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• "The Private Web" by Steve Gilmour with reflections on his daughters behavior. Interesting thoughtpiece.
  A few points from Steve's post

  "The key to the Private Web is notification, not the actual content. The social signals that enable or disable connections are the new PageRank. It’s not a link but the ability to see the metadata that describes a link’s immediate value that’s valuable.

  he keys to the Private Web are shared, not at a location but via implicit and dynamic permissions to access the stream in realtime. Those who signal their understanding of this deeper value pool will implicitly advertise their value, and encourage us to request permission to share with them. Those deeper conversations will contain higher value as we trust those who share them to keep them private to the group who values them.

  Twitter may not support conversations very well, but it provides clues to where the Private Web exists. "

  (tags: stevegilmour twitter socialnetworks socialmedia web kids privacy)

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The Chinese, Greeks, Romans and American Indians all used “smoke” to communicate complex messages. Todayʼs smoke signals may just be Twitter or another micro- blogging service. What implications does this have for mobile communications and escalating the conversation? For sender and receiver? How are our signaling patterns changing?

A new type of signal is emerging…. A callerID paradigm selected and controlled by the user. ConTEXT (SMS or other notification) before the call. Are the conversational rules of escalation changing? These directories and lifestream updates are all things that are emerging outside the Telecom exchange structure (directories, numbers, channels, records). Is the good old telephone number about to be snuffed out? Could a simpleURL replace it? I still think it could.

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Why Twitter could usurp Skype as the future for telephony. This assumes that we make Twitter talk and use the approach suggested in my powerpoint above.

Number of Users: Currently Skype dwarfs Twitter in terms of numbers. While claiming 500+million registered users the reality is not quite 20m are logged in at any one point in time and we have around 50 million per day that probably use it. Twitter by contrast is growing rapidly with much speculation around it numbers and user base. Safe to say it’s in the 10’s of millions but not 100’s of millions. (Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley quoted 55million recently)

However, for telephony there is a fundamental difference. You can only call on Skype when both users are logged in. (There are a few that when offline forward to their mobile – an insignificant number I think). So Skype has a built in design flaw and we see it in things like Twitter all the time. Search “Skype” on Twitter and you will find many messages saying get on Skype. This highlights the first issue. A rapid friction free escalation to a voice call on Skype requires both users to be online. Not surprisingly it is also common to text “can you talk now” as a query as the presence indicator is also effectively meaningless.

By contrast as proposed by Phweet Beta – Twitter has a set of remarkable advantages as a telecommunications starting point. First up. Twitter is merely a contextual signaling system. So as a signal it replaces the Skype click to call with a simple message. “mytwittername: +calltwittername* what you want to talk about”. This message has significant benefits. It links context to a call request. It’s a much less intrusive ringer than just calling out of the blue and enables the receiver to choose whether or not they want to escalate to a call. Unlike Skype the other user doesn’t need to be online. For Phweet provides the notification infrastructure. Call setup doesn’t require either party to be online. Thus Phweet can use Twitter SMS to setup calls, use any third party client etc. In fact there is no reason that a future Phweet cannot use Skype as a communications channel and that is part of the point. Users can choose individually the cheapest routing model.

Followers vs the Buddylist: For communication outside your buddylist Skype is difficult. “Add contact”. In Twitter you can message anyone with a simple @message. Yesterday I suggested this was a little like a ringer. (However, to an extent the add contact and context for why want to add message is similar on Skype. Yet approval provides access until some future point when the Contact is deleted or blocked. Effectively a persistent connection and thus leaves one open to future breaches of privacy or unwanted interuptions. As a result Skype users limit their buddylists and the concept of rapid escalation with people outside the buddylist is effectively thwarted.

By contrast Phweet acts as the signaling broker. Phweet negotiates the exchange on behalf of the two parties. This also provides the opportunity for Phweet to “filter” requests and provide presentation controls on behalf of the receiver. This is impossible in the Skype and traditional model of telephony. Note in a Phweet/Twitter type telephony world it is easy to send a callme request to anyone (on Twitter of course) which can be escalated to a voice exchange if the receiver agrees without exchanging further details.

