Tag Archives: iPad

iPad Bet Revisited: I was wrong (sort of).

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It’s always been a peculiarity of prediction making that we frequently hear the boasting over accurate guesses but rarely hear of the admission of (more frequent) bad bets. I thought I’d start the New Year (I intended to write this post last week but was distracted) by acknowledging a bad bet in my own blog going back a couple years. Back in October 2009, my longtime friend Brad Kay posted on his blog how he believed the combination of iPad and Bumptop would “forever change the computing experience as we know it”. You can view the exchange on his blog here.

I pounced on the statement for a few reasons. One, those kind of grandiose statements are always suspect to me. They roll off the tongue easily but often without  definition or context. I took issue with Brad’s statement on two fronts:

What does it mean to ‘forever change the computing experience as we know it’?

Change it how? Would we all be using iPads in two years? What percentage of the population needs to own iPads and use them a lot to constitute ‘changing the computing experience as we know it’? The statement sounded suspiciously like ‘paradigm shift’ talk and I found that hard to believe given the two-year event horizon. Paradigms don’t shift, they drift. Change happens slower than our sensationalistic media would lead us to believe.

For what it’s worth, I still stand by this point, but the more important piece is what I wasn’t seeing at the time. That brings me to the second issue I had with Brad’s prognostication.

What is the functional role of the iPad in a world of iPhones, laptops and desktop PCs?

I had trouble understanding what the iPad was going to be used for. Like many other nay-sayers at the time, I was trying to understand where the iPad fit for those of us who had an iPhone and a laptop. In several blog posts I tried to imagine how people would do much of anything productive on the iPad. I argued that most folks would not give up their laptop as a work tool. Conversely, in terms of checking email, visiting Facebook, watching YouTube and tweeting, my iPhone seemed sufficient. Why would I elect to lug around yet another device in my already heavy satchel?

And that’s were I was mistaken. I was assuming two things. First, that it was a zero-sum choice and second that productivity was the driving force behind acquiring an iPad. What I was missing was that the iPad, unlike any device before it, fits in a novel modern need set – one that has never existed before because we didn’t have the surrounding backbone and opportunities to warrant it. That need set is of the small task producer-consumer role we all play in varying degrees. In our multitasking lifestyle we now are rarely ever in a purely consumptive or purely productive mode. Instead we do a little of each which is a relatively new behavior pattern for us. We post to Facebook while watching TV and we check and write emails while reading magazines. We flit from production to consumption and back many times each day as we dart from small task to small task and short burst of content to short burst of content.

The other piece I wasn’t getting at the time was the important role of the app developers in defining the iPad’s utility. The device itself didn’t really need a purpose so long as it was sexy and desirable (it was and is) and the developer community could imagine uses for it. Developers have certainly seen uses of the iPad that I’m sure Apple didn’t anticipate. Instead Apple built the device with hooks that allowed it to crowdsource uses. And unlike tablets in the past which were made with productivity in mind, Apple focused on consumption foremost leaving productivity to the app developers to dream up.

In hindsight, Steve Job’s description of the Pad as ‘magical’ was spot on. With magic, no one knows exactly what’s going to happen. The delight in magic is that it is surprising – exactly the joy the iPad delivers to owners who find uses for it they never expected.

I finally got an iPad2 this year (I skipped the first version) and have fallen in love with it. I use it for simple tasks and simple consumption. It doesn’t replace any other device I have, and I suppose in a pinch it is something I could live without, but it has changed the way I experience computing and I’m guessing it has done so for many other owners too. It isn’t in enough hands to be considered paradigm shifting in my opinion. Once you’re away from urban commuters the sightings of iPads drop precipitously, but its heading in that direction and if prices drop as usual, eventually iPads and their like will find their way into more classrooms, offices and homes.

So while today tablets are a long way from being the dominant form factor for digital experience, they are a consideration on the minds of anyone making anything in the digital space from new products, to new marketing, to new tools, to new operational procedures in business, to new entertainment distribution systems, and on and on and on. In that sense, its influence is certainly changing the computing experience as we know it.

