Show me yours before I show you mine

The reason these “install this app” requests were so universally abhorred is because they were asking to give up personal information with no perceived return in value. The app gets to track everything I read and broadcast it out to my entire personal network? What I do get out of it except reduced privacy?

One may argue that the return in value is the actual article itself or the knowledge of what your friends are reading. But that’s already happening. People share articles they want to share and there’s no requirement to be tracked by an app on Facebook in order to read it. What’s the value return for me? My personal online behavior has a lot of value. I’m not just going to give it up because of one interesting article I saw that I could easily view by another means.

Luckily, I’ve seen a dramatic decrease in these apps. Hopefully they’re vanishing.

We accept usability tracking when we really don’t understand what’s going on

Even though our behavior online is being tracked via online ad networks, it’s generally confusing to us as to what’s being tracked and how we could opt out of it. But when we’re asked point blank, “Do you want your behavior to be tracked online to better serve up ads and other content,” the answer is most often, “No.”

Four years ago I attended a conference called the SWAT Summit where a representative from the research firm IDC presented a study that showed that people didn’t want their online behavior tracked to serve up ads. But then later in the study the representative showed that a huge percentage of people used free webmail programs like Yahoo! Mail and Gmail that are advertiser supported and DO track the content of your email to serve up more targeted advertisements. I asked the IDC rep, “Have you actually done a cross analysis between the people who said, ‘I don’t want my behavior tracked to serve up better ads’ and the people who use webmail tools.” She didn’t, but she said she would get back to me on that. It’s four years later, and I’m still waiting for her to “get back to me on that.” (As a side note, in the history that I’ve heard that phrase, “I’ll get back to you on that,” no one has ever “gotten back to me on that.”)

It was amazing to me that IDC hadn’t seen that obvious headline. “People’s Desires for Ad Behavior Contrast their Actions.” This may because of ignorance, or it may be out of laziness, or it may because they’re willing to give up personal information if they are FIRST presented with a very positive value exchange. (e.g., “How would you like this really cool free email program?”)

Automatically sharing our online behaviors is a combination of noise, a privacy intrusion, and phenomenal behavioral data

Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about how sharing will be the default action of any online behavior. So much of what we do is being shared, sometimes with our knowledge, and sometimes without. For example, I often don’t realize it but every time I listen to a song via the service MOG, it gets shared out to my network. Don’t you have guilty pleasure music? Would you want that information spread to ALL of your contacts?

With regard to the automatic sharing of articles that people are reading, this is completely inappropriate because the reader hasn’t had a chance to judge whether the article is worth sharing. All that’s been proven by this application is here’s a headline that is enticing enough to get your friend to click on it. Is there a way to take that broadcast back and say, “Wait, I clicked on it but then quickly realized it was useless and I don’t want my followers to think that I approve and recommend this article”? Yes, you could do that by deleting your post, but it’s already out there before you made the decision. There’s no need for these services except as a privacy intrusion. People are already sharing articles and they’re doing it after they’ve made the decision that it’s worthy of sharing.

Ironically, this overwhelming volume of content was the number one complaint that I heard at the SXSW conference. Here’s a video I shot at the Mashable party at SXSW for Dice.com where people were talking about their social media pet peeves.

Here’s the full response to that Facebook status update. What do you think?

Creative Commons photo attribution to marc_smith.

We would say “What’s the value in having a million unengaged impressions? Wouldn’t it be better to have a hundred thousand conversations?”

Well its great to hear someone else taking up that charge, I just read this great post by Jason Rosenthal, CEO of Ning, in Forbes – http://onforb.es/qcznoQ – and he completely nails it when he says that its better to have 100 intensely engaged individuals versus 100,000 likes.  He makes a few other really key points but it all centers around the notion of moving from broadcast to conversation.  I know that I have a bias with this, especially given that one of our products/apps (www.knctr.com) was really built on the notion of social conversation and entertainment, but that notwithstanding, the premise having a conversation with and not at the consumer has always been at the core of what we believe.

So what do you think, Social Depth or Social Breadth?  Drop us a note and let us know.

It was announced today, http://selnd.com/qcySJG – that Walmart, bought One Riot, those with the “Killer Social Targeting Engine” (their words not mine), to better be able to connect with customers.  They speak of the intersection of social, mobile and retail being and how this will help give consumers what they want at any time.  Coming off of the idea that Social Business is the future, this acquisition by the world’s largest retailer, makes for some really interesting thinking.  Big Brands buying out development and research shops…is this what the future of Social business looks like or is it just a case of not being focused on the core business?
Drop up a note and let us know what you think.

