Apple ignited the personal computer revolution with the Apple II, then reinvented the personal computer with the Macintosh. Apple continues to lead the industry with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system, and iLife, iWork and professional applications. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store, has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Raw facts:

In 28 short days Apple shipped nearly 1 million iPads
Over 5000 dedicated apps for iPad (including few from our Fliplog project)
12 million apps downloaded on iPad
1.5 million ebooks from iBookstore

I have been using iPad for nearly 2 weeks now. As a first device of it’s category, and also a first version, it’s just amazing. I feel real impact of iPad will be felt when we will have at least dozen or so knock-offs.

iPad resets user expectation, users are now enjoying what they thought impossible on a computing device. That reset alone will create lot of problems for Apple competitors. Multi-Touch has a big TM and support of many lawyers.

As a user, and also as a father of two kids, iPad is lot of fun. We developed few children story book apps for iPad and more are in the pipeline.

Giving away complete client side codebase - potentially with unique and standardized user experience like Tweetie - for iPhone, Android(coming soon?), Blackberry, Nokia and Windows7, they can give developers a new architecture for gaming, vertical apps, lbs apps and potentially enterprise apps.

Today Twitter made another move in their march towards mobile ubiquity. Working with Google Android team they announced open source version of Android client. Now sharing via Twitter is part of the Android stack. This is a huge relief for developers. Imagine if every windows app has to implement their own print interface! In a similar way this OS level Twitter sharing option will obviate the need for app developers to monkey around with OAuth code.

Conversation in movie The Aviator. Hughes is pissed off as he is not getting extra pair of cameras!

Big picture is emerging very fast and it’s carrying big ideas. Recent events tell us that lot of people are suddenly grokking full implication of the architectural shift happening in tech industry. Speed at which integrated platform thinking is spreading is frightening to say the least. Classical separation of software, hardware, systems and applications are crumbling faster than anybody’s prediction.

HP’s decision to buy Palm WebOS and then immediately dump Windows 7 tablet is a clear indication that the computing world as we know it is now history. Cisco, IBM, Oracle, SAP and many other big companies should be getting ready to make their own mobile move. There aren’t that many mobile OS companies to buy and not having a play in 2010 can prove fatal to lot of companies in 2015.

Companies who are strongly aware of this shift, Apple and Google, are well positioned for the future. They are at step 20 whereas rest of the tech space is still figuring out third and fourth step. Policies and architecture they are putting in place are coming out as a mild form of future shock to lot of experts. These experts are using yesterday’s rules, mostly developed during Win-Tel era, to evaluate newly emerging integrated platforms.

Apple, Google and to some extent Facebook are clearly executing on their roadmap. It’s amazing how these three companies, spread in 15 mile radius in Silicon Valley, are not only imagining post-PC world but also executing at ferocious pace. While another 10 mile south, Adobe in San Jose, failed to read tea leaves. In hindsight it looks like somebody forgot to write on the whiteboard “It’s the iTunes, Stupid”.

Charles Stross wrote a wonderful explanation on possible motives of Apple blocking Flash from their ecosystem.

This is why there’s a stench of panic hanging over silicon valley. this is why Apple have turned into paranoid security Nazis, why HP have just ditched Microsoft from a forthcoming major platform and splurged a billion-plus on buying up a near-failure; it’s why everyone is terrified of Google:

The PC revolution is almost coming to an end, and everyone’s trying to work out a strategy for surviving the aftermath.

Read his full post. Lot of people are still in denial about the game changing aspect of integrated architecture. Mobile clients, using App Store distributed application, accessing cloud based services is going to the new normal. There will be new rules. There will very interesting M&A deals in near future.

Also in new integrated experience architecture, interoperability issues will not get lot of respect. It’s a noble goal to pursue but normals will be less aware of the lack of interoperability going forward. In most likelihood interoperability will be one of the cloud service, users will be unaware of it, as we are right now when we use Google Docs. Ease at which I can generate PDF, Excel or HTML version of the document is almost a non-issue to me. It wasn’t like that few years ago.