So Brad Kay, I owe you a beer. You were right.

That said, the other half of your prediction – that Bumptop thing – not as much traction on that front. Maybe we can buy each other a beer?

People with low Klout are highly important.

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I recently joined Klout (I’m usually a few paces behind the real early adopters… intentionally) to see what it was all about. I entered my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and this blog. I came back as a ‘specialist’ with a supposedly strong core network. That’s all well and good. The more interesting thing happened when I looked at my Facebook friends’ Klout scores. Overwhelmingly they are in the single digits. Klout gives these folks feel-good titles like ‘Explorer’ but the real title is ‘marginal participant’.

By way of context for why this is important, I go to some lengths to keep my Facebook network focused on real-life friends while LinkedIn and Twitter are more professionally bent. This is both in terms of the content I share through these channels and the friends/followers/connections I seek out. In this sense, my Facebook friend set crosses all walks of life and does not index heavy for tech/social/net types (unlike my Twitter account which is stuffed with them because of the nature of Twitter and the type of people attracted to it – you know who you are you self-promoters you!).

So while this exercise is a far cry from a scientific sampling, when my Facebook friends consistently come back with very low Klout scores, it does make me wonder if the divide between the tech/social/net types who build these various applications and tools and the average users they think might adopt them, isn’t more significant than sometimes assumed. To look at Klout’s site, online influence is something really important to measure. Influencers are certainly desirable to advertisers. Most people, though, probably don’t care about Klout or clout or being or knowing an influencer.

(I also question the very methodology used for measuring influence online, but that’s a whole other post.)

I’ve observed a similar gap with the pervasiveness of the iPad. Taking a commuter train into NYC, it seems about one in ten people now have iPads. However, when I was in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago, I saw only a handful as is often the case when I’m traveling elsewhere. I don’t question that people are buying them – the sales figures are what they are – but I think opinions of market growth based on observing people in the metro NYC area are somewhat skewed by that rather unique and novelty-obsessed niche.

In my opinion the one recent social media rising star that has most successfully made the leap out of the echo chamber  of the tech/social/net set and become a tool for everyone is Groupon. It’s worth noting here now that Groupon isn’t really about ‘connecting’ the way Klout, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Posterous, et. al. all circle around that word either enabling it or measuring it.

Groupon instead offers something useful that people want – savings. That’s interesting. It might be that the next wave of successful business influenced by social-technology won’t see the technology as the ends itself, but rather the means to offer something lots of people find useful. Like coupons.

Meanwhile the tech sector keeps cranking out new ways for us to connect online. My big question is, how dissatisfied are most people with what they already have? I know early adopters need a constant novelty fix, but I don’t get the sense my low-Klout Facebook friends have too many gripes with what they have. Sure, people will be curious and sign-up – there’s a low barrier to entry for these things – but will they stick around and use it? That’s the big question.

And now of course there’s the hullabaloo around Google+ to look into. Yup, yet another account. Right now, given that Google has said upfront that the invites went out to people with ‘strong social graphs’ I’m not surprised to find it full of my usual industry peers (nice to see you again at yet another URL folks!). The big question is, will those low-Klout friends of mine find it worth either moving camp from Facebook to Google+ or be willing to manage both sites? Either avenue is a lot of work. The big draw of Google+ is the ability to create overlapping friend sets for sharing. That may well be a useful app, but if it turns out to be valuable to average folks, can’t Facebook just replicate it? Technological advantage is very, very short lived these days. If I’ve already set up shop on Facebook, I can’t see pulling up stakes for that feature set alone. What, and wait for all my friends to join? And port over all those pictures and notes? And what about my Farmville (which while technies may despise it, is popular among many people)?

For me, the real test Google+ and others is whether my friends with the lousy Klout scores bother to not just sign up but to regularly participate – like they do on Facebook. Attracting social media fanboys is easy. We’re early adopters who are willing to tolerate having all these accounts and constantly switching from one technology to another.

