One Year Later: I Repeat – Apple Should Be Worried About Facebook

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About a year ago (5/26/2012), I wrote a blog post identifying Facebook as a company Apple needs to watch out for.  Here’s the article: http://zdubpost.com/2012/05/26/apple-needs-to-change-facebook-is-about-to-ruin-them/  It’s a bit over the top when it comes to all the random graphs I through in, but it gets across one major point.  Apple has built all of its sharing products to only work inside the network formed by Apple devices, and Facebook (like Microsoft not too long ago) has built all of its tools to work on any device including Apple.

FB Home app image

Fast forward to today and more than 500K people have downloaded Facebook Home a new app that creates and home screen experience deeply rooted in your Facebook experiences.  More importantly Facebook is stepping up their engagement with a sub-sect of Android users, making FB’s utilities more valuable than the ones that come with their phone.  Specifically – Facebook Messager.  But to understand what FB has done, we first have to dig into two things, what they’re disrupting (iMessage) and what FB’s core focus is.

Group Messaging on iMessage has been a great long-term viral growth asset for the iPhone 

Tell me if this sounds familiar – The first friend in your group gets an iPhone, shows it off, it’s cool.  The second and third friend in your group get an iPhone a few months later, again they show it off, now they start showing their apps and it looks cooler.  You personally don’t feel a need for an iPhone because you see it as a luxury, or at least not great enough to justify switching plans.  But then a few things start happening; iPhones are now basically on every carrier, iPhone apps continue to get better and better, and by now like 5 of your 20 or so friends have them.  This is where iMessage takes over the sales pitch – you start getting texts from individual people but they’re clearly meant for a whole group.  You start seeing full conversations happening, but you only are getting bits and pieces of them, they aren’t easy to keep pace with on your phone.  You’re friend later that week shows you an iMessage group conversation on his iPhone and you realize, for him the conversation looks like a conversation.  Over time you’re phone number starts being left out of conversations, because you’ve had trouble keeping up with them, you tend not to engage in them as much, so you get forgotten from time to time.  At this point friends start having inside jokes you don’t understand and you feel a lot more pressure than you did before to buy a iPhone.  Now I’m not saying this is everyone’s experience, but it is literally the story of how I got an iPhone.  It’s not the reason it became a part of  my consideration set, but it was one of the major differentiators for me.  I suspect for Apple it’s a major tool to drive iPhone user growth after the initial early adopters in a social group buy one.

Who does Facebook want their customer to become

Facebook wants to change the way people communicate.  Facebook wants to make their users expect personalized experiences from what content they see, to what ads are shown, and so on.  Facebook as a company has done great things to nurture/build a user base that demands – TV on demand, custom news feeds just for them, and ads that are actually relevant verses interruptions.  (Talk to all the businesses in the world who rely on “spray and pray” marketing models to find relevant customers, most love Facebook as an ad platform but don’t realize the thing their customers are becoming makes every other ad channel less and less effective if they continue to “spray and pray”.)  In the pursuit of changing the way people communicate, raising people’s expectations of personalized experiences, and encouraging more engagement between networks (friends), FB also must aggressively pursue removing any and all barriers between its users and the tools that make those things happen.

Facebook Home is a problem for Apple

More than a year ago FB launched Facebook Messanger apps for Android, iOS, and all the other major mobile operating systems.  When they did this they extended the very popular one on one and group chat service from desktop to mobile.  It helped, in many groups Facebook Messanger replaced the text message, especially for group chat on mobile – taking share from both Android texting services and Apple’s iMessage.  Fast forward to Facebook Home and now they’ve gotten access at the operating system level on a select set of androids.  As of today they have 500K users and growing.  But that isn’t the stat that matters, what matters is how many people those 500K people talk to via text message on a regular basis.  A big trend of small apps over the last two years have gone after the iMessage problem I documented before, making their way into a lot of phones and making the idea of an internet based messaging service vs. tradition texting models pretty palatable for users.  Mobile users have shown they are ready to switch, they want effective group chat between all their friends… not just the other ones on Apple.  With Facebook Home, FB has created ~500K users already who have raised their hands to say “I want to use Facebook to communicate with friends because of the added values it brings”.

Value = group texting across phone, desktop, no matter the OS + text tracking that show’s who has seen what messages + low barrier to entry since all but 3% of my friends are already on Facebook.

