanted to charge a price that clearly made them a worse value than the iPad in the consumer space. Getting your targeting and message right is so important in this space. Trying to compete with Apple if you haven't done that is basically pointless and a good way to lose a lot of money.

The other thing is a bit about the Kindle Fire. There are apparently rumors that it's going to be in limited supply this year. Bezos said as much at his press conference when it was announced. If true there are likely two reasons for this. First of all Apple has used its excellent cash position and operational excellence to secure much of the manufacturing capacity that is available. This leaves Amazon and other tablet makers picking up the bread crumbs.

The second possibility is that Amazon never intended to produce that many of this version of the Fire. They may have wanted to get something out the door quickly and this was their best alternative. It's a capable platform but much like the first generation Kindle I suspect the subsequent versions will be more capable and elegant devices.

The end result of either of those two reasons being correct is we may see a limited supply of Fire tablets this holiday season so ordering early may not be a bad idea. I have my order in already as I believe I mentioned yesterday. Another thought is that scarcity has worked well for Apple and Amazon may be charting that same course for themselves in regards to the Fire.

Time to get ready for work and get a few other things taken care of. Have a great weekend!

Amazon On Fire (Short Take)

This will be another quick and short post. I had the choice of getting close to enough sleep for the first time in three days or spending an hour on the BLOG. Sleep won out. It's been even busier than normal around here but things should be settling down a tiny bit over the next few days.

Amazon is a really smart company. How do I know? The proof is in the pudding as the old saying goes. Look at their bottom line, look at what they are doing to their competition and look what they announced today. I'm going to talk about the Tablet and hopefully cover the other parts of the announcement in the next few days.

Seven inch tablet, $199. Wireless only, and not that impressive hardware wise but a good device to test the waters. Will feature the Amazon store which is substantial and a select number of other Apps. Android underneath the covers but that doesn't really matter anymore than the fact that the E-Ink Kindles run Linux. 

I think Amazon is testing the waters here. The new Fire compares well to Barnes & Nobles $250 Nook. B&N are rumored to be bringing out a new tablet soon, and will now have to think very seriously about how they price it. Think of the first Fire as a test shot across Apples bow. It's not going to compete directly with the iPad as it lacks the apps and the form factor. If things go well for Amazon though it would be very feasible for them to introduce a ten inch version in the spring of 2012. They would be very competitive on the content front and would have a decent selection of Android Apps, particularly if they upgrade the underlying version to something more up to date. They won't be able to compete head to head on the apps, but they don't need to. If they could sell such a device for say $300 wireless and $375 with 3G they would likely be in good shape.

Apples success to date with the iPad has been primarily due to two factors. One, the rich content experience they can provide and two, the Apple name. This lead to a third advantage when developers flocked to the platform (following the money and the cool factor) and built apps.

Amazon isn't as cool as Apple but they arguably have a more diverse pool of content and have the potential if they manage their app store well and entice developers to create a platform that will have a substantial enough pool of applications to please the majority of people who might otherwise buy an iPad.

As with all things technology related we'll have to wait and see but this race is likely to be interesting over the next year.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Related articles

• Amazon to Take on Apple iPad With 'Kindle Fire' Tablet (foxnews.com)

Monday Morning Miscellany

The weekend was very productive, both in terms of getting stuff down around the house and my current side project/venture which I'll write more about later this week.  I'm a little slower than normal getting going this morning as a result though so this will be another short/scatter shot entry.

Topic one is Google+; which is now open to the general public. On the plus side Google has been growing rapidly since the flood gates opened. In theory people are still required to use their real names.  On the downside, I've seen several apparently real names posting random spam to topics with little or no relationship to the topic of the spam. Google does provide a button to report bad posts. It's unclear to me what effect that has though and the quality of discussion is certainly down since the flood gates have opened. Google is going to need some better spam controls in place ASAP if they don't want to annoy their existing user community. Their email filters are amazingly good, so hopefully they'll get something similar in place on Google+ soon. A growth of ten million plus users in this first week is good, but they'll need to have sustained growth if they want to challenge Facebook

On another Google+ related note Klout now supports Google+. I'm kind of excited about that as my level of engagement on Google+ tends to be high which should help my score. It's not that Klout defines who I am but it's nice to have it measuring pretty much everything I do online at this point. I gave up on Peer Index awhile back since they never seemed to be able to fix the problems with my profile. The forty point mark seems to be a magic value that a lot of Klout perks require. I've been hovering just below it for the past week or so. Hopefully this week is the week I push above and maintain at least that level.

