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Default to public is a DNA shift that goes back to the original spirit of the web. It will interesting to see how other behaviours change as a result (e.g. moving from RSS to links I find in my twitter stream).
- "I want to know what's happening right now"
- "I want to check what 'Jane Doe' is up to."
Both stem from the behaviour you said.
If i want to say that i am going to eat, i can see what other people might be suggesting or doing - but really - this is transient information as over time i will learn all the habits of all those people that meaning anything to me, and i will begin to see a drastically diminished value in peer recommendation and frankly little or no value in status. i see no lasting value in it right now (thus my struggle with twitter).
What i want is this. i want a social concierge service that i can quickly communicate with that will suggest a result to my action (in this instance eating) - by telling me any deals that places it knows i might like may be offering right now. (free apps from 5-7). i confirm and it books. it can also communicate a social exhaust to the 'status' tools if i want it to. But i want a service that helps me find real-time solutions to my actions across my social activities. Eat, drink, dance, meet etc.
A restaurant would love to look at their book, and be able to move inventory in real time in a measurable fashion. I love a deal.
For example to add to your post. I've been a big fan of Twitter's approach and have blogged about it many times - nail the user experience and they will own the new category then monetization will be as easy as brushing your teeth. Well that was when they had 2m users. Bada bing. Sill no monetization and boom hello hockey stick growth.. they still have money in the bank so they won't be going out of business anytime soon but more importantly they can just wait til a match between user experience and monetization "shows its head".
That's my ANGLE
(typo fefault functions)
Non sequitur but anyone in Manhattan that's looking to hang out or stop in a friendly bar, please say howdy to my buddy Benjamin Powers (tell him I said hi)
http://friendfeed.com/messel/a968c19a/live-in-m...
are you ready to laugh? eBay.
just as i finished writing this, i just heard word of another eBay "glitch". now i am laughing too :)
I think the way to take on paypal is mobile payments or pssibly social payments
Twitter is even more interesting because they invented the behavior, and became the default through invention.
Classic failure of Twitter maybe that is could be the source to send, but someone else figures out a better way to filter the noise. I'd switch to a better way to sort through the noise. Then Twitter may become the platform that someone else makes money from...like the Zynga has done on Facebook.
Twitter broadened the reach of the status update. You don't have to be at your desktop to get the feed as with MSN or pulling it with Facebook for BlackBerry. It's pervasive and device independent (well less so in some countries with cost of SMS).
So many people are kicking themselves over not seeing the value of the status update.
On the other hand, this is an evolutionary way of thinking about growth, and to run with it, I'd suggest further that the best way to outgrow a Google is to find an ecological niche that Google doesn't yet occupy, but which meets similar needs along with other similar needs not met.
What does Google do at bottom? It connects people. There are mechanisms for connecting people that have been around for much longer than Google. There is still plenty of room for aggressive entrepreneurs to design interfaces that will allow us to connect with each other more like the ways that we have done so for thousands of years in offline social networks. Google is just the beginning.
My main point is that web designers need to work harder at designing tools and interfaces that mimic the patterns of social interaction offline. Many (although not all) of those patterns are hardwired into our biology. Inventors and entrepreneurs that find the ways to do this are going to have companies that grow as fast as they can build them.
GREAT article Fred!
Yahoo has just announced that they will be developing mobile apps exclusively for the iPhone from this point on. No blackberry, no palm, no android. (http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com)
I'm curious to see if this is evidence of new DNA finally coming through at Yahoo. They've been second place for far too long, and I think someone there has finally figured out that they need to be developing truly compelling applications, not struggling to pick up Google's leftovers. It's possible that by exhibiting focus in winnable new markets (such as iPhone apps), Yahoo can experience the upside of developing applications and services worthy of being a default choice.
I can't imagine them ever catching up to Google in search or ads...this type of bold move may be precisely what they need.
That's a great way to think about this
http://bit.ly/1sZ9kB
I would add something else -- spread the love around, don't hog it all for yourself, if you manage to get in that default position. That's the magic of Google, they spread the flow around to everyone on the web. And when they decided it was time to make money, they spread that around too. Not just to their friends, Fred, but to anyone and everyone.
Twitter is giving gifts to a very select group of its friends. That does not bode well for it being a default. It's going to inspire stiff competition with all the people you're not rewarding.
This new 'default' is really more about public micro-messaging and default to public than it is about Twitter. Twitter popularized and is benefiting from the momentum but if they drift into things that aren't compatible with that default I think they are going to stumble. It's really a DNA question for the organization - and does that DNA match the DNA of the thing they've created. Not always a given.
your point about twitter is a very good one, but i'd suggest that their behavior which you don't like (and rightly so) is a temporary one because they don't have the technology to do what needs to be done automatically and at scale.
they are building the tools to "spread it around".
also, as I said earlier in the comment thread, it's not clear to me that twitter will be default function for all of micro messaging. already they have ceded much of the read side of the equation. so it may be that they are the default for the write side, but not the read side.
http://venturebeat.com/2009/05/22/one-reason-wh...
He's irritated that he can't get them to return a phone call or email.
And that the follow/day limit has hurt them
With friends like that who needs enemies?
etsy and others have done the same thing with ebay.
but even when parts of their default functions are cleaved off, craigslist and ebay remain widely used default functions
Twitter. l'example de l'annee. Did they set out to create a default service? No and it is not a default service yet, but it's on its way. Once the search element matures, it may become the default live search engine, or the default news alert or something. Whatever it is, to your point on dethroning, its adoption rate and the loyalty of its users are seemingly unassailable now and there is an economy built around it.