The average person has about 10-20 people they talk to regularly via text, and many of those conversations are in groups.  If Facebook all of a sudden becomes the messaging platform of choice for 500K people, that means on a regular basis 5-10MM people are going to start having conversations on FB Messager.  As those 5-10MM people begin to convert to using FB Messager first they could start reaching 50-200MM people via FB Messager… And since this is a free software platform – no cost, or device type requirement creating a barrier to use – this adoption could happen pretty quickly.  As it does, iMessage will no longer be something the masses might consider to be a differentiator for iPhone.  As more and more features on the iPhone become table stakes for users to choose a smart phone, and the top 20% of AppStore Apps start appearing on both Android and iPhone – the mobile phone  market place is going to start looking a lot more like the desktop computer market place of the 1990′s.  Apple’s iPhone will just be another phone and they’ll have to invent another product category to keep growing.

This one app by Facebook isn’t going to take down Apple’s iPhone, but over time companies with similar missions to Facebook are going to take away Apple’s dominance on any connected device.  If your company is trying to build an exclusive in network experience like Apple, you better lead/invent your categories so you end up with a large lead.  Companies like Facebook and Google are in every category working to break down network walls to allow every person access to the world’s best tools.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

The Power of Twitter in a Crisis

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Today something awful happened.  Two bombs exploded in Boston at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  I’ll let the news outlets talk to that, but I want to point out something unique about the world we live in today.

Today I discovered the news about what happened in Boston via Twitter – first from a few retweeted posts, then confirmed by a major news outlet I follow.  Then as the day progressed Twitter offered me a quick look at what was going on.  I also noticed on my desktop that my suggested follows had become charities, Boston government agencies, and news outlets.  As the day progressed various hashtags began to trend – identifying all the major stories as they surfaced throughout the day.  All of this with the context of those I’ve chosen to follow, along with a wider point of view as others joined the conversation.

Today is a day when we all need to reflect, think about who we are, and realize we are all small.  For me something bigger happened today – I realized I belonged to a community, a world-wide community filled with support, important information, and a wide reaching perspective.  As the 140 character community and others like it grow, the world becomes smaller and more together more and more the world is able to share its perspective.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

There is More Than One Way to Listen

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how-to-be-a-good-listenerHad a very interesting day today, one filled with a number of moments of mentorship.  As a part of all the learning, there was a lot of listening… and most of the listening really wasn’t about the words people were saying.

What someone is saying is only about half of what they are saying:

What’s being said in a conversation is important, don’t get me wrong, but the ability to understand the context of what was happening and the emotion behind each conversation topic is so important.  We were in the midst of solving the world’s problems, you know because that’s totally what we were doing… and there was a moment when a mentor of mine was asked to deliver an explanation of his idea.  Watching him work was a learning moment – initially delivering the information slowly while he taught the room to understand his point of view, then speeding the pace of his speech he began to develop a concept of urgency behind what he was talking about, finally after some back and forth he stopped explaining things in detail and transitioned to a very high level summation of his thoughts.  In the end, it was the high level concept that ended up in the PowerPoint deck.  The learning moment wasn’t how the idea was present with detail and eventually thru conversation was brought down to a simple two sentences… any good business book could tell you to do that… the learning was in the way in which each stage was presented.  When educating speech patterns were slow, eye contact was very focused, and each new sentence of information was followed by a pause to give the opportunity for questions.  As the conversation moved from education to debate, the quicker pace and use of emphasis on certain words really hit home the point of urgency.  I realize these things seem pretty trivial, but a quality presentation combined with the right idea goes a lot further than just a good idea.

The context of what is said, is often more important than what is said:

Later in the day I got a phone call to help with this idea that was going to solve the world’s problems.  Immediately the person on the other side of the phone could identify the stress in my voice. (I realize this now, but not at the time)  Realizing my stress they took a supporting role as the context from which they were speaking.  Calmer speech patterns followed.  The conversation covered the same information it would have no matter the context each of us was talking from, but because of the context the conversation was in we were able to build to a larger plan.  In this scenario, it was me playing the role asking questions and starting ideas and my counterpart of the phone offering answers and presenting new ways to unlock/accomplish the task at hand.  It’s important to understand who you’re talking to in terms of the context of your conversation, it often makes all the difference in productivity and a wasted 30 minutes.

Words are Words are Words… so don’t use so many of them:

Body Language, Pace of Speech, and the Context of a conversation are important… but also are the words you use, especially the amount you use.  If you can’t tell by this and all of my posts, I struggle with the concept of less is more when it comes to my words.  People don’t want to learn every piece of information about a topic, that just shows you “know” something.  People want you to take all that information and summarize it to its most important points, that shows you “understand” something.  Even one step further, when you’re asked a question that clearly should get a response that is one word… just answer in one word.  (This happened like six times today, I promise one day I’ll answer a question “Yes” or “No”.)

