This is supposed to *herald* curated computing. Nonsense.

Curated Computing: Fancy cynical analyst term. Here is Forrester Research declaring a new era (‘Post-iPad’, no less).

A consumer can do anything with a Windows PC or Mac… the iPad operates very differently. [It] works more like a jukebox than a desktop — consumers choose (and pay for) applications from a predetermined set list. Each of those applications is, in itself, also curated; the publisher selects content and functionality that’s appropriate to the form factor, just as a museum curator selects artworks from a larger collection…

Rubbish. ‘Curated computing’  has been Apple’s design philosophy for all this decade – that’s only now making its way into industry consciousness.

But it’s a good thing.

If anything, it indicates mobile manufacturers hitting reality. In the short years after the realization that people wanted to ‘do more’ with their phones, manufacturers packed in as many features as they could. A few really took off (cameras, music players, even email), and most others just didn’t (bluetooth, mobile office packages, bar-code readers).

In another way, it’s a sign of the industry beginning to mature. Even as hardware has gotten more capable (faster processors, storage, memory, larger displays, touch-screens) and networks have invested massively to build capacity, there’s a discernible trend to do less better. Manufacturers are (belatedly?) realizing that a mobile device isn’t a smaller personal computer, but something ‘very personal’. And that very personal is very different from personal.

Which is also why everyone in the industry wants ‘vertical integration’ – control over the hardware, operating system, software platform, applications/content, and network. It’s so that having bet on what (limited) tasks a device will perform, a manufacturer has greater control over the quality of what the customer experiences.

Expect, in the next couple of years, for all major smartphone players (in addition to Apple, RIM, Google) to create (curate?)  really great out-of-the-box experiences for the 20% of tasks that matter most – email, web browsing, facebook/twitter updating, maps, and playing music/movies (yes, better than what we’ve seen). Expect  new devices to ship with fewer radios and sensors, and very few basic applications out-of-the-box. All other features and applications will be available via an App Store, to which there will be a prominent link on the home screen.

If this sounds very much like what Apple’s been doing with iPhone all along, of course you’re right. Forrester’s just woken up, declared it a trend and slapped on an alliteration.

Footnote: also, this isn’t as global, industry-churning a movement as Forrester would have you believe: the Japanese, for the most part, like cellphones crammed with bells and whistles (TV, bar-code readers,credit cards, suchlike). And this doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon.

Let’s say Firefox does buck the trends that open-source applications seem to follow (either having their best features taken by commercially backed competition or ending up as back-end infrastructure), and remains the single largest non-IE browser with an increasing market share. What characteristic of Firefox would most help it achieve that?

What keeps you on Firefox?
I polled Twitter and co-workers about which browser among Firefox and Chrome they prefer, and why [1]. Those that used Chrome did so mostly because they perceived it to be faster than Firefox. A smaller number liked its minimalist interface. Almost all those that used Firefox refused to switch to Chrome because Chrome didn’t support their favorite add-ons [2]. And almost everyone I spoke to was unsure whether they’d switch to Chrome if it supported all of Firefox’s extensions.

Extensions might be what keeps the existing user base loyal. It’ll take Chrome and the others something more than just replicating support for extensions. Developers will need to port their applications to Chrome. You can mimic a feature, but it takes years to develop a developer community. This will also be an important differentiator when it comes to gaining market share (mostly existing or potential IE users) – the ability to literally create your own customized Firefox.

Firefox could also use use deep support for Mozilla Weave as another major differentiator (check out Weave Sync, for example). However, their use cases look like Google could do the same thing with Chrome as long as you were logged in to your Google Account. I guess there’s some (limited) Weave-like functionality already with Google Toolbar.

Finally, that money thing
Now that Firefox has a certain conflict of interest with Google (regardless of how much both might deny it), it might make sense for the Mozilla Corporation to explore alternate revenue streams. As browser capabilities have improved (and bandwidth has gotten cheaper), there’s been a trend to push as much processing to the client side as possible (think Gmail). There’s a ton of potential for further enhancing the browsing experience – and making money off it.

One way of doing that could be an App Store for Extensions – giving the opportunity for developers to truly enhance specific browsing experiences and make money off the effort, with Mozilla Corp. getting a cut. Another could be Firefox Special Editions for companies with pre-configured extensions (like the one for eBay). Mozilla could charge companies for the assembly, promotion and hosting of the special edition download package.

