My BFF and I Agree: 10 Reasons Texting Has Taken Over the World

February 4, 2013

Why texting has taken over the world

Photo source: User kamshots on flickr.

Introduction

I used to think texting was something that teens did: a form of instant messaging to gossip, coordinate meet-ups and talk about cute boys (or girls).

Nowadays, however, I find myself using texting as a primary form of communication with my peers – I’m talking folks, like me, in their 40’s. It’s also prevalent in the business world, from the meeting room to the board room.

Texting as Your BFF

Admit it: texting is your BFF. And it’s taken over the world. I pondered this phenomenon when I exceeded (for the first time) my texting limit earlier this month:

Oops! I texted too much this month

With each subsequent text incurring an overage fee, I decided to stop texting until the start of the next billing cycle. But lo and behold, it couldn’t be stopped! Friends and family continued to text me. And I had to reply to them the old fashioned way: email.

Let’s consider how (and why) texting has taken over the world.

1) It’s asynchronous.

Consider the phone call. You dial your friend. She hears the ring and has to be available to answer it. She answers and you talk. What if you simply needed to tell her that you’re running 10 minutes late? Does that really require the dial-answer-communicate cycle? Or how about a text that says “Running late. Be there in 10”? Done.

2) It’s threaded.

I remember receiving text messages on first generation cell phones. The user experience was poor. We’ve moved light years ahead on smartphones. Now, my conversation with each contact has its own “record” and I can see the back-and-forth messaging in one place. It’s like a permanent instant messaging window, holding the entire history of our conversation.

3) It’s universal.

Texting is universal

Photo source: User oregondot on flickr.

Whether it’s an iPhone, an Android phone or my parents’ 90’s era flip phone, every cell phone supports texting. This is one “application” in which you and your friend don’t need to download the same app. The app is built in to your phone.

4) Its notifications receive valuable screen real-estate.

While some may change the notifications settings on their phones, for most of us, an incoming text message receives high “priority.” The message pops up as a notification, usually accompanied by an audio alert. To check email, you have to open your email client. Texts, on the other hand, are visible the moment they come in.

5) It’s great for sharing photos.

Texting is Instagram without the filters. Long before Instagram hit the scene, people were sending each other photos via text message. Take a cute photo of your kid? Send it to family via text. As mentioned (above) with “notifications,” family members will see that photo right away. If you sent it via email? They’d probably see it much later.

6) There’s an expectation of near-immediate response.

Let’s say you need to urgently reach a colleague and she’s in a meeting. Do you interrupt the meeting and pull her out of it? Do you call her cell phone? Maybe in days past. These days, you send her a text message (perhaps labeled as “URGENT”) and chances are she’ll take the needed action. Immediately.

7-It’s short, it’s Twitter-like.

Tweeting is like texting

140 characters or less. It’s a big part of Twitter’s popularity and charm. With text messages, you get an additional 20 characters, for a total of 160! Endless email chains. Friends who just can’t seem to stop talking. With text messages, you get none of that. Instead, it’s 160 characters (or less) and you move on.

8) You can text in groups (if you want).

Yes, your 1:1 conversations can be extended to groups of friends (or colleagues). In a work setting, this could be especially useful when traveling together to a conference: coordinating meals, meet-ups and the like. In addition, there are numerous apps available to help you send group text messages on the cheap.

9) It delivers the entire payload at once.

Many email clients have a “preview pane,” in which you can read the body of the email (or the first portion of it). With texting, the entire payload of the message appears in the message notification. Often, I’ll receive a text, read it (via the message notification), then put away my phone. This adds to the efficiency of texting. Unlike email, there are times you don’t even have to open the “application.”

10) It’s resilient.