I'll round things out with a rumor that Apple is cutting production of the iPad 2 and thinking of a price cut. My initial reaction is that this doesn't sound all that credible. Thinking about it a bit though it could be true. Even the base model isn't cheap, particularly when compared to small laptops that do a lot more but don't have the Apple logo. At this point the early adopters and Apple enthusiasts should all own an iPad so we're getting to the point where a drop in price might be needed to sustain sales. The other alternative would be introducing a new version and there have been rumors of that for awhile. I don't think we'll see a new iPad until next spring though.

Image via Wikipedia

Related Articles:

• Klout Now Measures Social Influence On Google+ (techcrunch.com)

HP CEO Swap (Short Take)

Image via WikipediaNot a lot to say on the whole HP CEO debacle right now but I did want to note a few things.

Clearly this story started a year back when the current board ousted Mark Hurd and hired Apotheker. Whether the decision to fire was right or wrong I don't know. What I do know though is that it was done hastily and apparently with minimal thought based on the outcome. It isn't a surprise then that the HP board did such a sub par job again this time. I'm not referring to Whitman who should almost certainly be an improvement over Apotheker, but rather to the very public way in which the whole thing played out. That was unfair to Apotheker, unfair to HP's employees and unfair to their shareholders as well. It betrayed a lack of professionalism and ethics that was kind of disturbing.

I have no clue who the leaks came from but I very much question the suitability of the source or sources to be looking out for HP shareholders interests.

The last thing I wanted to note is that Apotheker's biggest mistake may arguably have been talking about selling or spinning off HP's low margin PC business. If he'd had a serious buyer lined up or plan in place this might have made sense since it would have let shareholders know that HP's margins would be under less pressure in the future. Apparently though neither scenario was in place so the net outcome was a lot of businesses that normally buy HP started looking at other vendors due to uncertainty over the PC divisions future.

Whitman has the advantage of coming into the middle of a train wreck in progress. Almost anything she does is going to look better than what her predecessor accomplished. I think it makes sense to spin the PC division off or sell it if a serious buyer can be found, but that planning/negotiation needs to take place behind closed doors and not discussed until a firm plan is in place.

A thorough review and housecleaning of the current board would be a great idea as well but that's going to require outside intervention.

Related Articles:

• Atop Meg Whitman's worries: H-P's size (seattlepi.com)
• HP fires second CEO in 2 years; Whitman in charge (abclocal.go.com)

Facebook's Timeline And Why I'm A Doubter

I've covered some of this ground over the past couple of days but there are a few new thoughts here and I've refined my thinking a bit.

First of all I'm going to say that I'm not making predictions here and I'm not confident I'm right. As I've alluded to in my previous couple of entries though I do have a nagging suspicion that a lot of people are looking at Facebook and their changes in a way that doesn't actually make sense. I've seen a lot of cool technologies that were loved by tech types (including myself) come and go over the years because they did not in fact appeal to a wide enough audience. This feels like a case in point. I'll be dropping this topic after today and taking a wait and see attitude though I may comment more in the future as things develop.

The first point to keep in mind is that Facebook essentially owns the social graph. This means nearly everyone you would want to communicate with is on Facebook. That includes not only your tech savvy friends but also people who are not. Different kinds of people have different priorities, needs and desires. As a long time tech geek and intermediate social networking participant I'm going to desire a different interface and volume of content than my seventy eight year old mother. This general concept explains why companies offer a variety of products in whatever market they compete in. Think cars for instance. Early in the history of the Ford motor company Henry Ford was quoted as saying you could have any color you wanted so long as it was black. Over time Ford added additional colors and models to their product line in order to entice more customers to buy from them. These customers weren't necessarily being fickle or stubborn either. If you needed to haul stuff around than a truck was much more useful than a car.

The second thing to keep in mind is that most of the people in the press who follow Facebook as well as the people creating Facebook are tech and social networking savvy. They are advanced users who handle change with much more comfort than much of the Facebook user community. The problem with this scenario is it means that a substantial % of Facebook's user base has little or no voice inside the company or from within the tech press. Their only avenue for expression is via the mechanisms Facebook provides for feedback and based on what I've been reading Facebook isn't very responsive in answering complaints that are voiced by their user community in those forums. I suspect this is because they are busy, they've seen this phenomena before and because they just don't understand what all the ruckus is about.

