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Author Archives: ilkut
Until you are useful.
©Ian Stevenson
FastCoDesign started a very intriguing series of articles on what today’s social networking solution providers were once set-out to be & what they are now.
Before Twitter became a micro-blogging sensation it was a podcasting business. YouTube’s founders were convinced they’d hit the jackpot with a video-dating site. PayPal’s original mission was to beam IOUs from Palm Pilot to Palm Pilot. Flickr grew out of a massive multiplayer online game as a way for players to drop photos into text messages. Instagram’s founders created a check-in technology called Blurbn before settling on photos.
This pattern of change is not coincidental, or under-considered. All these companies are dealing directly with society, on a daily 1-to-1 basis. These companies that are pivoting in response to the demand are actually answering the need in the market for the organization that can change, which is limber and obviously gets it.
As straightforward as the fact that these companies are unmissable parts of how we connect, they sustain this position by being in tune with their audience, and understanding what their users’ needs are (even what it will be). They seek to be useful.
This leads us to observe that change at human centered organizations is permanent, due to unstable/ ever-evolving nature of people’s needs & desires.
The Pivot is a very interesting read and you can join the conversation following the #thepivot hashtag.
Apple now doesn’t depend on Google Maps
It is well spread in the news that Apple is ditching Google’s services for an in-house solution, which offers a more realistic approach to the mobile world of cartography. (See the original news at it’s source at 9to5Mac.)
Having an almost native application removed from the 6th iteration of their mobile operating system shows how dedicated Apple is to remain independent in providing such a core mobile service. It took them 4 acquisitions to offer that same service (see purchases of Placebase, C3 Technologies, and Poly9).
What will they do about the search? Nothing! they don’t have to do anything, consumer level information gathering is done & spread around dedicated apps. Search will stay as an additional option browser for extra’s information that can’t be delivered by these dedicated sources.
I am hoping Google will start thinking about delivering value on top the core services they are providing, or else…
Bonus:
Speaking of search have you heard of Microsoft’s new social approach to search (news article here)? It aims to connect you with relevant though leaders in related to your search term. (definitely deserves it’s own post).
Adobe might just have Solved their Piracy Problem
On 23.04.2012, Adobe has made a huge progress in resolving their pirated usage problem they are having with CS suite of tools.
Creative Cloud, allows Adobe to catch up with the industry-trend of Cloud Computing (Wikipedia). This technology will allow you to synchronize your data to all your devices, work on all of them flawlessly. See similar offers aimed at Adobe’s target audience;
If you are confused about these different brands offering all these a-like services, head over to the Arstechinca’s comparison article for these services.
Prior to the creative cloud offering adobe was only selling standalone products (each $600~) or bundles of software ($1400~) that are aimed towards certain industry with the limiting assumption of a user could/ would only use certain software nothing more maybe less. The Creative Cloud ($50/mo~) offering sets itself apart by giving all it’s subscribers access to all the latest Adobe software as well as a Cloud storage offering that will deliver their documents on each computer they are using.
This company already does annual product releases and always sets prices that makes starting to use this software expensive. By softening the users introduction payment the suit of tools, aggressively, Adobe is making a better case to not to used as pirated software.
This, however, might also set a new lowest for entering to pirating as well. Which i am looking forward to find out observing the success of Creative Cloud.
See the promotional page for more information on product.
Why Facebook needs to build a browser – NOT!
From Cnet‘s article article Why Facebook needs to build a browser.
Facebook could try to counter Chrome with Facebook integration in IE, but it wouldn’t be the game-changing move Facebook needs to put Google on the defensive. The only way Facebook can knock Google off its feet is to build its own browser and use its massive reach to promote it.
Currently there is a similar threat to smartphone camera applications by Instagram, who doesn’t get bundled with the users but the most engaged photographic content is still at Instagram because of the window they provide to the social graph.
Browser stats & extensions has nothing to do with where my 229+ other friends are, as well as 50+ photo albums. So it doesn’t matter what medium users interact with your service as they develop a heritage of usage and create connections with whatever matters to them during that time.