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It’s time for our new weekly TechCrunch TV show called CrunchWeek, where we discuss a few of the past week’s more interesting stories.
This week, TechCrunch writer Ryan Lawler and I delved into Instagram’s decision to turn off Twitter Card functionality for its photos; Uber’s regulatory success in Washington D.C.; and startup TechForward’s $27 million win in a lawsuit against electronics retailer Best Buy over misappropriated trade secrets.
Editor’s Note: Semil Shah is an EIR at Javelin Venture Partners and has been a contributor to TechCrunch since January 2011. You can follow him on Twitter at @semil.
This post is about Apple’s Passbook. It’s not about mobile wallets, or Google Wallet, or Square, or anything else. I realize the space is vast and dynamic, but I only have an iPhone, and I’m here to write about Passbook. With that disclaimer out of the way, I’d like to share some thoughts about Passbook, a thesis I’ve developed around “cards vs. apps,” the big opportunity this creates for Apple, and how potentially disruptive Passbook could be.
A few weeks ago here on TechCrunch, I wrote a column about the unbundling power of mobile, and how fierce competition at the application layer is fragmenting audiences. To take this a step further, I believe Passbook Cards could actually unbundle some native applications, stripping out the most essential features of apps and placing them in a format that, in many cases, is easier to access, easier to use and navigate, loads faster than apps, is more intelligent about time and location, and is much more lightweight as a consumer experience.
I’ll share a personal example. Sometimes, I’m “dragged” to Target to go shopping. I’m not going to download the Target iPhone app — which, I will admit, is actually fully stacked with information and very responsive. We’ll sometimes scramble to find a coupon in the car, and at checkout, every time, someone asks us if we have our Target number. We usually don’t, and we don’t want to sign up for it again. This would be a case of where I’d just want my iPhone to know I’m at a Target and push a Card notification to me with my payment information, whatever coupon code I may be entitled to. The UPC scanners at stores like Target will also read QR codes, so I just want to fire up Passbook in line and be done with it. In this case, the native app is too much of a commitment for me, I just need the Card.
So, whereas mobile apps unbundle in a disruptive manner by often leading to fragmentation, in many cases Passbook Cards could unbundle native apps but, in doing so, also create new opportunities for companies, brands, and developers striving to build larger audiences on mobile in the face of app discovery challenges and distribution challenges. Earlier this week, Urban Airship acquired Tello for its Passbook management tools, and I’ve heard from many enterprising builders around the world who are creating tools and platforms like PassMaker Pro (which empowers merchants to easily create Cards for tickets, coupons, etc.) and PassForce (which can convert information traditionally stored in apps into cards). Tools exist for developers and merchants to create and distribute their own cards, especially through a reliable channel like email.
Given all these possibilities, it seems to me that Passbook is underrated and under-promoted, at least for an Apple product, and not getting the attention it deserves, especially from the majority of app developers, merchants, and brands. Despite my excitement for Passbook, I was surprised to hear that many experienced technology observers and operators weren’t impressed with Apple’s handling of the launch and subsequent lack of marketing of the platform. In only a few months for me, I’ve used it for many store purchases, boarding passes, and movie tickets, and each time it worked flawlessly. I’m waiting for Passbook to completely replace my wallet to include things like ID cards, driver’s licenses, and it feels like it’s just a matter of time before this happens.
Obviously, the shift to mobile devices is the overarching, mega-tectonic technology platform shift of our times. Consumers expect mobile experiences for any and every function or brand. On iOS, native app performance surpasses the experience mobile browsers or other non-native solutions provide, and usually delivers more delight and utility to users, including new functionalities like iOS push notifications. However, apps are hard to discover, oftentimes difficult to navigate, sometimes too heavy, clunky, and slow, and somtimes unnecessarily complex for the everyday consumer. Many users could be more likely to understand how to use Cards and potentially adopt them more rapidly. Cards also help solve the fragmentation problem between customers and merchants. As Cards unbundle certain apps, it gives Apple a powerful bundling opportunity, as well, the chance to control the payment, rewards, and redemption layers of mobile commerce. And, as these Cards can unbundle apps, Passbook ironically affords Apple an attractive bundling opportunity to lock down mobile payments and better connect merchants with their customers at the point of sale.
Photo Credit: kalleboo / Creative Commons Flickr
The process of getting someone a gift card is kind of ridiculous. You go to a store, you take out your credit card, pay for it and then hand it to a friend. That’s the gist of it, and it’s a slow process.