Phweet also offers the capability for persistent exchanges between individuals. It may also be a one-off a new URL established for each. Effectively Phweet directionally allows you to publish as many numbers as you want at no cost and manage each one differently.

My Identity: Yes Skype has a profile. Many of the aspects are similar to Twitter although I’d argue a Twitter profile provides a better sense of reputation, number of followers, number following, number of tweets, tweet content etc. Therefore it provides a better opportunity to “filter” the call requests. In the future callme requests can be filtered on many other criteria, context, location (eg close or not) etc.

I’m stopping on this topic today. I believe there are many opportunities to innovate around the status update, where contextual updates and “callme” requests are adopted just like RT or StockTweets $. At eComm Voxeo was integrating messaging with their more traditional voice solutions, while speech to text is being adopted in platforms like RibbitMobile. All of these solutions moving towards a day when we can 1)scan call request more effectively, 2)demand context before the call, 3)get out of calltrees by providing the problem before the call etc.

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RibbitMobile handles this more effectively. Enabling the instant taking of the voicemail while starting to ring those other lines. In this way Ribbit beats GoogleVoice. And the settings make all the more sense to me now.

I also contacted Ribbit support who have been most helpful. The key problem for both of these services is the capability to forward the calls from the mobile which is controlled by the carrier. If the delay is too long they can’t ring the number back. I’m afraid the only way to really get the service I want is a form of number portability. I have to be able to transfer my number or exchange my number with GoogleVoice and AT&T. Or it is giving out a new number.

So what is it? Which service is better? Well it depends. If you want to hand out your GoogleVoice number then GoogleVoice is superior offering screening options not available and translation on automatic that is better than Ribbit on my limited testing.

If you must use your mobile number and would prefer to optionally take the call on another line then Ribbit is better… if your callers are prepared to wait at least six rings and probably hear.. please leave a VM before you pick up.

What am I doing?
Well I’m going back to my visual voice mail on my iPhone and hope that Apple just offers the same text translation that Google does. I’d love that and sooner the better please. Maybe someone can create an app in the meantime that can listen and translate and then list?

I’m leaving my Ribbit account in mothballs and my second GoogleVoice account inactive for now. My first GoogleVoice account is now our home number and it texts both of us with any VM for the household. That’s very convenient. The issue is. I can only associate my mobile with one GoogleVoice account at a time. So activating the second account and using it for text translation of VM to my mobile doesn’t work that well. One or the other has to go.

At the end of the day….. the number of rings before going to VM is a big problem and if you ask me a real barrier to adoption or utility of these services. What I want is multiple phones to ring at the same time potentially. That way I can pickup the lowest cost option at that point in time. Eg the SIP phone on my desk.

Text before call is the future. It’s the “callmeabout” function that’s required. When I’m ready I click “accept” and we are connected. For me that still sounds awfully Phweet like.

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So recently I was disappointed when a consumer products client who happily commissioned a blography didn’t have time for the respondents. No comments, no daily reading etc. They missed out in many ways.

In this project traditional diaries were also used with some respondents while others were on the blography program. We observed distinct difference in what we got back. While some might trace to recruitment other benefits become obvious when using a blography. Paper diaries tend to restrict people. Blography respondents wrote much more, not restricted by paper size they also added hyperlinks and photo’s that for many would have been more difficult or impossible in the paper diary. Overall I’d say the content in the Blography format was more expressive and more interesting.

Traditionally we wait until we get the diaries back from the field. Thus the second benefit of the blography comes in enabling a dialogue between researchers and participants in real-time. As our client didn’t partake in this they missed a major opportunity to drill down on content and find new areas for inquiry when moving towards the field work. From experience I also know that the participants are increasingly interested in getting comments. They’ve been trained by Facebook walls etc. even if they have never blogged. It’s no longer so “foreign”.