It’s hard to imagine a near future scenario where we will have handful of integrated platforms. All innovating for their advantage and optimizing experience for their user base. We are going to see some scary pace of innovation this year, at least from Apple and Google camp. It’s almost like technology world has found a new wild west.

“Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.”

Let’s vandalize this statement to suit our current taste:

“Every vendor alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second vendor, hypocrisy begins.”

Social media segment is seeing an onslaught of hypocrisy like we’ve never seen before. This practice is not only institutionalized but it has evolved to a stage where you really need to have good filter in order to catch bs.

Technology movement called OpenThatGoddamnMarketWhichWeFailedToCaptureInTheFirstPlace!

This type of movement has a long history. Though in current context this can be traced back to the phenomenal success achieved by Google. Google indexed pretty much all the web, it has a near monopoly on $30 billion paid search market and has a near universal presence in all the web sites using Google Analytics and other javascript embeds. Google never launched OpenSearch or OpenIndex. They don’t have to as they rule this space. So the job of waving Open flag was left for vendors who were catching up.

At the entrance of a second vendor, hypocrisy begins.

Facebook rules social world. They have found a nice hack to do what Google did but with a lot less data center resources. Their Like model gains from user engagement. Like is a vote. Like is a Farmville style crowdsourced indexing of the web. This vote goes into huge Facebook ocean, where on the other end, massive data crunching monetization monster is waiting for it. Like is also an action which will grow to become a Buy button in near future. Stakes are high and so is the market size. So what’s going to happen now? Let’s recycle Michael Corleone:
We’re both part of the same hypocrisy, senator, but never think it applies to my portfolio.

There is plenty of commentary going on around ‘Open’. Read between the lines or better read author’s disclosure page: Facebook Open Graph, Open Like, Private Social Graph. Meaning of the Word Open. Open Than Thou. Facebook F8 good for open web. For the geekier version you can follow these resources: Open Graph Protocol, Data liberation, Open Like, OAuth 2.0

You can expect further erosion of user privacy and can very well expect more innovation in default privacy management. What I am more concerned about is the inclusion of engagement and game dynamics in user privacy settings. Argument will go like this: it’s fun and it’s designed to increase user engagement.

Dylan Casey on Google Blog reports that Google search will now include entire Twitter archive. This is a clever addition and will prove valuable to journalists, historians and researchers. Technically this is a great example where Google, due to it’s unique scaling capacity, is strongly positioned to provide this kind of service. I doubt, at the current level of infrastructure, Twitter can do what Google is doing.

This is also interesting from a historical perspective. It’s first time that Google has allowed third party branding to happen in search results. Nearly 10 years back, Yahoo had replaced inktomi search engine with the technology from a little known startup called Google. That’s how we started noticing ‘Powered by Google’ branding. Rest as they say is history. You can read some of that historical move on this CNet article from year 2000. Here is a screenshot of that article.

Today by adding Twitter archive and allowing Twitter brand to show-up, Google has acknowledged, rather reluctantly, the arrival of next generation player in the information sharing business.

Danny Sullivan has a excellent follow up post with interesting search numbers.

Google: 88 billion per month
Twitter: 19 billion per month
Yahoo: 9.4 billion per month
Bing: 4.1 billion per month

Twitter as a search engine company? Get used to the idea.

Since then lot has happened. Now in real life Tiger Woods talks in 140 characters. Twitter has now close to 70000 third party applications, round about 100 million accounts (not all are users) and all along tech pundits had been screaming - show me the money!.

Twitter has something for those pundits today. Company is rolling out an advertisement system which relies on 9 unique parameters. Called Promotional Tweets, these 140 character ad units will be driven by resonance algorithm. This resonance score is sort of like 140 character equivalent of relevancy score. Click and link is replaced by click and retweet - plus some more. Promotional tweets are in the flow and it’s part of your attention UI (unlike the AdWord ads which show up mostly on the sidebar). More on Resonance algorithm from NYT:

Twitter will measure what it calls resonance, which takes into account nine factors, including the number of people who saw the post, the number of people who replied to it or passed it on to their followers, and the number of people who clicked on links.