Today, payment service Square has introduced a new way to send gift cards. With the Square Wallet (or is it lowercase W now?) app you can now go through all of the businesses that use Square to process payments, pick the right one for your friend or family member, and then purchase them a gift card in the amount of your choosing. Right now, this just works for folks in the United States.
Best part is you don’t have to go to that physical store and take out your credit card.
It just works.
Here’s a video about the Gift Cards product, which looks, feels and sounds very much like an Apple commercial:
The process couldn’t be simpler from within the app:
A week of cappuccinos for my dad. http://t.co/RSaYZCoJ
—
Jack Dorsey (@jack) December 09, 2012
Also, when someone buys you a gift card and you have Square Wallet installed, it’ll pop up in your Passbook in iOS 6. Clearly, Square works very closely with Apple, and this has to be the best implementation of Passbook that I’ve heard of to date.
As you know, the company recently raised a $25 million mega-round of funding, led by their new partners at Starbucks. Square is now being integrated into all of the Starbucks stores in the United States. Gift cards from Starbucks are a hot gift, so think about how much money could potentially flow through Square’s payment infrastructure this holiday season.
Crazy, right?
If Square gets what it wants in the world, we’ll never have to carry cash or a physical credit card again. I feel like this is a company that will go public soon or will be acquired by Apple. It’s disrupting too big of a vertical not to go onto huge things. At last check, the company is processing $10 billion in payments annually, not including the Starbucks partnership. Wow.
Let’s not forget, Facebook is also diving into Gifts, so this should be interesting to watch. Is Twitter next? I hear they’re friends with that Dorsey guy who started Square.
We recently witnessed an awesome integration of Square at an ice rink in San Francisco:
Everyone is now familiar with, and with a few significant exceptions, has moved on from, the blood-freezing image of the man on the subway tracks about to be struck and killed. The circumstances of the photo and the actions of the photographer are not the topic of this article, partly because such discussions are incomplete, but mostly because I’m interested in the way the photo has propagated, and how we may expect similarly powerful but controversial images to propagate.
When our media is filtered and refiltered, bleached by content guidelines and automatic takedown algorithms, we run the risk of living a life with the objectionable and graphic and terrifying, in other words the real, strained out. That makes it the more striking when something like the man on the tracks appears — although this time, puzzlingly at yet perhaps appropriately enough, it came printed on dead trees.
I wrote in Surveillant Society that putting an Internet-connected camera in the pocket of every person was one of the most important developments in recent history. And although the man on the tracks isn’t the best example of this (the photo was taken on a DSLR by a photographer on his way to an assignment), it serves well enough; The pervasion of cameras means the documentation of everything, and this is at odds with the prim, “curated” platforms on which that documentation is most often shared.
So while a picture of a meme-themed cupcake has no problem making its way onto the credentialed, aboveboard network of promotion and instant visibility, other things, perhaps more important things, may find it difficult. A soldier posting an image of a wounded comrade, for instance, or images taken live at a suicide bombing site, might have more of a problem.
I’m not just talking about simply a place where graphic images can be put. And this isn’t an argument against the idea of removing content many people would find disturbing. That’s a whole other discussion — and one worth having, but not here.
The simple fact is that we have two huge forces that are about to collide, not head on, but at least glancingly. You have the mass deployment of the tools of instantaneous documentation, and content networks that rely at least partially on centralized curation.
That is to say, images and content that are culturally or otherwise important may be incompatible with the scope or ideology of the services through which they must pass. It’s a conflict of interest that we should keep in mind.
Because it’s the same conflict of interest that prevents people in Iran and China from reading certain Western or secular websites. It’s the conflict of interest that might prevent a video like that showing Rodney King being beaten, or an image of a protestation by self-immolation. Who holds the means of communication is not a simple question, or an idle one.
Fortunately, it’s also not a critical question right now. Information that’s truly important acquires a special kind of virality and propagates however it can. A world-changing image like those we’re all familiar with, or the news of a dictator’s death, or what have you, always makes its way out eventually.
Terrible things make their way out as well. The man on the tracks may be a chilling, almost sublime image, but it’s arguable that it should never have been published at all. And to that end, there will always be a way for such things to be posted, for enjoyment in poor taste by gawkers and fools.