The people with no Klout (and who, frankly, don’t care about having clout online) are the other 99%+ of the population that Facebook and Groupon continue to grab and largely satisfy as far as I can see. It’s these folks, characterized by low numbers of friends, low numbers of comments, low numbers of posts and low Klout scores, that set the high bar for being the next game-changing player in the space.

Groupon seems to get this. I’m not so sure some of the other ventures popping up do.

Quantifying A Paradigm Shift

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For some months now I have had a friendly sparring session going on with my friend Brad. Last October, Brad posted to his blog a piece on iPad and Bumptop that I took issue with. My issue – to be clear – was less with the eventual outcome than with the timeframe. As followers of this blog know, I take a Now Not New outlook on technology and believe that despite the hyperbole and headline writing, the rate of adoption of technology is not quite as fast as advertised.

Clay Shirky wisely measures cultural revolutions (which I’m equating with the popular term ‘paradigm shift’) not by technologies but by enough people modifying their behavior because of them. I do not believe Apple’s iPad, or any tablet device for that matter, can possibly ‘change the computing experience as we know it’ in two years – which is the line Brad drew in the sand.

In a past post, I made note of the actual rate of MP3 player adoption into mainstream culture, noting that while it seemed that suddenly everyone had one, in truth the technology had taken nearly a decade to achieve the current ubiquity it enjoyed (which, incidentally is still less than half the population). Was this game changing? Absolutely. Did it happen overnight or even within two years? Not at all. Paradigms don’t shift, they drift and that presents opportunities and a mandate for calm, level-headed thinking.

Numbers talk.
Back to iPad. Brad playfully swatted my proverbial hornets nest when he Tweeted at me that at 2MM sales, he was ahead of his own schedule in terms of his prophecy.

I decided to do some digging to build my argument:

Apple has sold 2MM iPads worldwide, mostly in America. For arguments sake, let’s attribute ALL of the sales to America.

According to one source, the population of North America was approx. 340,831,831 in 2009*.

(*Its worth noting the U.S. census numbers for the U.S. are lower but that only 72% of people participated in the census in the first place.)

Working from the same first set of numbers above, 259,561,000 of this 341MM were internet users – or 76.2% of the population. That means 1 in 4 people weren’t even using the Internet yet which as an aside somewhat surprised me.

Attributing ALL iPad sales to North America, the 2,000,000 iPads sold are in the hands of approximately 0.58% of the North American population. That’s just a hair over a half of a percentage point. So yes, iPad sold faster than iPhone, and that’s a neat short term stat, but within the perspective of the internet-using population we’re talking fractions of a percentage point here.

As an interesting aside (thanks to my friend Jim for pointing this out) when the government went to switch from analog to digital TV in 2009 anywhere from two million to six million U.S. homes still had rabbit ears on their set top. Ask a techie and 2MM in terms of an iPad is a paradigm changing mass. 2MM in terms of legacy rabbit ears is a fringe minority. Subjectivity is a funny thing.

Ok, for argument’s sake, let’s peg a ‘paradigm shift’ at perceptual ubiquity in the marketplace. Per this study MP3 players enjoy a 44% market penetration in 2010. They feel pretty ubiquitous right? They’ve changed entire industries after all and it seems everyone owns one so I’m going to use 44% for now (we can revise later).

Let’s assume Apple iPad sales will continue at pace moving forward, even though some people are beginning to back away from this bullish outlook. I’m feeling generous, so if Apple sold 2MM iPad units in two months let’s give them 1MM in sales per month in perpetuity. That’s fairly liberal I think as the early adopters’ enthusiasm is being assumed as ongoing and applicable to everyone.

By this figure, to be in the hands of 44% of the North American population (150MM people), thereby equating with the iPod in terms of game-changing impact for a significant proportion of the population, Apple will have to sell iPads, at 1MM units/month, for the next twelve and a half years.