Facebook does have a marketing department but I wonder what the average age and background is and how comfortable they would feel saying "Hey developers, that stuff is neat and all but does it really address the needs and desires of the bulk of people using our site". I can't know for sure of course since I don't work there but based on my own workplace observations over the years I tend to suspect the answers are mostly under thirty five and "not very".

All of which leads to a very large blind spot for Facebook and the press that covers them, or so I theorize. What makes this blind spot more difficult to spot is the fact that other social networking sites don't have nearly as big a worry in this area since their customer bases are much smaller and more tech savvy.

Facebook has made changes before and after an initial period of discontent things have settled down until the next big change. Owning the social graph gives them a lot of leverage and makes it difficult for people to leave if they want to keep in touch with their friends. For the past several years there wasn't a credible alternative either which helped as well. It shouldn't be assumed though that the discontent simply goes away.  Based on comments people are making recently it's clear that much of that discontent lingers below the surface until the next change. At some point Facebook may reach a tipping point. I'm not convinced they have but I am convinced its possible. I've seen modest growth in the number of people I know on Google+ over the past week or two. At this point it's a trickle but with further changes coming it isn't outside the realm of possibility that it become a flood in the coming months. I'm not betting on that but it sure wouldn't surprise me either.

Consider also that the tech savvy types have numerous other social networking outlets where they can find both their tech savvy friends and interesting people to talk to and Facebook's dependence on their less geeky members becomes even more important/clear. If they start losing their "main street" base things will go very badly for them.

The next big change is Facebook's Timeline feature. I've read about it and checked out the demos and while it's techy cool I don't see the broader appeal primarily because it's going to take a lot of time and effort to curate it down to something manageable/attractive and I seriously doubt very many people are going to bother, particularly after the initial euphoria over the new capability wears off.

Using Facebook has increasingly become a "drink from the fire hose" experience and Timeline is just another step in that direction. It certainly has utility, particularly for people who want to make it easy for old friends who have been out of touch for awhile to catch up but is that utility enough to get people to actually maintain and read what is there?

I'm not against innovation. I am against creating products that fail to please large portions of a companies customers and it seems  to me that this is what Facebook is doing. If I were them I wouldn't give up on the innovation though. Instead I'd design my site so that it was possible for people to customize how they interact with it. By default I'd give people a very simple view that minimized the amount of clutter and information overload and maximized their ability to keep in touch with the people they cared about the most.  If you're wondering what that might look like, think Facebook three years ago or so. I'm not familiar with the FB API, but I suspect it wouldn't be hard for somebody to create a "lite" front end that minimized the bells and whistles while maximizing the experience. I'm not sure how Facebook would react to that though. Next, structure the site so people have an incentive to explore the more advanced features. Allow them to wade into the deeper parts of the pool slowly and in a way that they feel comfortable with. Also allow them to stop at any time. Not everyone is going to have the same sweet spot.

Mark Zuckerberg is one of the few humans alive today who in my opinion has the potential to be the next Steve Jobs. He's clearly brilliant and has a drive and clarity of vision that is very rare. Much like the young Steve Jobs though he isn't without his rough edges. One big question in my mind is will those rough edges eventually lead Facebook into a downward spiral or will he learn and adapt quickly enough to avoid that? As with all things, time will tell.

Image via Wikipedia

Related Articles:

• Facebook at F8: Will the Timeline Work? (epiphanysolutions.co.uk)

Not Everyone Is A Geek (Facebook)

I'm pressed for time today so this one will likely be short, minimally edited and perhaps a bit more jumbled than normal logic wise. The topic is highly news worthy right now though and I really want to get something out.

Facebook is apparently going to release/announce even more changes today and many in the technical press are waxing poetic about how wonderful it is going to be. Great, I don't doubt that people who love technology are going to be impressed. Frankly though that doesn't matter because the vast majority of Facebook's seven hundred and fifty million users are not tech savvy geeks. They are just people who want to hang out with their friends and family and share the occasional thought or event. They want a platform that intrudes minimally on their ability to do that and each "feature" beyond that happy minimum clutters their experience and leads to confusion and frustration.

Those of use who are of a geeky persuasion have always made up a disproportionate percentage of the users on most online services. Yes, the representation online has broadened substantially in the past fifteen years but until Facebook there was never a site that appealed broadly to almost everyone.