The specter of censorship always looms vaguely over the Internet but rarely touches down. And hopefully, that trend will continue. But the “open” Internet is still a myth, speaking in terms of ideals, and while it doesn’t make sense to tell Facebook it should stop censoring (it’s part of making a safe and successful online community), it does make sense to note that the biggest websites and services in the world are, in fact, actively monitoring content.
That’s not a problem as long as you agree with Facebook, Google, Twitter, the government, your ISP, and so on over what stays up and what gets taken down. But that’s one hell of a shifting foundation on which to build a platform for free speech.
Editor’s note: Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive. Each column will look at crowdfunded products that have either met or missed their funding goals. Follow him on Twitter @rossrubin.
Given Kickstarter’s mission as a place to promote creative projects, gadgets that have roots in the arts seem to have a particular affinity with the service. For example, hardly a week goes by without a device to steady or roll a camera gracing the Design section. Music-making devices don’t appear as often, but a pair of portable instruments/MIDI controller projects recently met with different fates on the service.
Backed: QuNexus. Keith McMillen Instruments has been responsible for many firsts, all of which its namesake CEO can adeptly catch and throw in midair in QuNexus’ Kickstarter video. The company is a returning Kickstarter alum, having raised more than $165,000 for the now-shipping QuNeo, an iPad-sized MIDI controller that features multicolored, multitouch light-up surfaces for feedback. QuNeo brimmed with unmarked controls, such as 16 trigger pads, nine multitouch sliders, two rotary sensors, and a look inspired by the illuminated disco dance floor that John Travolta made famous in Saturday Night Fever.
If the QuNeo had a novel take on the drum pad, its QuNexus follow-on does the same for a portable MIDI keyboard controller. Most of its rectangular pads are laid out in two chromatic octaves that light up white or blue; the pads are sensitive to velocity and tilt. Unlike a conventional musical keyboard, you can press different parts of the squishy pads to bend the sound. (There is also a separate but small pitch bend pad.) The lack of much key travel on a keyboard-style MIDI controller may be more of a disadvantage than it is on a drum-style one, but the device is much thinner than a comparable traditional controller and less susceptible to having keys stressed during travel.
With about a week to go in the campaign and with already more than 50 percent above its modest $20,000 funding goal, the QuNexus is expected to arrive in the tapping hands of musicians next April.
Whacked: Jamboxx. The Jamboxx has nothing to do with the well-regarded Yves Behar-designed portable Bluetooth speaker devices from Jawbone. (The extra “x” is for x-halation). While indeed boxy (boxxy?), the Jamboxx looks a bit like and is played similarly to a large harmonica. It can not only be used as an instrument or MIDI controller but even as a game controller or, asserts the Albany, NY-based creators, a PC mouse alternative.
The Jamboxx was inspired by Dave Whalen, a musician and would-be trumpeter who lost most use of his hands — but not his drive to perform — after a skiing accident. However, as its Kickstarter page and video do not fail to remind, the Jamboxx is designed “for everyone,” including guitarists or keyboardists seeking a hands-free alternative to the harmonica. The Jamboxx’s creators – who are game developers by trade – have created a learning game to master the basics, as well as a pro software suite that allows Jamboxx players to model any instrument in any octave. The video demonstrates it emulating the signature bass lines from Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” and Yes’ “Owner of a Lonely Heart.”
The Jamboxx looks like a lot of fun on which to get hands, er, mouths. Sadly, its recent campaign raised only about $15,000 of its $100,000 goal. Some of that may have been due to its early backer reward price of $299 for a Jamboxx, about 50 percent more than the price of the QuNexus. But while it may be a bit pricey compared to many harmonicas, it’s completely reasonable for a novel MIDI-enabled instrument. As is the case for many other projects, here’s hoping it finds another path to production.
The Kindle Paperwhite is Amazon’s latest ereader. After four generations of devices, Kindle users expected a slight incremental update from the previous Kindle Touch. But everything was improved in the Paperwhite, from the operating system to the display resolution. On top of that, Amazon added frontlighting. After two months of use, it remains the best reading device.
… a major improvement over the Kindle Touch. With all the attention on the Kindle Fire, ereaders could have become an afterthought for Amazon. But with this device, the company knows that it is talking to its most devoted fans and to heavy readers.
The LED frontlighting system was an expected addition, but it wasn’t the only improvement. First, Amazon chose a more traditional capacitative touch screen instead of an infrared-based screen. It is much more responsive than the slow Kindle Touch. Navigating the interface or even just turning a page is much quicker.