Unfair to put the burden solely on Apple when Samsung, HP and Dell are all working up tablets? Okay, let’s double the sales figures per month for tablets. Even at 2MM units per month you’re still looking at 6 years to reach 44% of the population.

Driving the point back to my friend Brad’s two-year plan; to put a tablet in the hands of 44% of the population in two years, you’d need to sell 6.2MM units per month beginning on day one. That’s very aggressive in a new category wherein the market need being met is poorly articulated at this point.

To those arguing with my subjective benchmark of 44% pegged to the MP3 player, this brings us to the definition of paradigm change. First, MP3 players are more appropriate than say iPhone/smartphones because the latter has even less market penetration. Second, the free (mis)use of phrases like ‘paradigm shift’ and ‘change the computing experience as we know it’  and the running-around-with-our-heads-cut-off  it creates is precisely what I am taking issue with.

To call something a paradigm shift, which is defined as a fundamental change in approach or an acceptance by a majority of a changed belief, attitude or way of doing things, it must impact the behavior of a larger population than the smart phone (currently about 10% of the marketplace) or iPad do. Not by a little… by a lot. By the definition of the word, even the MP3 player/44% example is not a valid basis.

By contrast, according to this nifty website there have been about 153,073,000 PCs sold in the world this year. That includes laptops, desktops, and notebooks but not handhelds. That’s a paradigm shift in process (that was at its early stage three decades ago). Smartphone and tablets are still at their early stage. Will they take three decades too? Probably not. But they won’t take two years either.

So why am I making such a big deal out of this?

Overcoming NYopia.
My point here is not that the iPad isn’t a successful product by business terms. Apple continues to impact the computer industry and the iPad will effect lasting change on computing. No arguments here. Even more encouraging is the fact that you don’t need to create paradigm-shifting technology to do quite well in business. Hell, the people who reshaped rubberbands, colored them and call them Sillybandz are making a fortune on a very old technology.

The important realization – I’ll say it again – is that paradigms drift, they don’t shift. This gives us time to think and consider. This gives us the ability to make plans, create a strategy and spend wisely. This means we need to take a collective deep breath and think about things a little more.

Yet any time a new technology hits the media hypemachine, businesses (from Wall St. on up) have a collective freakout. Reason goes out the window, everyone begins truncating thought and talking in superlatives. Worse, companies begin allocating a lot of resources and money based on these knee-jerk reactions fed by poorly contextualized information. You can call this jockeying for early-mover advantage but this doesn’t always work. You can shoot from the hip in the name of ‘experimentation’ if you want, but experimentation without a process for learning is wasteful. And yes some companies do these things and still come out on top. But that’s the would-be actors in Hollywood dynamic. For every Tom Cruise there’s 10,000 waiters working for $8.75/hour. Shouldn’t we want to improve our odds a little?

So Brad my sparring partner, I do not contest that tablet computing, like the mouse, modem and microchip, will have a lasting impact on the evolution of computing. I do not, however, believe that will be experienced by the vast majority of people within the next two years. I also believe that it is this vast majority of people that most companies do business with. It might make sense to spend some time looking at how they really live, act and engage with the world.

They say fortune favors the prepared mind. Part of preparation is looking ahead. The other part is keeping your head amid the exaggeration flying around.

Is news 2.0 dangerously dumbed down?

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I have a soft spot in my heart for Newsweek. Growing up, my father had it around the house and I associate it with breakfasts before school where he’d sit with me munching Cheerios and catching up on current events. I recall thumbing through Newsweek myself as a youth, more interested at the time in the photos than the articles. Even today during visits to my parents’ house I will happily kill some time reading articles in Newsweek. My father even got me a gift subscription of my own a year or so ago. However, a year into it, I found little time to devote to Newsweek what with the Economist, WIRED, Nat Geo, Smithsonian, the Wall St. Journal and the New York Times lying around the house. Plus the books, blogs, and work-related literature.