Facebook isn't run by normal people. It's run for the most part by a core group that are under the age of thirty, highly tech savvy and very bright. That description matches a substantial percentage of the work force as well. They are creating features that they think are cool, and they are right. If you're under thirty and highly tech savvy. This isn't to say that there is zero appeal outside of that core group, but the amount of appeal is going to be much more limited for many of these new features.

This likely explains why so many people complain every time Facebook rolls out a new round of changes. Much of that complaining is just a fear/dislike of change which is much more common outside of the technical community than it is within. It's easy to dismiss those complaints as meaningless in the longer term but I'm not convinced they are. With each successive major overhaul it has seemed like the level of complaints have increased and the amount of activity I see on Facebook has gone down. Keep in mine that the vast majority of the people I hang out with on Facebook are over forty years old, as am I.

This latest round of changes seems focused on turning Facebook into an all inclusive platform, almost an OS. You could in theory create devices that ran Facebook as an overlay. Add an HTML 5 browser and you would never have to leave. I can see the appeal of that for tech types, particularly the tech types working at Facebook but will it appeal to the majority of their customers who just want to hang out with their friends with minimal clutter and noise?

Facebook owns the social graph. This is their biggest asset right now and a big part of the reason they've been able to get this far in the changes they are making. They risk is that they'll reach a tipping point where large numbers of people are no longer willing to deal with the changes and the complexity they introduce and start leaving. Are we at that point now? Too early to tell but I think we're close. The next month or two will be very interesting for Facebook and social networking in general.

I halfway seriously made a comment on Twitter in response to something I read that Apple should create a simple cross platform social network similar to early Facebook. Apple understands the importance of simplicity and could probably pull this off fairly quickly. They also have a large and seemingly ever growing legion of fans who are willing to at least try anything they bring out. Could they supplant Facebook with such a service? I'd like their chances more than I do Google's.

Image by krazydad / jbum via Flickr

Did Facebook Make A Mistake?

It wasn't hard to figure out what to talk about today. Facebook has featured prominently in technology news over the past day or two and I'm seeing a lot of negative comments from my Facebook friends.

From a usability perspective Facebook "updates" are always a mess but this one seems worse than normal. I've always been under the impression that most people who use Facebook don't want a bunch of innovation and/or change. All they really want  is a place they can hang out with their friends and family without having to think much about the interface or being distracted by a bunch of extraneous stuff that makes it harder for them to meet that basic need. Facebook used to be relatively simple and met that  need well which is why they ended up owning the social graph in the first place.

As time has gone on though they've had a tendency to get away from that simplicity and add an ever increasing number of features that take away from their core value to the bulk of their customers. This trend has accelerated recently with the emergence of Google+ as their first legitimate competition in years.

Facebook is also preparing for a public offering of their stock and is thus motivated to make changes that enhance their core value to current and future shareholders. The ironic thing is that actions that in the short term favorable to share holders often end up being unpopular and unfavorable to stakeholders such as customers which in turn leads to lost value for shareholders.

One thing that makes Facebooks task more difficult is the fact that their most important customers are advertisers. Facebook has a relationship that is analogous to that of most TV networks. Generally TV networks are supported by advertising but without viewers a TV network has no business. The tricky bit is that too much advertising alienates viewers who in turn tune out which makes advertisers unhappy. It's a difficult balancing act.

In defense of Facebook, some of the changes they've made aren't bad. Providing automatically categorized lists (AKA circles) and making it easy to add people to these lists is a nice feature even if they didn't embrace this change until Google+ built a lot of their early momentum on it.

One problem I've encountered is that things I've "liked" no longer seem to be showing up in my news feed and there is no obvious way to add liked things to one of Google's new auto generated lists. I'm highly selective with my likes which makes it frustrating that right now I'm missing out on at least some of the content that is being shared by way of these likes.

One challenge all incumbents have is figuring out when to stand pat and when to react to their competition. You can wait too long or you can move to early. Either one of those scenarios can lead to lost customers. If I were to guess right now I'd say Facebook has moved to fast and too early. Having said that I think there is a good chance that people will settle down and relax over the next week or two. That's the typical scenario when Facebook rolls out new changes. Facebook may actually be in a bit of trouble if things don't play out that way.

On a related note, Google+ is now open to anyone who wants to join so if you've been thinking about checking it out and are annoyed with Facebook now's as good a time as any. Having said that, I'm not leaving Facebook any time soon. I find the two services to be complimentary though I prefer Google+.

Image via Wikipedia