The display finally received a resolution bump. For years, it was stuck at the original resolution of the first Kindle released in 2007, 600×800. Text looks better on the new display.
… the avid book readers you know. The Paperwhite still shares the same DNA as previous Kindles. It has a great battery life, doesn’t cause eyestrain and is very portable.
Previous Kindle owners that have been waiting for a major change in the Kindle line can get this one. Since the Kindle 2, all models came with the “pearl” E Ink display, including the current $69 non-touch Kindle. The Paperwhite finally changed that.
Some will regret that Amazon still doesn’t provide a “next page” button on touch-based Kindles. It would certainly be a good addition, as you have to move your thumb for every page turn instead of simply pressing a button. But you forget about that quickly.
… we are now living in an always-connected world. As a writer, following the constant stream of news and keeping up with your social network feeds can be tiresome. Many share the same feeling. Stepping away from that and reading a chapter or two, at your own pace, can easily become an important part of your day.
If you want to keep wireless on all the time as I do, get the Wi-Fi version. It will be much better for battery life and it will sync the last page read without even having to think about it. I get around three weeks of battery life. If you buy the Kindle for yourself, buy it with the ads as you can always remove them later in your Amazon account.
The Kindle Paperwhite is the perfect gift for book lovers. Between smartphones and tablets, there is still room for dedicated reading devices. This year’s Kindle is certainly a good choice in this category.
This weekend the blogosphere is abuzz with news that Twitter is planning to build Instagram-like photo filters into a new version of its mobile app, which will reportedly be released in time to take advantage of all those Winter Holiday photos.
The move makes sense – photo sharing apps have exploded. Notably, Instagram got a big boost as it saw over 10 million photos posted on the day of Thanksgiving, a record high. Twitter clearly wants some of that action, and filters are a way of enriching the whole experience for its users and creating more engagement. But could Twitter be lifting some ideas from startups out there? We’ve heard rumours that one feature of the new Twitter app – allowing a simple swipe of the screen to change filters – looks suspiciously like the feature on EyeEm’s app, the Berlin-based photo discovery startup. We’re not suggesting that Twitter will have seen it there, but it’s clearly going to be interesting if Twitter’s new app has that kind of feature in it.
Here’s a video of EyeEm’s app in action:
How the new Twitter app may work is anyone’s guess, of course, but there have been observations that Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey has been doing a lot of heavy posting of black-and-white filtered photos lately. Twitter hasn’t commented on the rumors yet.
All of this comes in the context of Instagram snubbing Twitter last Wednesday by turning off “Cards,” the functionality which showed Instagram photos properly inside the Twitter stream, leading to cries of “The Photo Wars” kicking off. Facebook is benefitting from Instagram’s direct integration into the news feed, so clearly Twitter wants some of that high engagement that photos, and particularly photo filters, bring as well. Google+ just launched its own photo-editing app, Snapseed, just this week.
Tune in today for the live stream from TechCrunch Moscow, our third annual event in the Russian capital. Today is Demo Day, where we will see 44 companies pitch in one afternoon. Tomorrow will feature a plethora of speakers both from the Russian and from international markets.
Co-organized by Digital October, Kite Ventures and AOL Tech Media, and backed by numerous partners, the third TechCrunch Moscow will tomorrow feature some of the world’s leading technology entrepreneurs, including Brent Hoberman, founder of Lastminute.com and Mydeco.com, Lukasz Gadowski, founder of Team Europe, Dmitry Stavisky, VP of Evernote, Arkady Volozh, co-founder and CEO of Yandex, Christian Saller, Managing Director of Kayak Europe and many other leading names.
TechCrunch Moscow will be held at the first Russian private tech incubator, Digital October, located in the historical manufacturing building Krasny Oktyabr. For history buffs, this building was part of the “Red October” building (??????? ??????? in Russian) named after the Russian Revolution. Pretty appropriate for revolutionary entrepreneurs, right? There’s a dedicated Twitter feed and Facebook page and we use the hashtag #TCMoscow.
In 2010 and 2011, TechCrunch Moscow only featured early startups as participants of the Startup Battle. This year, we are dedicating the full day of December 9 to demos and pitches. Winners of the Demo Day will be invited to take part in the Startup Battle on the main stage of TechCrunch Moscow 2012, on December 10.