If a post does not reach a certain resonance score, Twitter will no longer show it as a promoted post. That means that the company will not have to pay for it, and users will not see ads they do not find useful, Mr. Costolo said.

My emphasis on ‘number of people who clicked on links’ parameter. It’s too early to predict but designing key monetization algorithm on this parameter means that Twitter needs to control the input link. They need to own URL shortening service. This service will not only be required for the deep analytics but also for speedy real-time computation. Hard to think bit.ly providing rich meta data in the time scale in which Twitter usually thrives.

Tweaking and constant fine tuning around resonance algorithm will drive next set of acquisitions for Twitter. Bit.ly should be a prime candidate.

Also 3rd party apps will be most pleased with this development. Putting money in the stream makes real time stuff look real. Coming from Twitter this removes cheesiness - which is often associated with current generation of in-stream ads. This takes Twitter closer to apps-as-ad-unit model, it’s not very far fetched to think that one day Twitter will start showing small apps as Promoted Tweets. Imagine Starbucks coupon which you can print right from that promoted tweet - without visiting Starbucks website. Twitter is in a great position to leapfrog AdWords model by applying iAd technique here.

PS: Headline is purely for fun. Nothing against Bit.ly. We love their service and use it in our application.

Twitter is in the client business now. They are extending their core platform to leading mobile platforms. Not surprised that the developers are up in arms and they are crying foul that Twitter should have fixed their business model problem first instead of competing with them. Twitter has every right to go in this direction. They are still figuring out their business.

To me the interesting point is why now? Why is Twitter making these moves now. It’s not as if users have suddenly discovered new productivity with these clients. There is a big picture emerging around mobile platforms. That picture has elements of location based services (on that is based local advertisement market - which is very very significant. Remember Google/Yelp episode!). Platforms are colliding and this time revenue pipe will be tightly controlled by the entity which ends up having tight control on the platform.

Chris Dixon has a great post on this topic. Evolving platform without having a locked down business model is a risky move. Twitter can compare with Facebook to figure out new ways to make money but anymore comparison will just kill the main value. As he rightly said, Facebook can just sit back and enjoy the drama.

Twitter genius is that it works quietly in the background - in real time. Twitter’s social graph has amazing approachability. They need to figure out ways to make money from that unique experience. Extend that approachability and serendipity to all developers. Give Tweetie back to community as an open source SDK, add firehose access and ask all iPhone developers to build vertical apps with it. Wishful thinking? Maybe.

Giving away complete client side codebase - potentially with unique and standardized user experience like Tweetie - for iPhone, Android(coming soon?), Blackberry, Nokia and Windows7, they can give developers a new architecture for gaming, vertical apps, lbs apps and potentially enterprise apps.

Big question is what’s next for Twitter developers? Wait for the Chirp conference to throw light on Twitter’s long term business model or just stick to business as usual. I think there is one way developers can avoid future heartburn - by going vertical! Agree it’s boring and probably will require domain knowledge but definitely worth it. Pick a category like the way Stocktwits is doing with financial services. Morph your client into a best tool for field journalists, or for automotive sector, or for political event reporting or for social recruitment. Add all the great things which mobile platforms has to offer - LBS, Mapping, Notification and Social Sharing. Obvious advantage in this strategy is that developers will be required to work with their market.

I am sure smart developers are already making their next move. You just have to read Chris’s opening line from his blog post:

I can’t remember the last time the tech world was so interesting.

It’s incredible the amount of change we are seeing in mobile space. All the more amazing when you contrast this with the fact that we are still struggling to recover from Great Recession.