[Update 17 July 2009: Mozilla is now soliciting (voluntary) contributions from users who download extensions/add-ons. What's striking is this: "Mozilla is not getting a cut of any contributions at this point, but I think it would be fair and could become an additional source of income for Mozilla to finance the necessary infrastructure." That's one step closer to launching an App Store.]

I’d like to hear ideas for both issues in this post:
- what will sustain Firefox in the face of increased competition
- what revenue options the Mozilla Corporation should pursue for Firefox

Comment of email rahul@rahulgaitonde.org.

[1] Yeah, that’s a ridiculously small sample and totally not representative of the population. Why don’t you help and let me know in the comments? Chrome or Firefox? And why?
[2] A lone exception said he stuck to Firefox only out of sheer inertia.

“The world is a lot different from a year ago, and we have three brand new browsers and there is a lot more competition and as a result the users are getting a lot more technology…”

“… I think it is uncomfortable, because our rivals have 2-3 times the magnitude of people and resources, and they are relentless.”

The state of the browser market pretty much proves that it’s impossible for an open source project to remain a popular front-end application for too long.

A successful open source project will see one of two trends:

- Commercial entities, each with its own USP will pick, modify and integrate portions of the project into their own products. This is what’s happening with Firefox. (Chrome, according to Google, used ” components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox”). Firefox as an open source project is likely to thrive, but its best features and technology will probably find their way into more popular commercially-backed browsers [1].

- It will see widespread adoption, but on back-end IT infrastructure instead of the desktop. Linux and *BSD are examples of this. I guess this is because after a point, the marginal cost of polishing the UI is more than what developers are willing to bear, and that end users demand more. Regardless, the core functionality of such applications is on par with/often superior to commercial alternatives, so a combination of this + low price point makes them an attractive choice for back-end deployment [2].

[1] Android was a commercially-backed open source project (based on Linux kernel 2.6) from the beginning, so I guess we’ll treat it like Chrome.

[2] This isn’t a value judgement on the quality of open source products, or the viability of the open source development model itself. The past couple of decades do seem to have proved, though, that end-user open source applications are tough to build and sustain in their original form.

No longer. Not only are more mobile phones being sold now than ever before, there are more types of folks making money off it. For smartphones with an ecosystem such as iPhone, there is

- Apple, the iPhone manufacturer

- AT&T (in the U.S.) that provides cell phone connectivity

- tens of thousands of developers who sell their iPhone applications through the App Store (with Apple getting a cut). And this is not just indie developers. Amazon stands to make a huge bundle through book sales via its Kindle Reader app for iPhone [2]

- businesses that create free iPhone applications but make money off ads within their applications [3]

- record labels that offer their music for sales on the iTunes Music Store

- television networks and Hollywood studios that offer their TV shows and movies (respectively) for sale/rent, also on the iTunes Music Store

Of course, this runaway success has inspired every smartphone label to scramble to bake its own pie. Witness the plethora of application stores (Palm, Nokia, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Android) [4], and Nokia’s attempts to sell music.

Open or closed?

The more mature a product category gets, the more players there are that stand to make money off it. That’s because the pioneer quickly realizes that for true scale, it must “open up”  the product to entities other than itself. And that’s where it seems we have from history, a clear lesson: IBM opened up the specs of its original PC, and hordes of beige box manufacturers crowded Big Blue out of its own market. Apple itself nearly destroyed all that the Macintosh stood for when it licensed the Mac to other manufacturers.

“Opening up” a successful product and creating an open ecosystem divides the pie into so many slices that the pioneer is left picking up only crumbs. Apple’s iPhone ecosystem has been “opened up” to all those players above through the iPhone OS developer API, the iTunes Music Store and the iPhone App Store, but the ecosystem itself remains tightly closed.

[1] OK, so there were (are) electronic component manufacturers on the source side and advertising agencies on the sell side. But let’s limit ourselves to those that gained directly from the mobile phone. 

[2] Also with iPhone OS 3.0, developers can now charge for features within the application (unlocking extra weapons and purchasing weaponry within games being the most commonly cited examples), so you could have a free basic application with paid features if you like. Before OS 3.0, the best that developers could do was offer separate “free” basic and “paid” full-featured apps.

[3] Take Twitterific, for instance. The free version of the application inserts ads into your tweetstream.

[4] With comical attempts to make them sound different (Palm Software Store, Nokia Ovi Store, Blackberry App World, Windows Mobile Marketplace, Android Market). 

Online pioneers have lapped up the biggest brands and most popular goods: the largest cities, the biggest hotel chains, the most popular travel destinations, the widest marriageable demography, the most desirable gadgets, the most viral videos, the news everybody reads, the the matches everyone watches.