To meet the requirements of an exhibition participant, the startup has to be less than 3 years old, having raised no more than $3M investment, able to demonstrate at least a demo version of the product, and working in the field of IT (Internet, Mobile).
In addition to the Startup Alley, on December 10th selected startups will be able to announce important releases of new products or upgrades.
Here is a quick run-down of the startups as they describe themselves:
4Fingers is a mobile social network for your personal ratings of places and events. Use swipe gestures to rate restaurants, cafés, bars, nightclubs, hotels, shops, sights, museums, movies, shows, concerts and other moments of your life. Use ratings made by your friends and expert tastemakers to discover new awesome places and events and avoid disappointing ones.
The fastest, easiest way to directly sell premium ads. AdEasy is a turnkey solution and a toolkit for publishers to power up direct advertisement sales. In three easy steps and in less than five minutes advertisers interactively create beautiful ads, choose display options and pay for their order — you set the price and approve which banners are published.
Mobile application and an online city guide with the most interesting, important and useful sites in the city.
Travel planning service for independent and experienced travelers. The startup will be launched at TechCrunch Moscow.
Alloka allows clients to lower the cost of customer acquisition and increase the effectiveness of advertising by tracing incoming calls to the advertising source.
Antikvarus introduces the main tool for collectors in today’s fast-moving world with dynamic antiques and art markets and the growing interest for investments in eternal values that are out of touch of turbulent economy.
App in the Air is an iPhone app that helps you fly smarter with everything you need to make the most of your flight experience. Know where to find the best food in the airport and how to connect to free wireless internet. Learn the best ways to spend free time and find the
best coffee. Don’t be late with online check-in and keep your friends and family updated by sharing your flight status.
The service is aimed at people`s desire to make profit. Identification and motivation of large scale e-commerce target audiences. An instant access to the social groups with common features for more effective implementation of users` commercial, business and everyday life initiatives.
Leading Russian personal finance management solution with over 75k users. Our mission is to help out clients control their cash flows and plan their financial future. The service has been integrated with major consumer banks (including Alfa Bank, Russian Standard Bank, VTB24, Citibank, Bank24.ru). At TechCrunch Moscow 2012 EasyFinance will introduce its unique smart reports and graphics.
Service that uses your photograph to figure out your clothing, shoe or lingerie size. It is an application for iOs and Android, and can also be built into your favorite online store’s website.
Mobile application that analyzes and evaluates 1st and 2nd level social connections, for the purpose of finding useful business contacts among your extended network.
Innovative social marketplace for tours and activities. Travellers and locals alike can connect with private guides and tour companies all over the world to find, personalize, book and pay for their individual experiences and activities. Excursiopedia is the easiest way for local providers to increase the demand for their offers and showcase them to an audience of millions!
Running a mobile network is hard. We do it for you. We double the
active subscribers base by allowing operators to profitably run the
mobile networks even in the poorest countries in the World.
Hello World is a dynamic medium for communication and sharing. You can get the latest news from locations or people, restaurants and boutique offers, useful contacts and much more.
Hello World gives you access to all the interesting events happening nearby.
InFlow is an iPhone app that helps you to better understand yourself and your ever-changing mood, keeping your friendships healthy and happy along the way. Even though we know what makes us feel good, we tend to spend our time doing absolutely different things.
Convenient Interior furnishings and decoration search engine which helps people made amazing home’s interior arrangement.
Inventarium is a tool for gathering and analysing customer’s feedback through mobile devices.
Labbler is a new music network for both professionals and fans alike.
It is a community where professionals can look for new business opportunities, browse potential partners, find out what’s fresh and new in the industry, get in touch with other key industry players and run their business within one network.
Labbler allows fans to keep track of their favourite artists, clubs, media and
promoters, keep abreast of the news, new music and events.
Online mobile apps wizzard for constructing iOS, Android, HTML 5 applications for personal and business needs. In 5 minutes and 5 simple steps without specific knowledge in programming or design.
Octopod offers a powerful tool that helps developers and startups simplify and speed up mobile app building and integration. This is an enterprise-level solution already proven by European clients and available for any mobile developer in the world for free. Unlike the competition, Octopod makes native mobile apps. With Octopod you can develop your App once and deploy it on all mobile platforms.
Oh My Stats is the marketing analytics service that help online shops to measure and improve the efficiency of their advertising expenditures.