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

 

Why a “Favorite” on Twitter is better than a “Like” on Facebook

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facebook_logo
It’s not news to anyone that there are a lot of behavioral concepts at work when users explore networks like Twitter and Facebook.  While companies keep digging to solve for the value of a “Like” on a Facebook page or a “Follow” on a Twitter account, have you ever stepped back and thought what some of these “actions” mean to you personally.  I had a moment today when Twitter made me smile.  @arifuchs someone I respect, “favorited” one of my tweets, specifically a blog post I did a few days ago.  I’m going to be honest, when similar folks  ”liked” the post on my Facebook wall I don’t get the same joy.  So here’s my attempt at explaining why…

Twitter is a very Public platform assuming you don’t have a locked account and Facebook is a very private platform assuming you don’t share everything on a public setting.  In contrast the actions you take on

the platforms directly oppose their overall feeling of public or private.  They both have “ReTweet” and “Share” buttons that basically create a “Hey everybody! Look at this cool thing I found!”  They also have reaction options such as “Reply” and  ”Comment” which allow for somewhat private reactions to content.  Finally, there are the passive action buttons of “Like”

and “Favorite” – these I see as having very different functions.  On

the surface both allow you to throw some “Kudos” to the user, but the way the “Kudos” is delivered makes all the difference. ..

Personal vs. Public

When someone “Likes” your content on Facebook they are saying to everyone else who see’s that content, I like this.  While at the same time triggering a heads up to you that they “Like” your content.  The experience is more a public display than private.  When someone “Favorites” a tweet it doesn’t become a focal point of the tweet like on Facebook, rather it is subtly added to the full info of the tweet if a user clicks into it.  All this while again triggering a heads up to you that they like what you tweeted.  The experience is much more personal, given the only incentive behind the action of a “Favorite” is to support the content creator.

Direct vs. Indirect

Going one step further, I see a “Like” as an indirect form of support.  Since there is an incentive to publicly associate one’s self with good content, the psychology that drives someone to “Like” content creates an indirect sort of “Kudos”.  Again with the “Favorite”, since there isn’t a “to be seen” quality to the action, it feels like a much more direct and real action of support.

twitter-bird-white-on-blueRelationships with Many vs. Few

In my private Facebook network it makes perfect sense for those who support my content to be pretty obvious.  (The listed “Likes”)  In a public network (Twitter) however, it makes a lot of sense to really focus on the content first then as sub-content (hidden) offer up who is involved. (“ReTweets” and “Favorites”)  This brings me to something I think is at the core as to the difference between Facebook and Twitter form a high level:  Facebook for most part is a fundamentally private network that creates (because it’s a closed system) one large shared relationship with many, while Twitter for the most part is a public network that creates (because it’s an open system) many relationships with few.  On Twitter short-lived social relationships sprout, grow, and die every day making the platform new (to a point) to the user every time they invest time on Twitter, whereas Facebook is one very large long-term relationship reflected in an ever-growing experience where the user gains their value over a long period of time.  There is a reason your profile (“Timeline”) on Facebook is so important to you as it is built from your content, while most people only focus on the content they post on Twitter in the now (real-time) - their long-term profile really isn’t a big part of the experience.

So if you can’t tell, I like Twitter a lot.  But that’s mostly because over the time I’ve built out my Facebook “Timeline” I had a major change in who I am… and who my network is.  I graduated college and moved on to a working world miles away both physically and mentally, making a large portion of the “Timeline” I had built into only a memory rather than an active long-term relationship.  For me both platforms are great, but only in their purpose, which brings me back to the title.  At the end of the day I’ll always value private displays of support over public ones.  Maybe its just me.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

If You Know What You’re Doing, It’s Probably Time to Quit Your Job

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Recently I found a podcast series called “Foundation” hosted by Kevin Rose the former founder of Digg.  As many of my friends know, I usually spend about an hour a day on the train on my way back and forth to the office.  When I’m on the train I’m usually listening to business books and lectures.  (I’m a nerd.)  In college I used to go running for an hour or so every day and listened to Stanford’s free Entrepreneurial Thought Leadership lectures on iTunes U.  (I’m a long time nerd.)  My senior year I even conducted my own version of founder interviews, asking my peers in student leadership to share their stories with me for a book I never exactly got around to writing.  In all this time I’ve learned a lot from all these people and their experiences, but today I had a eureka moment listening to an interview between Brian Wong and Kevin Rose in the “Foundation” podcast series.

foundation podcastIn listening to 6-7 years worth of entrepreneurs and leaders I’d never noticed that they all had something in common… they didn’t know what they were doing.  Brian in referencing his own success mentioned the concept of a table of skilled poker players having an unskilled player joining the table.  The skilled poker players all know what to do, how to respond, when to take risk… they’re moves are pre-determined.  Add a player who doesn’t know what to do, and all of a sudden all the assumptions that determine the skilled players choices are gone.  The unskilled player becomes the table leader, becomes the person everyone else has to react to.  Sometimes that unpredictability creates new opportunity and the unskilled player ends up winning.