During natural disasters, voice service may be down, data service may be down, but text messaging is likely to survive. So your email won’t get through, your web site will be unreachable, but you can still send that text message. I’m sure texting is an important tool used by relief organizations and first responders today – and its use cases are sure to grow.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

3 Virtual Worlds Technologies To Watch

September 26, 2010

On September 24th, FountainBlue held its annual virtual worlds conference.  This year’s event was hosted on Cisco’s campus in Milpitas, CA.

The event was attended by entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, investors and virtual worlds practitioners.  Several virtual worlds entrepreneurs spoke on the scheduled panel discussions and a few set up stations to demonstrate their technology.

I’d like to highlight 3 virtual worlds technologies that caught my attention.

RocketOn: A virtual world layer on top of the entire web

Presenting executive: Steve Hoffman, CEO

RocketOn takes my “Best in Show Award” for most innovative virtual worlds technology.  While Facebook and Twitter have propelled social networking to mainstream adoption, surfing the web is still a solitary experience.

While many web sites have added community features (e.g. membership, comments, Facebook social graph integration, etc.) – it’s still the case that when I browse my favorite content sites, I have no idea who else is reading the same page at the same time.

RocketOn seeks to change that.  Using a Flash layer placed on top of web pages via an i-frame, RocketOn users can create their own avatar and have them walk atop any web page.  They can then see other RocketOn users who may be visiting the same web page.

Perhaps you’re reading a movie review and happen to bump into a friend, who’s reading the same review.  You decide to visit a site that hosts a trailer for the movie, so you both navigate to the trailer site, watch it there and continue your chat.

A Foursquare for the entire web

One of the captivating features of Foursquare is the ability to see who else is at the same physical location as you.  RocketOn has built a similar feature for the entire web.  While the service is focused on a consumer audience initially, imagine how this technology could be used in a corporate setting.

Browsing your company’s intranet could become much more productive and engaging.  Now, water cooler conversations could occur online, as you bump into colleagues at the employee directory page (rather than the kitchen).

Additional Information

  1. The “About Us” page for RocketOn
  2. More details on the RocketOn platform
  3. Neat 2-minute video about the RocketOn service

Zenitum: Bringing virtual worlds into the real world

Presenting executive: Albert Kim, CEO

I admire technologies that flip conventional models upside down.  While we visit virtual worlds from the real world, Zenitum seeks to have virtual worlds elements visit us in the real world.  CEO Albert Kim receives the “Jetsettter Badge”, having attended the conference from Zenitum’s home base in Seoul, Korea.

When publicly released (later this year), Zenitum’s technology will be supported on iPhone, Android and Symbian.  Zenitum will provide their app and an SDK (software development kit) for free.  They are encouraging widespread adoption of their technology – consumers use their app and device manufacturers develop services using their SDK. Zenitum will monetize their service via advertising (“augmented advertising”, perhaps).

Our reality will forever be augmented

When you run the app, your smartphone scans your surroundings, attempting to recognize images.  If it finds a match, Zenitum overlays a 3D animated object on top (or around) the real world object.  For example, let’s say a comic book publisher is running a campaign and loads an image of a comic strip into the Zenitum platform.

The same image is on a billboard on a city street.  When I walk down that street with the app running (and my smartphone positioned properly), Zenitum detects the comic strip image.  It then inserts animated 3D objects (perhaps other characters from the comic strip) around the real world object.  As I move my phone left, right, up and down, the animated objects adjust their positions accordingly.

Possible use cases

Imagine the use of this technology at a museum – as you walk past a painting, its “virtual artist” could appear on your phone and speak to you about the inspiration behind the work.  At a trade show or conference, walking down an aisle could cause executives (virtually) to spring up and give you a brief pitch about their product.

Neat stuff – I hope we’re able to keep the distinction clear, though, on what’s real and what’s virtual!

Additional Information

  1. Zenitum’s “Company” page on their web site

Digitell: Bringing a global audience to your next meeting

Presenting executive: Jim Parker, President

Digitell uses the ActiveWorlds 3D platform to bring you hybrid meetings, virtual events, virtual communities and webcasts.  Jim Parker, Digitell’s President, notes that a common client of his service is associations, who want to extend the audience for their annual meetings.  Parker notes that the immersive experience of Digitell makes attendees “feel like they’re there” (at the physical event).