Podarkov combines gift-giving with targeted marketing, social metrics and mobile apps. If you want to give a gift to someone, Podarkov will determine how valuable they are to Podarkov merchants and give recommendations. You might get a $20 gift card and give it your friend, at no cost to you. Merchant gets a good potential customer for a very reasonable expense of only $20. Smart merchants collect data on who’s connecting with whom along the way.
“Do what you say or else you’ll pay!” – that is the motto of our startup, whose goal is to heal the world of broken promises.
RealtimeBoard is a browser-based whiteboard with no limitations to create, collaborate and share. Implement your endless possibilities on endless boards — together with your team.
See how a chat obtains context with rizzoma team communication online service. The first software where you can zoom your discussion from mindmap to a particular piece of knowledge.
Automated direct sales of premium advertising slots, using exchange pricing mechanisms and helping form the optimal demand strategy.
Runfaces is a video platform that allows you to find friends with common interests.
The company develops strategically in two directions:
1) Web site and mobile application (iOS, Android) – matching interests social video platform (video chat, video recording, social networks sharing, new friends search), and
2) Widget integration for partner web sites (video chat, video comments, public video conferences) – simple and easy way to make any web site interactive.
RuTuner is a new media environment that employs the entire potential of telephone calls and connects cell phone users into one social network on the principles of targeted communications and confidentiality.
Mobile tickets app where you can find & buy tickets to the best show & concerts in Moscow.
And soon: cinema, sport events, theaters and museums!
Just couple touches in your iPhone, and mobile ticket is in your pocket.
Crowdfinancing platform that allows you to be both an entrepreneur and an investor. You can finance startups with micro-investments, getting in return lots of benefits ranging from potential revenues to practical experience of being in business. We allow to not only donate money, but exchange financing for a share in equity.
An app for social networks and mobile platforms designed to help find and recruit young professionals.
Start-Up Market is a crowdsourcing platform to fund Russian startups by foreign and Russian investors.
The platform provides an opportunity to make oneself known among relevant VC audience. Dozens of projects have already received funding from $100k to $2.5M with the Start-Up Market. This is a real platform to support Russian startups by international audience.
Providers of the service of creating, organizing and supporting an online business, based on a fully functional free Open Source CMS.
A cloud office, including html5-based online document editors, collaboration tools for project and document management, crm system and email-aggregator.
Teamlab new version will be released at Techcrunch Moscow, on the 10th of December.
Mashup that uses Foursquare and Last.fm to create playlists for venues based on visitors’ music preferences. Discover venue rhythm with tootFM.
The startup will be launched at TechCrunch Moscow.
TradingView.com is a social network for traders, built on an online technical analysis platform.
Start collecting comic strips in Brussels, fall in love with port in Porto, fly in a balloon over the “Valley of Love” in Cappadocia, have a battle of flowers in St Helier, or choose any other experience, which exists in the world and turn them into a real trip with Travolver – that’s the best way to travel.
Social travel-planning discovery platform. Trego.travel combines unique content based on real travel experience, social connections, booking engine, trip planner and becomes a start-point for every independent traveler. In addition trego.travel is a marketplace for local travel-friendly services.
Uploadcare allows developers of web services and mobile applications receive files from users quickly and easily. UC handles uploading, storage and processing files, storing them on Amazon S3 cloud servers and serving via CloudFlare CDN. Uploadcare resembles Dropbox in its simplicity and usability, but it is made for developers.
VIATUN application provides mobile data compression (up to 80%) and non restricted, secure and anonymous web access. Get high speed, secure, and inexpensive mobile internet powered by VIATUN VPN.
YouDo is a mobile platform that allows you to quickly find reliable people to run errands or fulfill urgent tasks.
Zingaya enables voice calls through any computer, right from a webpage. No download or phone is required. Simply embed a “Call” button into your website. All you need is a website; all your visitors need is a browser and microphone. It’s that easy.
Zvonomania.Ru offers you to record or choose an audio postcard and send it to your friend’s phone. Easy to create, this gift will guarantee your friends a wonderful day!
Editor’s Note: Nir Eyal writes about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at NirAndFar.com. He is the author of the forthcoming book “Hooked: How to Drive Engagement by Creating User Habits”. Follow him on Twitter@nireyal.
The first thing Don Draper does when he gets to his office is give his busty secretary a suggestive wink. The second thing he does is take off his fedora. Finally, depending on the severity of the previous night, he completes his morning routine with a stiff drink.