Now comes the hard part. The cities only a few want to travel to [1], the outliers for whom it isn’t easy finding a match [2] , books in regional languages, people with odd skills, niche but tremendously useful gadgets, highly technical videos. There’s a market for all those. In aggregate, they’re as large and lucrative as those that have already been monetized [3].

Then there’s an even larger market – for individual professional services. The mother of all yellow pages, with a location-based and rating-based component. One that connects me to the nearest puncture shop when my car has a flat on a stretch of highway (and takes Rs. 10 for that connection), directs me to the nearest ATM in any city, to the most reliable service center for my phone.

There is no technological barrier to setting up these businesses anymore (you really don’t need broadband for most of this – just plain Internet access, and in some cases, a cellphone). What makes this hard is convincing small businesses/individuals to sign on. Building trust and credibility. Selling to Jet Airways is much easier than to Pravin Puncturewalla on a random national highway. If you’re willing to tackle that, you have a successful business.

Finally, Rajesh has a compelling vision of the “now-new-near” web, which you should read. I think that “niche” is about as much the future as the others. I also think that “now” and “new” are synonymous for the vast majority of cases, so I propose that tomorrow’s web will be the “now-near-niche” web (built around the evolving Internet Operating System)

[1] RedBus.in is doing a spectacular job with that, by my estimates. Driving to work today I spotted a travel service that did a Hyderabad-Kolhapur (!) bus route. And hey presto, Redbus.in has that route listed.

[2] Secondshaadi barely scratches the surface, but hey, it’s a start.

[3] Yes, yes. It’s the same old tired Long Tail phenomenon. Let’s set aside discussions of how cool the phenomenon itself is and why it works, and explore how you can build businesses in India with it.

The most popular of the smart marketing strategies today is about building customer “stickiness”. Making your customer return to you for repeated service. Staying engaged with him/her. Online, you’d do this by creating, say, a Twitter account with updates about new deals,coupons and discounts [1]. Or staying in touch through a company blog. Or having your customers sign up for a regular newsletter (so old school). Or building an iPhone application (so hot!)

Stickiness is often held up as the best way to market a small business. But the basic assumption of stickiness is that you want your customers to return repeatedly. What if your business just isn’t like that? What if you’re a user-car evaluation service? Or an apartment broker? Regardless of how much they love you or your service, stickiness is no use with them.

Your marketing strategy then needs to focus on referability: getting existing customers refer you to other potential customers. Offline, you could offer your customer, as part of the deal close, a choice of one piece of merchandise: a t-shirt, a key-chain, a cap, a set of stickers, whatever. Online, you could build a Facebook application that your customers could display on their page. For the apartment broker business, the application could have you enter your location, size of apartment, approximate rent and display snaps of sample apartments, with directions to call you. You get the idea. If your customer is satisfied, he/she will be glad to help you with this.

Your business needs to choose between stickiness and referability. And it’s not an either/or choice. Sticky customers are also likely to refer you to their friends. Also, customers that care enough to refer you will come back to you. But the focus of your marketing strategy must be one or the other.

[1] Dell is doing this pretty well. It’s not a small business, but the principle remains the same.

Did Microsoft miss out on the big search opportunity that Google pounced on? Is Google losing the real-time communication game to Twitter?

Microsoft’s original mission was “a computer on every desk and in every home” [1]. Even with their almost total dominance of the PC industry, that mission remains far from accomplished.

Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. That’s a mouthful. But it’s also nowhere near completion.

Both companies – one over 3 decades old, the other over a decade old – have still only plucked the low-hanging fruit. Urban homes and corporations have computers, but there are still billions of potential Microsoft consumers – who might be well served with a mobile “computer”, for instance. For Google, even with its mind-boggling data center infrastructure and web-crawling, the task is just begun. Books. Space. History. Energy and resource consumption. And more. And that’s just the “organize” bit. Converting all that data to information so that it is “accessible and useful” is another thing altogether.

Companies like these are larger than the “next big thing”. Their own “thing” is so incredibly significant, so humbling. That’s why it’s unfortunate when such an organization changes its very mission to something that can mean absolutely anything (and therefore also nothing): Microsoft’s mission is now “to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential” [2].

Google isn’t about to kill Microsoft. Not if Microsoft directs all its resources towards what it set out to do. Likewise for Google; Twitter isn’t out to organize everything known to man. So ignore those predictions of doom.