Parker’s clients who run these hybrid events often charge the same amount on virtual attendance as they do for the on-site event.  In this way, the common objection of cannibalization goes away, as the virtual component generates additional audience – and additional revenue for the meeting organizer.

Dispelling the notion that virtual worlds are for the younger generation, Parker notes that the average age of a Digitell user is 44 (wow!).  Users are so passionate about the experience that they often comment, “when’s the next event, I want to use my avatar!”.

Parker has created 3D replicas of museums, which allows students (across the globe) to visit and experience the museum’s works, without having to be “bused” to the physical building.  Imagine how easy it would be to have a virtual guide take students on a tour of the museum’s main works, any time of day, with students participating from all over the world.

Additional Information

  1. More info on Hybrid Meetings from Digitell

Conclusion

While the term “virtual worlds” has a negative connotation in the minds of many, it hasn’t stopped innovative entrepreneurs from developing new and exciting services.  It will be interesting to watch each of these technologies to review their adoption, growth and monetization.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

How Vendors Should Evolve Their Virtual Event Platforms

July 10, 2010

The following is a collaborative posting by Miguel Arias, Steve Gogolak and Dennis Shiao.

Content creation and collaboration was facilitated by a PBworks wiki – the wiki page can be found here: http://allvirtual.pbworks.com/How-Vendors-Should-Evolve-Their-Virtual-Event-Platforms

To evolve their platforms for enhanced experiences and broader adoption, virtual event platforms should consider the following:

Make it easier to experience

Most virtual event platforms are easy to use – on a first-time visit, users tend to grasp the overall user experience and can figure out where to go (and how).  That being said, for wide scale adoption, virtual events needs to be as easy as Facebook.  That is, our grandmothers need to be able to access the site and figure things out.  On Facebook, grandmothers can update their profile, read their “friends” posts and write updates to their Walls.  Can a grandmother login to a virtual event, update her profile and participate in a group chat?  We’re not so sure.  Similarly, navigation and interactions need to be easier.  Most virtual events are intuitive to navigate (e.g. Lobby, Auditorium,  Lounge, etc.) – but may not be so intuitive with regard to message boards, chat, blogging, rating, etc.

Along with a simplification of interfaces and the use of usability and navigation conventions, many customers and users seem to be demanding more immersive environments. While presenting a brand and hosting an interactive experience in a convention centre, it seems an interesting field to add some real-time rendered environments using engines like papervision3D or Unity3D. This said, it is unlikely that avatar-based real time rendered environments will make it to a mainstream audience. Key considerations (or obstacles) are plugins or applets downloads, system performance and learning curve barriers.

Make it easier to find

The typical “location” of a virtual event is quickly becoming outdated – microsite with registration page, with no ability to experience the event prior to completing all mandatory registration fields. The registration page serves as a “wall” not only to potential attendees, but to search engines as well.  Virtual event platforms need to move “outside the wall” and expose their technology on Facebook, on blogs and on publisher web sites.  Platforms should widen their distribution via widgets, embed code and application programming interfaces (API’s).  Facebook is not limited to Facebook.com – it has Facebook Connect, Facebook Open Graph and much more.  Virtual events platforms, on the other hand, seem to be restricted to “VirtualEventPlatform.com”

Make it easier to access

The most relevant virtual event platforms will introduce, or already have, Facebook Connect and Twitter API, and they will need to move to even wider standards like OpenID.  For public events, ease of registration is a must.  Using open methods for registering and/or connecting social networks have three-fold benefits:

  1. Registration is faster because basic information can be provided by services like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.  Shorter registration forms increase completion, period.
  2. Intelligence gathered by the platform about the user’s existing social graph can enhance the experience within the event by automatically creating connections with other attendees based on that user’s connection outside the platform.  This will lead to more networking and awareness of actual people within the environment.
  3. Users opting into connections at the point of registration allows platforms to create publishable actions that can be spit out to twitter and facebook news feeds that can increase viral awareness of the event.  Marketing automation at its best.