What can we learn from Don’s habits? First, that scotch and submissive secretaries always equal drama. But what of that fedora? There’s a lesson there, too.
As any Mad Men fan knows, it was once popular for men to wear hats everywhere they went — except, that is, when they stepped indoors. When a gentleman went inside, he removed his hat and placed it on the nearest rack. It was a required social norm, a sign you were ready for business.
Though hats have long gone out of fashion, the custom should be a guide for how we adapt to the increasing pervasiveness of personal technology. It’s high time we started doing with our digital devices what well-mannered men did with their fedoras. We need a digital hat rack.
It seems that whenever people meet in person these days, they do so while separating their attention between the people in the room and the devices in their hands. Somehow, it has become socially acceptable to digitally masturbate in each other’s company. You might say, “but I’m taking notes or responding to an important request!” No you’re not, you are digitally dicking around.
Trouble is, we’ve become societally addicted to using our devices at all the wrong times. To illustrate how addiction works and to make the parallel clear, let’s again look at our friend Don. At first, Don drinks “to take the edge off.” Booze is the solution to ease his worried mind and perhaps conscience. As with all addictions, over time, the solution becomes the problem. Under the influence, Don makes increasingly poor decisions in his professional and personal life. To escape the stress or the real world, Don continues to imbibe and the cycle of self-destruction continues. This makes for great television, but in the real world, it’s not pretty.
The addict’s path offers lessons to why we can’t stop our technological indiscretions and why we’ll never be able to kick the habit. The real reason we use our phones, tablets, and laptops in meetings is to escape our reality, much as Don does, because reality is uncomfortable. Meetings can be tense, socially uncomfortable, and very often, exceedingly boring. Meetings are hothouses of discomfort that any rational person would want to escape given the opportunity. Our technology gives us the perfect way to be there, but not.
Unfortunately, by mentally teleporting through our devices, we make things worse. Like alcohol to a drunk, the solution becomes the problem. Sherry Turkle, an expert on the psychological effects of technology, observed in her book, Alone Together, “students whose laptops are open in class do not do as well as others.” It is reasonable to assume that digital distractions produce similar negative results in the boardroom. As numerous studies have demonstrated, we are terrible at multitasking. Our brains are awful at absorbing information when we’re not paying close attention.
Under the guise of getting things done, we play ping-pong with our messages, sometimes to people in the same room. Of course, this only generates more emails, not better ideas. Furthermore, watching others use their devices escalates an arms race of perceived productivity. People look busy, even if they are just checking Facebook. The impression that someone else is being productive while you’re not, increases our stress levels as we consider our own flooded inboxes.
Most corrosive however, is the fact that less attention means worse outcomes. When people use their devices during meetings, even just for a quick sec, they eventually rejoin the conversation, aware that they may have missed something while they were mentally away. They fear revealing that they were not paying attention and tend to shut down. Thus, otherwise valid concerns and bright ideas are never discussed. Their lack of participation only serves to make the meeting less productive, less interesting, and more boring. Conveniently, to escape the discomfort of being not only bored, but also increasingly paranoid, more device usage ensues and the cycle continues.
The first step is to admit we have a problem. The machines are winning. We don’t have the will to resist Pinterest when we should be participating or Instagram when we should be interested.
The allure of connectivity is just too seductive, no matter how damaging to our relationships and businesses. As it became more persuasive, technology became increasingly pervasive; entering the places in our lives where we are least likely to assert self-control.
Studies suggest that our brains’ abilities to resist temptation markedly decrease during times of stress and fatigue, both of which are common in the workplace. Unfortunately, the trend toward an increasingly addictive future is inevitable, and unless we develop a new set of norms, things will get worse.
What we need are what I call “digital prophylactics.” Most people think of condoms when they hear the term, but a prophylactic can be any “course of action to prevent disease.” Likewise, new norms are needed to protect us from socially unhealthy behaviors. These are otherwise known as “manners” but that sounds much too uptight. So instead of grumbling, “Where are your manners? Put that iPhone away!” perhaps we’d do better by proclaiming, “Hey, we need some digital prophylactics in here!” That would surely get everyone’s attention.
It’s time for a change. Here’s a proposal for establishing new customs similar to the hat rack of yesteryear:
Every conference room should have a charging station just out of everyone’s reach, perhaps in the center table or near the door. When people congregate, they plug-in their devices on their way in just as easily as they would have hung up their hats.