Those new to blographies who have an online life usually find real benefits in the experience. It also represents a safe environment to learn in and the formats are kept simple.

Lastly, blographies can also become part of a panel with longer term implications. I remain surprised that more insight departments or product managers aren’t working harder to have a 100 people at their finger tips and engage them on a more persistent basis.

I didn’t mean for this to be a complete post or guide to running blographies. However, if you use them and have found other benefits or have questions about them I’d like to learn more.

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Ribbit mobile is focused on turning your VoiceMail into text which is then delivered to a variety of endpoints. Eg SMS, IM or email. In principle this is great. Now we get context before we call them back. Unlike GoogleVoice I don’t think there is a “listen” in mode. In reality it is focused to those that don’t want to talk except at their own chosen time. Take the message (they support with real-people on the translation) and then if and when you want call back. See RibbitMobile Use Cases

I ran the following tests.
1. Added all my contacts. Although Ribbit only supports Plaxo (which I use) and Outlook (which I don’t). Nothing for mail or gmail or Yahoo.
2. Added a Skype Account and then deleted and added again
3. Added a SkypeIn number as a second number
4. Added another number.

So I synched my mobile, added a Skype account and then phoned from my home number. The Skype account didn’t ring. I presume this is because I don’t have RibbitSkype added as a contact. So I added as a contact. Still didn’t work.

I added a SkypeIn number. I tried to activate. I wouldn’t activate. At first I presumed this was a fault in the Skype CallerID being read. Then I realized that my SkypeIn and SkypeOut numbers (Skype CallerID) are not the same. So I went to my account and changed to my default SkypeIn. Still I could not activate this account. Passing CallerID’s from Skype tends to be tricky. In the end it did ring my SkypeIn number.

Numbers Utility:
I found that it rang my mobile for a long time before taking voice mail. Why can’t I set the number of rings? One can also add extra rings as it tries to find you at the same time. There is in the ringing pattern a point when the ringing stops and you want to hang up just before it  makes chime noise and takes you to the next step.

Here’s a setting snip that shows you there are only two options. You can set it to ring after your mobile starts ringing and while taking VM or you can ring all numbers after it gives up on you answering your mobile.

This is a huge difference versus Google Voice which allows you to ring all numbers at the same time or concurrently and then if none are answered send it off to voicemail and transcription. To complicate this… it rings my mobile at least six times before sending it to my SkypeIn number. Note in the above you can get it to ring your skype account. I cannot get it to ring my Skype Account when my SkypeIn number is off.

Note I didn’t add a SIP channel as the instructions are unclear although I think I’d get to work if I played around.

There are some other details that I still don’t understand. Eg with contacts or People there is a push to get TwitterID’s etc inserted. There is an attempt at adding social network services to the directory. This seems premature. It isn’t working and my 1600+ contact upload apparently didn’t work effectively.

It never did load my contacts from Twitter.

Comparisons re GoogleVoice, Apple and directionally Phweet:
One can’t help making comparisons. In so many ways they do something similar. Yet RibbitMobile is poorly executed in comparison. It feels like a hodge podge of functionality. It’s UI on the web takes ages to load and despite it saying RibbitMobile I cannot load the browser on my iPhone for it uses flash! The general UI opens and closes adding complexity when none is required. I prefer the GoogleVoice UI by a massive margin.

Making a business of getting the efficiency out of VoiceMail is questionable in my mind. At least as an iPhone user. If MobileMe was to offer the same text translation service and stay integrated with visual voicemail then I’d see absolutely no need to use RibbitMobile.

As the emphasis is on text first and thus screening of voice mail it just confirms my point that context before the call is important. Phweet enables context before the call and then enables you to choose routing before you connect. With Ribbit you have zero control over the ringing process. It doesn’t even appear possible to forward all calls without ringing your mobile first. There are no hours or other access variables. Although in future I’m sure this could be built into lists or groups much like googlevoice has.