On the other hand, desktop or mobile widgets to control your stand usage, statistics and reporting will be a must. Lastly, the platforms will have extensive APIs to manage their integration with various social networks, corporate databases, physical event managing software, etc.

Make the experience available on more devices

Most virtual event platforms support Windows, Mac and Linux.  They need to support more platforms, especially mobile.  On the mobile front, it’s important to consider iPhone/iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows 7 Phone and WebOS (listed in our order of importance).  To start, we don’t believe the entire virrual event experience needs to be “ported” to mobile devices -rather, vendors should determine the most critical features for attendees and exhibitors – and prioritize based on importance.  For instance, chat is an important element of virtual events, so why not make a mobile app that allows exhibitors to staff their booth via their smartphone.

The entire 3D environment does not need to be supported on a mobile device, but the networking tools (visit card managing, real time conversation, etc) and the reporting tools certainly do. On the other hand, it will be interesting to see what happens with Flash and Apple, and see which vendors will try to develop their platforms using HTML5.

One of the key areas where mobile can play a huge role is the “reminder” needs that come from tons of scheduled activities within virtual events.  If attendees have the ability to build out a personalized agenda before the event and opt-in to either SMS reminders or download some kind of app that will push notifications at them throughout the day, it would be much easier to create a flexible agenda.  Currently we’re cramming so much into the shortest amount of time because we’re afraid of losing people.  If only we had better planning and reminding tools, driven by devices that never leave our pocket!

Make the platform more adaptable and flexible

Related to our point about mobile support, platform vendors have important decisions to make regarding the development platforms.  Virtual event platforms today are based on Flash, Flex, Silverlight, Java and JavaFX.  Are those the “right” platform technologies for the future – or, should platforms move in the direction of HTML5?  Does a combination off HTML5, Javascript and Ajax create a more adaptable and flexible platform?  What do we “lose” by shifting away from Flash, Silverlight, etc.?  And what are the mobile implications with the chosen direction?  All good questions for the platform vendors to consider.

Make the platform more adaptable for different customer needs and different usage

There are so many different kind of virtual events: trade shows, conferences, job fairs, corporate events, webinars, congresses… that vendors should decide in which market niche they are going to play. We will see generic platforms and other vendors delivering a tailored solution for one or many of the previous choices. It will become more and more complex to provide physical event managers with the features they need to handle their hybrid events at the same time as the platform is able to cope with the extensive data handling of the virtual job fair, or the networking tools of a professional tradeshow.

Take a hint from Apple and FaceTime

Video chat will, without a doubt, increase the effectiveness of networking.  It is the one key element that can be introduced that will get critics to come around to the idea that networking in an online environment can be as effective as the cocktail hour of a physical event.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

At A Crossroads: Where Does Second Life Go From Here?

July 2, 2010

Crossroads

June 2010 will mark an important month in the history of Linden Lab and Second Life.  On June 9th, the company announced a restructuring that included a 30% reduction of their staff.  On June 24th, the company announced that CEO Mark Kingdon was stepping down and named company founder Philip Rosedale its interim CEO.

Second Life is clearly at a crossroads – it will be crucial for Linden Lab to determine the best path forward.  To do so, they need to identify the right questions to ask and then determine the right answers to those questions.

What is your audience and customer segmentation?

Second Life takes quite a broad approach today – there are a wide assortment of communities [audience] (see their Destination Guide) and an equally wide assortment of land owners [customers].  Having cut 30% of staff, the question at this juncture is whether the company (and the platform) is well suited to cater to “anybody and everybody” or whether it’s better to narrow the focus.