That said, I have for some time now been following Newsweek as it struggles alongside its brethren to find a new place in today’s media environment. Doing so forced me to ponder the role of news publications in a world of real-time Twitter feeds. I followed with great interest Newsweek’s decision to significantly alter its format. I had come to much the same conclusion as Newsweek did; namely that the news itself was parity and couldn’t be provided fast enough by a formal corporate entity to compete with pro-am Twitterers. This was not because of being a printed product. Even a digital version (iPad, Kindle or otherwise) does not free a professional company from the organizational layers that slow down the process of getting news to market.

I believed (and largely still do) that what professional outfits could deliver that amateurs could not (at least as well or as easily) was depth, perspective, and the resources to gain access where amateurs with Tweetdeck and Flip cameras could not go. Newsweek and I weren’t alone in this thinking. The Economist came to a similar conclusion – which didn’t surprise me as I think it reflected the organization of that magazine’s business in the first place. I was hopeful Newsweek’s decision would help turn them around.

Fast forward many months and I am saddened by the news that Newsweek is on the auction block. Despite cuts, reorganization, redesign and a new editorial format, the publication is still losing money. This at a time when apparently some newspapers are seeing a rebound and even – gasp – profitability. Candidly, I am a bit perplexed as to why. Perhaps it has something to do with the cost of operations. However, I can’t right-mindedly hide behind that. The circulation continues to drop (see inset at the start of this post) so obviously interest by consumers is waning. So why is Newsweek failing?

The Internet-era expectation of ‘free’ hurts for sure. Why pay for something when you can get an approximation for free?

Our increasing focus on multitasking, skimming and toplines vs. reading deeper has an adverse impact as well. In fact, WIRED just published a fascinating article on the impact of the Web on our brain discussing these very effects. (I will have more to say on that topic in another post.)

Then there is the ‘good enough’ factor. From MP3 compression to single-feature Flip camcorders, we are again and again turning down rich feature sets for ‘good enough’ convenience. This is not inherently wrong, but it is a compromise with consequences. In a world of 140-character headlines piped to my desktop, perhaps the market for deeper investigation is just smaller than anticipated.

Lastly, the prosumerization effect has dealt  a blow to the cause of getting to the ‘truth’ (and I would argue it is the pursuit of ‘truth’ that is important, not the establishment of some objective absolute truth). I am all for anyone having the right to publish. There are huge collective political, economic and innovation advantages to our world with its incredible and widely available publishing tools. There is also a price tag. Today anyone can call anything news. When millions and millions of people do exactly that, we encounter a two-tiered challenge. Simply to digest the volume of superficial information is all consuming. Worse, it leaves little time (or energy) for sorting out the thoughtful from the thoughtless.

Translated into social circle terms; struggling to keep up with 150+ Facebook friends is hard enough. Having anything deeper than a status-update level of intimacy with any one of them is extremely difficult indeed (and I would argue reliant on a relationship outside of digital media). It is the same news I believe.

Right now, I can go out and find a ‘news’ headline (in a blog, publication, forum, etc.) on any topic, however irrational, that confirms what I want to believe*.

*I do not believe Obama is a Nazi by the way, I chose that topic for its absurdity

If so much of my time is spent simply digesting these headlines, and I choose only those headlines which fit my existing world view, then in effect I am creating a cognitive bubble. Everything becomes both myopic by nature of the media channel I choose and dumbed down because I never get much further than the headlines.

Personally, I find this very troubling.

There needs to be a place in the world where depth is important. Watching publications that pursue depth as a business go on to fail is disheartening. I have thought for a while now that the term ‘news industry’ was a misnomer. The news industry is less and less about ‘new’.

What then should it be about?

I would like to add as an addendum here that I by no means claim Newsweek is a source of absolute truth. I recognize its left-leaning political slant and would even go so far as to say that without an editorial slant there is little likelihood anyone would be interested. My point is that I would much sooner have the option to read, compare and weigh the perspectives of lengthier articles in Time and Newsweek, each trying to go deep on a topic, than to merely take the televised evening news headlines from Fox or MSNBC at face value. It seems the market for depth in news is waning and that is cause for concern.