I’m sure others will have some insight on the cost structure. Good job BT has big pockets. They will need them. Strategically this supports the idea that short messages should precede calls or set up calls unless the parties are very familiar with each other. It’s not yet anywhere near what I envisage is necessary for rapid location based call escalation.

As a closing comment I think this age of calling numbers is coming to a close. Ribbit is also just another in a stream of solutions that proves numbers no longer have any geographical meaning. That’s just another reason why I’ve continued to focus on URL’s as the exchange format. The future is in something much simpler than  Ribbit or GoogleVoice.

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1. The first phone phenomena. The handset has gone from being a device to a window to a software and network experience. The object has lost it’s functional identity. So it can now be anything you want it to be. So now you can bring the general computing experience along with it.

2. People are managing two lives. The meaningful standing in front of them and the second life that is in such high fidelity that it competes with our first life. We now have the opportunity to create a really meaty life.. facebook, twitter, etc. This is meaningful. Inevitably these are becoming entangled.

3. Computing, particularly the human interface is undergoing a rapid development. Eg Touch was the first step to get out of this older model. Touch bridges the physical and the virtual and the computing universe. Eliminates an abstraction. The Wii let us interact in 3D space to understand the dimensionality of my world and understand our world and interact with and in our world. Eg overlay a recognized object and decorate it.

4. HAL the 2001 computer. Interacting by being themselves. That as the interface with the computer being aware of the user in their own context. Using the MS Project Natal example re gaming to see you in a spacial way and respond. So a major shift in a way which we can talk to a computer. She drew a picture as as she drew it out the computer captured the image and then took the gesture and passed it to the person on the screen. The avatar continued the gesture. Eg took the paper.

He’s using a Layar clip again… and showing how we may interact. Another example of retail sign responding to the body. Some illusion may become common place. Example of a projection of a keypad for a telephone on the hand. In another example described as a walking amazon. Example of a virtual city complied from all the photos that everyone has taken.

The computing experience was started by being relegated to special places and we synch ourselves to it’s world. It is still its world even with the iPhone we stop when we need the value. Starting to see signs where when we interact with it it becomes our world. The growing world of “Computing in Context”.

A weird question. Would you give away an eye to have it replaced with an eye? Example of a guy that installed a camera in his eye. He looked like the Terminator and the body is the node. Node-ness of communication eg people on a map. Electronics for medical purposes that can transmit data to a small network or your phone. Eg a bluetooth sensor into body for glucose monitoring. What happens when  the device that monitors your heartbeat is also uploaded to your social net. Will the heartbeat become part of the social conversation?

Q&A … are there ethical issues raised. He doesn’t think it is really a problem will solve progressively.

Thought provoking presentation. To tie it back to the conversation this morning from Morten who also spoke about how the identity of the mobile device is changing. It is a few years before it disappears. It isn’t now, the longer term implications are worth keeping in mind. Many should add this perspective to James Enck’s presentation this morning. Then think about future scenarios.

Captured in real-time. Some paraphrasing and general interpretation. Live blogging from EcommEurope09

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Want to look at the potential and power of people in a network that are empowered to do things that weren’t possible in the past. My proposition is “people power”. Taking control of your own value. “VLUME” taking a buyers club. (This is not a new idea, although the time is coming closer. I wrote all this in The COMsumer Manifesto some 10 years ago). Now looking at lifetime value of capacity and what happens when you put it all together. We are talking about being a big corporation. This is about changing the economics of a service company. When  it gets to a certain percentage we can get it for 30% less and still make the supplier more profit. Just think eliminate the cost of customer acquisition.

The future is in the data, personal and meta-data and who controls that data will control the value chain. If that data is used then I want a piece of the action.

I don’t think this is the correct migration path to get there. While I love the idea of a buyer club I believe that the information to get there and the methods are quite different. I also believe that not only is it a coop but the people have to own for it to really work. I must find the opportunity and time to kick this one around with Norm.

Live blogging from EcommEurope09

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