One “focus area” may be in evolving the platform to cater to the hobbyists and loyalists who helped grow the Second Life community from the early days [consumer focus].  Another focus area, while unlikely, may be in catering to corporations for business use (I say “unlikely” because the Enterprise group was let go in the June staff reduction).

Yet another focus area may be in catering to particular categories (e.g. Music, Art, Education).  If Second Life focused their resources around building the #1 immersive music experience, would that have a larger impact than evolving the broader platform to meet everyone’s needs?

So the question really comes down to “narrow vs. broad” – by identifying narrower segments to target their service, can Second Life create a more rewarding and enjoyable experience for both residents and land owners?

What is the revenue model?

Today, the Second Life revenue model is based around a virtual economy, whose currency is the Linden Dollar.  Residents purchase Linden Dollars with real money (e.g. US Dollars) and can then buy land (in-world) or buy virtual goods from in-world merchants.  One of the challenges inherent in this model is its dependence on others to sustain a viable audience (community).

The model works when the audience is growing and the community is thriving; however, when the audience declines and becomes less active, purveyors of virtual land find the ROI less compelling and the audience decline snowballs (since users have fewer residents to interact with each time they login).

Are you a media company or technology platform?

Second Life can go one of two ways here – they can morph into a media company (and have direct influence over the audience) or they can move to a pure-play technology platform provider, which shifts the audience generation “burden” to licensees of the platform.  As a media company, they’d be similar to Facebook, Zynga, IMVU and Slide, with revenue being a mix of advertising, sponsorship and the sale of virtual goods.

Today, I’d say that Second Life is somewhere in between – they’re a technology platform that has no explicit and associated “force” to drive audience (like a media company does).  Resolving this “grey area” will be important.

Where do you take the technology?

To some degree, the technology vision was shared in the June 2010 restructuring announcement – the company will migrate Second Life to a web-based experience, with no software download – and, they’d look to integrate popular social networks to be more accessible and relevant.  Of course, there’s a delicate balance to manage here, since a core component of the Second Life community uses the service for the immersive experience that a downloaded client can deliver.

Here, Second Life can take a page out of OnLive’s book – if OnLive can deliver immersive, action-rich, multi-player video games from the cloud, then one would imagine that a 3D immersive virtual worlds can move to the cloud as well (though, of course, it’s not trivial to achieve).  Second Life needs to think beyond the web as well and determine the viability for apps running on iPad/iPhone, Android and related mobile operating systems.

My Answers (Recommendations)

These are obviously complex questions that require a lot of analysis – in addition, there may be other questions that need to be asked.  The answers to these questions are interrelated and need to be answered together, not individually.  Here are my high level answers / recommendations:

  1. Audience and customer segmentation: Go narrow – you’ll lose segments of your user base, but the core segments you choose to focus on will see solutions and experiences that are more targeted and relevant.  Build upon these small successes and grow outward again.
  2. Revenue model: Move to a SaaS licensing model (priced in US Dollars) – keep the Linden Dollar currency system in place for the purchase of in-world virtual goods.
  3. Media company or technology platform: Become a pure-play technology platform that partners with media companies as a sales channel.  Give media companies incentives and easy-to-use tools that foster growth in virtual real estate – encourage them to be your sales champions and bring their audiences into the community.
  4. Technology evolution: Complete the transition to a 100% web-based offering (no small task!) – and, on the journey there, have plans in place for iPad and Android apps.

Times of turmoil give companies the opportunity to throw convention out the window and reinvent themselves.  Consider another company whose original founder returned to transform them from a “has been” to the most valuable technology company on the planet:

Apple Computer.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

The Future Of Virtual Events

February 1, 2010

There’s no time like the present … to think about the future.  I previously wrote about predictions for the virtual event industry in 2010 – those predictions were based around a short-term outlook and have a reasonable chance of coming true.  Now, I’d like to weigh in on 2011 (and beyond) and discuss where the industry (and the technology behind it) may be heading.