It would seem to me that once a service has an ecosystem around it, then it has become socially disruptive and it cements its position as a default service. People store their credit card info on it, bookmark it, have the userid remembered, download the iPhone app, set up their wishlists, friend lists, hook up to their APIs, etc.
With the exception of Amazon, none of the services that are default now are things that most of us even thought about 8 or 16 years ago. Methinks it's easier to invent a category and become the default app for that category than to dethrone. If Gmail can't dethrone Yahoo Mail, what chance does anyone have to replace a default service? It's possible. It just can't be a frontal assault.
Good advice: chip away at the margins. Come up with something entirely new that your friends think is really cool. Make it something that your mother understands. Make it cheap. Hook 'em, then monetize.
niche solution businesses are everywhere: the user-experience / workflow can really be enhanced in so many ways. Connect that with Aza Raskin's ubiquity or ideas like that that let you get at a site or applications functionality directly without breaking up your concentration and a lot of things fit together.
Crowd-sourcing (threadless) and collaboration (37signals) are pushing forward very well. Local networks and listings are hot (yelp, meetup) and are in sync with the general trend of "make it real" (zuckerburg).
I think commerce is going to explode soon, just a hunch, but communication costs have gone through the floor, the hub spoke model is proven, and distribution and production are solved problems. This leaves a lot of room and opportunity for niche sites and communities to focus on the customer experience. This can be done, even if they don't have an inventory - just pull from amazon and the rest via api and take a small margin. I would be happy to pay an extra dollar if i'm really happy that I found the right thing.
Its not enough anymore to share what i am doing - it now has to become about what i WANT to do, and building a light weight set of services that really meaningfully help me with this.
p.s. On a side-note, did you deliberately change your writing style on this post?
as to the question of monetization, yes it's an issue. skype faced it. facebook faced it. i think both have built large half a billion or thereabouts revenue streams by now though.
Realistically, coming up with a way to make money to keep the lights on while not hindering your ability to become the default is the best way to give yourself the runway to do it in this environment.
Amazon and Google had funding before they became the default--funding from frothy late 90's markets. Craigslist had a way to make money and bring home enough profit to keep the lights on.
We have a bunch of companies who took their shot at becoming the default and missed and then morphed into a business that doesn't require being the deafult
You don't have to be the default to be successful
My point is only that those few businesses that do become the default have a different playbook and value proposition
As a general mantra for company building, securing a rev stream allows you to explore options....so long as it doesnt hinder growth.
We've always "asked our network" but now that we're interconnected, we can do it easily. Over time, the default internet behavior will mirror the default offline behavior....
http://jer979.com/igniting-the-revolution/reeds...
I'm going to break from the comments:
I would suggest that our functions/behaviors on the web are as much a transformation of our society's relationship with a sort of Panoptic-like (J. Bentham/ M. Foucault) default into something more broad.
As we change our position in relation to the "Panopticon," with some of our behaviors opening up what was formerly considered private (and hence as a society we watched ourselves and others for them) and other behaviors switch into the private sphere, this social upheaval will cause monetization opportunities.
The question to ask is- in the context of what the internet is causing, and what social changes that have been proceed and what you can guess will happen in the future, is the object offered to you likely to have an effect. If yes- you'll probably make money. If no- probably not.
Just from looking around a little.
Everyone's default behavior used to be to use either Internet Explorer, or Netscape, for surfing the web. Variation away from these defaults has given us Chrome, and Firefox and all of its Plug-ins which have added value to the Web in significant ways.
Deviating away from the default is a great way to gain a competitive edge, or for a VC, it is a great way to discover emerging new technologies that will become default behaviors as more people become aware of them.
For software to survive it must integrate itself as fully as possible with the web.
Default behavior for most students who write papers now is to use Microsoft word, but companies like Eduify.com are challenging that default by offering a Web Based word processor for free with Facebook connect integration, citation toolbar, and other great tools. We are releasing beta invites starting next week so for those who want to be ahead of the default curve make sure to request yours and check us out!
a newcommer can't just compete against a default service without bringing something new to the attract users. my case study is cuil.com and google.com
I've been watching cuil.com which is a search engine by ex-google engineers; their new thing is that they claim they search more pages than google; their result page layout is different than google, but confusing to me.
neither of their claimed advantage over google got me the results I want. I tried cuil.com for a while, but I went back to google.
Now she rarely uses google - she asks her friends on Facebook.
For instance, wouldn't it be great if you could purchase a computer from BestBuy.com, a printer from Staples.com, and a desk from Ikea.com, but instead of visiting three different websites, you could visit one?
Interestingly just came across some data from the Smart phone industry that validates your point of how specialised functions will eat away at Google's search power.
iPhone apps are Google's biggest threat in mobile search - http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=1611
Wolfram is interesting because they posit that people really want knowledge, not just information. They are right--for about 20% of the population, perhaps, but I think most people are looking for information.
Microsoft (or someone) could dethrone Google by doing 3 things: 1) make people think of search as a commodity (kind of is--screw the technical arguments to the contrary, it's about how people perceive what "valid" results are. There's no way to tell what's more valid unless you really know what you're looking for and care to compare each time, which is impractical) 2) offer something simple and demonstrably more relevant than basic search; Wolfram isn't it, because what's relevant to people isn't necessarily accuracy or knowledge, it's what's relevant to them and their world view, 3) make it really cheap to advertise and limit upside bidding to keep it cheap.