[1] According to Wikipedia the exact words were “to get a workstation running our software onto every desk and eventually in every home”

[2] Although I didn’t find any evidence to suggest Microsoft changed its mission in response to any other company or threat

The aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result. … a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends… this artifact can tell us extraordinary things about who we are and what we want as a culture.

That phrase made it into his book “The Search” and quickly became a popular way to demonstrate how enormously important and powerful Google might eventually become.

This last Saturday, the New York Times ran a piece on a possible new monetization idea that Twitter was considering: to “offer shopping advice and easy purchasing”. People already solicit their Twitter followers’ opinions, and it is also already possible to identify real-time trends related to a particular product, company or event. Put those together, and you get an extremely powerful (and, the founder hope, lucrative) tool.

Viewing this piece of news in the context of “database of intentions” you can see how the web has evolved since Battelle propounded that idea:

One, Twittter is now a database of actions, of people announcing by-the-second what they have tried, used, bought, rejected, liked and disliked. I see an attractive opportunity for an analytics firm to help companies make sense of what people are saying about them, what events caused this conversation, and the results of a company’s actions/response on the conversation and subsequent sales/signups.

Two, it is still a database of intentions, but at dizzying, real-time speeds. From the New York Times article:

“Commerce-based search businesses monetize extremely well, and if someone says, ‘What treadmill should I buy?’ you as the treadmill company want to be there,”

While it’s certain that companies can use these intentions to snap up customers before competitors, it’s unclear as yet how companies will be able to scale and respond if and when Twitter achieves Google’s adoptions levels. There is definitely an opportunity for another business here.

So far [Microsoft] has been on the losing side of the equation, ceding market share to its upstart rivals, all of whom are touting ease of use, simplicity, security and speed. Microsoft’s browser chief, Mike Nash, thinks the new IE 8.0 has got all that and more.

So true, except that none of it matters to Microsoft. If it cared about  “simplicity, security and speed”, it’d install Firefox + extensions with every copy of Windows.

It’s become pretty clear that the only way you can make money off a browser is by driving traffic from it to a search engine results page with advertisements. That’s how Mozilla makes over 80% of its revenue – driving traffic to Google from its search box and its default home page.

Earning revenue from ads on Microsoft Live Search pages through IE traffic is the only imperative driving IE development. And its getting costlier by the day to keep up with the competition.

Or not.

The article’s conclusion is probably right (this is what this post is about; the Kindle could indeed help the U.S. newspaper industry) but its reasoning is entirely incorrect.

Costs (printing, distribution or others) were never the newspaper industry’s biggest problem; it was revenues. Readers have been moving online in droves, resulting in plummeting print sales and print advertising revenues. Also as newspapers have found out, generating revenue from online advertising wasn’t easy. Advertising on the web works fundamentally differently from print. As Nicholas Carr points out:

A print newspaper provides an array of content—local stories, national and international reports, news analyses, editorials and opinion columns, photographs, sports scores, stock tables, TV listings, cartoons, and a variety of classified and display advertising—all bundled together into a single product. People subscribe to the bundle, or buy it at a newsstand, and advertisers pay to catch readers’ eyes as they thumb through the pages. The publisher’s goal is to make the entire package as attractive as possible to a broad set of readers and advertisers. The newspaper as a whole is what matters, and as a product it’s worth more than the sum of its parts.

When a newspaper moves online, the bundle falls apart. Readers don’t flip through a mix of stories, advertisements, and other bits of content. They go directly to a particular story that interests them, often ignoring everything else. In many cases, they bypass the newspaper’s “front page” altogether, using search engines, feed readers, or headline aggregators like Google News, Digg, and Daylife to leap directly to an individual story.

In other words, the true value of the newspaper – the bundle – is lost once online. It becomes a set of standalone articles, each responsible for its own revenue.

Here is where the Kindle can change the game back in favor of print. Since newspapers on the Kindle are subscription-based – just as in print – the bundle can now be restored. Only the medium will have changed, from paper to e-ink. In fact, if Amazon can track the location of a Kindle, it could even display local advertisements, in exactly the same way that local editions of a national newspaper do.

But not so fast. Newspapers (and their partner, Amazon) also need to understand why users moved online in the first place: the convenience of having unlimited news accessible instantly for free. This is what they need to deliver. For the bundle to work, the Kindle must make all its newspapers available for free, instead of charging an arbitrary subscription fee. Revenue from advertisements (on a per-impression basis, since per-click makes no sense in the absence of a web browser) should be split between Amazon (the medium) and the newspapers (the content).

Of course, we still don’t know how many online readers will bite and make the move to the Kindle. But the U.S. newspaper industry sure can’t afford to not try.