Virtual Event technology moves “closer” to the end user

To spur increased adoption, the virtual event experience will move closer to the end user.  To move closer, the browser-based experience of today will be complemented by numerous apps that live outside of the browser.  A relevant analogy is Twitter, which could not have achieved its place in the world on twitter.com alone – its power is broadened with desktop clients such as TweetDeck and Seesmic.  Possibilities include:

  1. Browser toolbars that encapsulate a subset of virtual event functionality (OK, we’re still within a browser here – so consider this an initial step only).
  2. Desktop applications – initially, these apps may provide a real-time dashboard for attendees, exhibitor or show hosts.  You’ll get to keep tabs on activity within a virtual event without having to be logged into the event (from your browser).  Subsequently, the apps will become more sophisticated and take on more of the virtual event platform’s features.
  3. Asynchronous alerting services – attendees, exhibitors and show hosts will be able to configure alerts that inform them of important activities.  The alerts will have numerous transport mechanisms – email, SMS text message or social media notification (e.g. a direct message on Twitter).

Virtual Events Go Mobile

Related to “getting closer” to the end user, mobile is the “elephant in the room” for virtual events.  The mobile apps will start off quite simple – think again of the dashboard app, which provides a real-time view of what’s going on within the event.

Building onto the dashboard will be basic interactivity (e.g. text chat) – allowing attendees and exhibitors the ability to chat with others.  An exhibitor, for instance, can now staff her booth “on the go” from her iPhone.

As we look to 2011 and beyond, I see a clear shift in the computing landscape, whereby more and more “computing” moves from the desktop and laptop and on to mobile devices.  In this decade, the smartphone becomes the PC of the past decade.

The challenge for virtual event platform providers is to determine where to place their bets (investments) across iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Palm.

Tighter Integration Inside The Firewall

Virtual events see major adoption from multinational corporations, who leverage the events for internal-facing communication and collaboration (e.g. sales kick-off meetings, human resources programs, learning programs, executive briefings, team/departmental meetings, etc.).  Corporations will begin to request the following:

  1. Integration with other enterprise applications (which often sit inside the firewall)
  2. Tighter security measures

This drive from corporations will cause virtual event technology to morph a bit, shifting from a 100% software as a service (SaaS) model to a hybrid model that combines SaaS with on-premise software.

At first, integration points to a company’s enterprise apps may reside “on premise” on corporate servers – subsequently, corporations may require the underlying virtual event platform be hosted inside the firewall – a model that mirrors Linden Lab and their Second Life Enterprise.

Augmented Virtuality

Virtual events and in-person events meet augmented reality – resulting in “augmented virtuality”.  I previously wrote that 2010 is The Year of The Hybrid Event.  There will come a day when every in-person event has a virtual component.  With existing smartphone technology and the emergence of augmented reality – we’ll soon hit a sweet spot whereby in-person event attendees will wield enormous power in the palm of their hands.

Physical event attendees will begin to experience an event through the lens of their smartphone – holding up the smartphone at any location and seeing overlays of relevant information.

Augmented virtuality will blend augmented reality with the virtual event platform – elements of the virtual event appear as overlays on the smartphone (e.g. the virtual booth is layered on top of the smartphone’s view of the physical booth – and virtual staffers are displayed as being available [via the smarthphone] if the in-person staffers are busy).

Bye Bye, “Virtual Events”

Based on the trends I’ve outlined, by 2011 (if not sooner), we’ll no longer refer to “virtual events”.  Instead, they’ll have “grown up” and migrated into a broader category of business or collaboration application.  Virtual event technology becomes a toolset in a larger ecosystem – or, they’re integrated into a broader suite of tools (rather than being a standalone solution).

Conclusions

In a few years, these will no longer be your mother’s virtual events!  The industry and technology will change, morph and adapt to suit the needs of the market.  Let’s all be thankful that we’re along for the ride.

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Posted by Dennis Shiao

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