Update: Evolving dynamics around Twitter ecosystem will be under microscope for next couple of weeks. Mark Suster has interesting Salesforce reference:

And Salesforce did this more broadly in all of their key areas. Salesforce was very good at managing the 1-year roadmap so at any point in time we had a pretty good idea about what we would be developing and what we wouldn’t. We also knew what we wanted to build but wouldn’t be able to get to. Often these were things that would make Salesforce more competitive vis-a-vis Oracle and Microsoft. Salesforce was excellent at outlining to the developer community what they considered “core” and what white space they wanted filled. If they gave you the white space you knew you had a good period of time to build a business without being boxed out by Salesforce and you knew that Marc Benioff was likely to highlight you at a conference or with journalists. Importantly, all of this was done privately, as it should be.

Read his full post. It’s full of insights. Two thoughts come to mind

- Imagine how useful Ad.ly kind of services will be if they addressed specific verticals. Why wouldn’t your followers click on car tweet ads if automobile is all you tweet about!
- White space thing is tricky in mobile space as compared to enterprise space (Salesforce area - longer sales cycle = longer dev cycle). At this point nobody has any clue on the pace of white space discovery and white space harvesting as it applies to mobile space. It’s one big TBD.

Reminding myself of the blog title - One More Idea. There was an extension to this title which remained in the background. Maybe its a good time to bring it to front and center.

One More Idea - Because Most Start-ups Fail!

I am still conflicted on the need for blogging. Twitter is working very well for me. I will see if there is any experiment I can do by mixing long form writing with emerging stream/river format.

In 12 months the BlogHer network has mushroomed from 180 bloggers to 2,200.

According to comScore Media Metrix, community based women's websites are now tied with political sites as the fastest growing category online.

"Today, women are not only the most powerful consumers in the world, we're also the power users of Web 2.0 and social media technologies," said Lisa Stone, BlogHer co-founder.

That willingness to harness the web has resulted in a community of 36 million women who write and read blogs, said Ms Garrubbo. And that gave them clout among advertisers.

Female blogging is a powerful force and something we are following as a parent. You take important public discussion forums and you will find that it's still a male dominated society.

Blogging, being an extremely low barrier to publishing platform, allows everyday stories to grow and develop online communities around them.  Especially for females bloggers community plays big role.  Discussions around family and kids generate online bonding, which I have seen growing into offline (face to face) interactions.

I was amazed when I saw this project where close to 50 women got together online to celebrate baby shower.  They were pretty much from all over the world - US, UK, Switzerland, Pakistan, India and Middle East.

They used every day tools, without getting bogged down too much into geeky stuff. Idea was to get the job done. I was told they used blogs, email, Google Groups, Google Calendar, virtual gifts, Photoshop, audio/video tools, and  puzzle sites to get the job done.

I think we are going to see female blogging evolve into a powerful political and economic force. Smart money is already aligning around this.

This picture captures everything:

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holy shit earthquake in so cal

Now if you were reading this from public timeline on Twitter, you can potentially come up with two reactions. Laugh it off by saying this guy's apartment got hit by truck or take it seriously by thinking may be he is genuine and it's a first indicator of something serious.

Either case we don't have a quick way of verifying unless lot of people quickly retweet or validate via different sources. In the world of sub-minute information distribution, peer level validation is critical for random bits to be taken as news.

I think this sub-minute game is what makes Twitter interesting. And puts Google (and Reuters) in the legacy category (as far distribution velocity of news is concerned).

Rush to hit on SEND button is not unique to micro-blogging or for that matter blogging. We are witnessing video-game like rumor/excitement characteristic between introductory breaking news tweet (or blog post) and eventual validation tweet (or blog post).  What happens between these two phases is pretty much a citizen journalism equivalent of a roller coaster ride.

Time dimension is becoming increasingly important. We are in the sub-minute domain. Check out these two screens which compares how Twitter and Google covered LA earthquake news -

This is from Google News. I took both images with couple of seconds difference.

This using Twitter search (Summize)

Twitter has more chatter and gets better CPC (without the C off course). But you get the idea.

VentureBeat's blog post is 'first' on Techmeme. Not sure all this matters in the long run but just observing how news (and views) spread in early stage is fascinating.

News is followed by page view grab, and page view grab is followed by smart ad placements. That's where I think companies like MediaMath will play interesting role.

In any case Twitter beats Google on the sub-minute game.

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