So I’m not sure labeling many successful folks as “unskilled” is the right comparison, but it does a pretty good job of identifying what differentiates many of the success stories in innovation.  When you don’t know what the right thing to do is, you create variations in the process… that’s how discovery happens.  When you don’t know the right way to be introduced to people, you’re tactics for meeting people ends up being different… and memorable… and more effective.  Not knowing what they’re doing isn’t the only key to success – pretty sure if it was we’d all be doing a bit better – but it is something you don’t want to forget.  Knowledge is power, but perspective is reality, and if you let what you think you know fully inform your perspective you’re no longer learning.

Now for the title of this blog post – If you know what you’re doing, it’s probably time to quit your job.  Not sure that concept applies to most, but for me I have a real problem with the idea of knowing what I’m doing.  It messes with the idea of free will for me – if I know what to do next, then my future is predetermined.  I really have trouble staying motivated when I know rest of the story.  (I’m that guy who never buys movies because it’s really hard for me to watch the same movie twice.)  I came into this blog post trying to write an explanation of “motivation”… as it turns out I found one of my own motivations.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

Social Media Isn’t the Answer to Everything, But It Answers a Lot

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Below is a recent chapter I wrote with one of my co-workers Eric Gottloeb (@Gottloeb) also a Social Media Manager @Walgreens – thought it was worth sharing.  You can get the whole book (free PDF) here: http://spr.ly/ZachDWest (they even gave me a fancy personalized URL)

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Rather than attempting to write eloquent paragraphs, we figured you (the reader) probably just want bullets. So here’s a snapshot of Walgreens’ Best Practices:

• Treat your customers with the respect they deserve. Social isn’t an ad platform—it’s a conversation. Don’t interrupt people trying to have a conversation without something relevant to talk about.

• Don’t let “Social” the buzz word drive “Social” the strategy. Social media isn’t the answer for everything. Before coming up with a “social media plan” for something, what you’re actually trying to do needs to be weighed against all the other channels that your digital and traditional marketing teams have at their disposal.

• “If you build it, they will come,” doesn’t work. It’s true for microsites, it’s true for Facebook pages, and it’s true for Twitter handles. Build long-term products that customers can keep coming back to. Social is a long term game not a short-term ad buy.

• How You Keep Innovating: Separate then Integrate. Separate the team from the bigger organization so they can be forward thinking, unhindered and frankly, weird. But never let the whole group fully detach from the bigger team. Then once they’ve done lots of small independent things to prove what the core concepts of the strategy will be, scale. Integrate the winning concepts where they belong, and evolve just like every start-up.  The team has to grow up into the organization, something that both the team and the organization need to have in the cards from Day 1.

Organizational Structure: Each time you integrate something new, you start isolated in a vertical team, then you drive the team into a horizontal structure and integrate it into the larger company. Take for example, customer service. You start with the social team, understand the nuances of how social can play a role in customer service, build up the process and then scale it into the customer service organization. There are many examples like this one, where social media as a utility does not belong to a Social Media center of expertise, but that center of expertise can incubate the utility until it has matured enough to live in the right part of your organization.  We realize there aren’t any trade secrets here, but let’s be honest: The secret sauce isn’t going to be the same for everyone. However, the core concepts behind innovation pretty much apply everywhere. Start with your company’s business model, solve for where opportunities to drive on those models exist, and then scale it.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West

My 2013 Resolutions

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Short and sweet.

1.  Enroll in an MBA program

2.  Build and launch that app I’ve now been pondering for 4 months

3.  Write more blog posts – Expect at least 1 a week – for why I’m making this a resolution see Why I write blog posts… Practice, Practice, Practice – Real-Time Critical Thinking

4.  Launch a weekly podcast… for those who don’t know me, while I’m not too bad at expressing myself through the written word, the spoken word is by far my best medium – Look for it in February.

Thanks for Listening,

Zach West