Can’t argue that. However, it got me thinking of other ways that startups can take advantage of Social Media that weren’t noted in the piece.

Using social media as a coherent and actionable approach to updating investors and the investment community (especially if you are a public start up) can save an incredible amount of time for the senior team as they deal with ensuring that the messages are always clear, and consistent.

Educating and training your supporters on where, when, and how to find the information is critical…and as the piece suggests, requires a great deal of commitment. But the opportunity – not to mention efficiencies – far outweighs the short-term challenges and provides a great outlet for idea mashing and just as importantly feedback.

To answer my own question here: no, results and social media are not an oxymoron. We just need to help people define what real results should be viewed as.

Can this idea really work? Can 24 carriers along with three device manufacturers operate more smoothly than just a single device manufacturer?

My answer: Good luck.

I’m sure when the announcement was made there were cheers all around. Execs were slapping each other high five and saying to each other, “Watch out Steve Jobs.” And then as soon as everything calmed down, they all said to themselves, “Oh shit.”

Wholesale Applications Community needs to consult with a cat herder

Yes, oh shit is right. Just the technical complications alone with different devices, different networks, and different governing rules are complication enough. But if you think it’s hard to get agreement on anything within your organization of 100 people, think about 20+ worldwide organizations. I wouldn’t want to even try to get agreement on whether they’d like Coke or Diet Coke served. Years ago I worked for Sprint and I was amazed at how long every single task took. I realized I could do so many tasks quicker if I just did it myself. I hosted and produced two podcast series for Sprint (a B2C and B2B version), and was seen as just the guy who could do it all when it came to podcasting.

Do dictatorships work better than democracies in mobile?

At a much grander scale, Steve Jobs is the guy who can do it all when it comes to creating a computing and content market. He did it with Apple computers, the iPod, the iPhone, and more importantly the resulting iTunes store for movies, music, and applications. In a conversation with friend and Apple industry expert Andy Ihnatko, he said of Steve Jobs, “If Jobs says every computer gets a cup holder, then every computer gets a cup holder. He dictates the market for his computers.” This didn’t happen in the PC market, it didn’t happen in the mobile phone market, and good luck trying to get it to work.

Mobile carriers are very protective of their respective networks. They don’t operate like the free and easy Internet. Geez, just to do an SMS campaign over their networks you have to fill out a form to explain what you want to do and how long the campaign will run. That’s just text. Now the carriers are going to agree on a whole how to manage applications. Sounds great in theory, horrible in practice.

But then again another idea that sounded great in theory, horrible in practice, turned out to be great in practice. I’m talking about Wikipedia.

Can the Chinese fire drill behavior of the multiple carriers eventually come together and form something useful like Wikipedia? Check back with me in a year.

Creative Commons attribution: Star5112 / CC BY-SA 2.0

Let me show you some examples:

BlackBerry app more expensive than iPhone app

iPhone/iPod

BlackBerry

iPhone app more expensive that BlackBerry app

iPhone/iPod

BlackBerry

iPhone and BlackBerry app priced exactly the same

iPhone/iPod

BlackBerry

While both BlackBerry and iTunes have many free apps, only iTunes seems to have inventory of $.99 apps. With BlackBerry, after free, the applications cost $2.99 and up. Most wouldn’t think much between $1 and $3, but that is THREE TIMES AS MUCH.

A few top selling $.99 iPhone applications

In this sample I only looked at games, not productivity applications. When you get into that space the price varies even more widely, especially when you start comparing Windows Mobile applications which back in the day could cost hundreds of dollars on Handango. Now productivity applications have come down to a more reasonable arena of about $29, but it’s still violently more expensive than other applications. I’m just confused as to why the pricing of the mobile applications have no rhyme or reason to them. I don’t track the gaming market that closely, but I can say that when a game is released on the three major platforms (XBOX 360, PS3, Wii) it’s priced the same. So why isn’t it the same for mobile platforms?

Possible explanations for the complete inconsistency in mobile application pricing:

• Who cares? It’s usually less than $5.
• Nobody is deciding between an iPhone or a BlackBerry app. They’re deciding whether they’re going to get the app at all, so they never compare prices on other platforms.
• The cost of applications is never a deciding factor when purchasing a mobile device.
• Pricing for mobile applications is far from settled. We’re all still in a “figuring it out phase.”

Got some other explanation? Let me know.