Of course, leaving one’s phone at your desk is fine, but just in case someone reflexively picked it up, the charging station gives them a convenient and functional place to leave their devices. Now, instead of sparking the desires of others to use their device as part of the productivity arms race discussed earlier, anyone attempting to use their phone in the meeting will receive cold stares of contempt from their disconnected colleagues.
As for laptops, iPads, or any other digital doodads, they’re off limits, too. Just as the brim of Don’s fedora covered his face, screens create physical obstructions and barriers between people. They should be left outside.
But to save anyone from being the device cop, consider printing this sign and placing it wherever you designate a device-free zone.
Surely there are specific exceptions based on the business, but for the most part, the only things attendees really need in a meeting is paper, pen, and perhaps Post-its.
I will admit that the one thing lost in a no-device meeting is the ability to record and quickly distribute notes and action items. However, I’m often surprised by how few of my clients actually record meeting minutes despite everyone in the room being on a keyboard. Perhaps people assume sending notes is unnecessary with everyone busily typing. But of course, it’s a facade, and all the more reason that recording and distributing notes is a good company habit.
At the start of each meeting, designate a note taker who utilizes the one permitted machine in the room. Project the notes on a screen to ensure everyone’s contributions are properly recorded. It’s then the note taker’s role to distribute the meeting minutes afterwards.
Perhaps you’re getting squeamish about saying bye-bye to our digital pacifiers. That’s okay. Start slowly. Perhaps ask a few colleagues if they’re willing to give the idea a try? Start with one work week, just five days, and see how it goes. At least use this article to start a conversation. Forward it. Here, I’ve even pre-written a tweet at this link (assuming that is, you are not in a meeting right now).
I should mention that I’m no advocate for superfluous meetings. In fact, I find organizations generally have far too many of them. However, if a topic is important enough to require participants be physically present, let’s ensure everyone is really there, in both body and mind.
Clearly, technology is evolving much faster than our ability to adopt new cultural norms. Devices have infiltrated every facet of our lives and have not given us time to adapt. It’s time to become aware of the cost of our new digital habits and gain control over them, or we will soon discover they have control over us.
Photo credit: BrettRed for NirAndFar.com
Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of articles by Brad Woodcox that explores the topic of intellectual property for entrepreneurs. The first examined the basics of the system. The second explored ways to determine whether patents are a good strategic move for your business. Woodcox is a technical specialist focusing on startup development for Novak Druce + Quigg, an intellectual property super boutique law firm. Follow him on Google+ and Twitter.
If you’ve made the decision that patents are a good strategic element for your business, the next step in the process is to determine how you should structure the patent applications to best leverage the patents in your business. Selecting a non-optimal method could cost you significantly in lost opportunity. In this article, I will discuss a patent application strategy that may be beneficial for many startups and small businesses.
As discussed in part 1 of this series, the time from filing a non-provisional utility application to final disposition of the application is typically 3-4 years using the standard examination process with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). With this process, the standard USPTO application fees apply, which may include, but are not limited to, the filing fee, search fee, examination fee, and processing fee. Three to four years is a long time in “startup years.” There are a multitude of startup strategies, but generally obtaining patent protection sooner rather than later is preferential. To illustrate this, I detail two typical invention/startup strategies at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Licensing/Sale. This scenario often arises when an inventor chooses not to pursue a startup company full-time but still wants to profit from the idea. The inventor conceptualizes the idea and may develop a prototype. In order to protect the idea, the inventor desires to obtain one or more patents covering the elements of the invention. The inventor will then license or sell these patents to another company, which is in a position to commercialize the invention. (This strategy is typically viewed as a lower risk and lower reward than the second scenario, as some of the risk and reward is shared with the licensee or acquirer of the patents.)
In general, a granted patent will entice more demand and a higher price tag than a patent application, as the granted patent has clear rights while the application just has the possibility for future rights (and additional costs of continuing prosecution of the application). Hence, in this scenario, an inventor is incentivized to obtain a patent quickly in order to capitalize on the potential financial benefits of the granted patent.
Commercialize. A second scenario arises when an inventor wants to directly commercialize the invention. This may include building, manufacturing, and/or selling the elements associated with the invention. In this case, an inventor would desire to utilize patents to attempt to block competitors and gain a competitive advantage. However, an inventor could only enforce these rights after the patent is granted. Further, if the company needs to raise capital, some investors will utilize the presence of patents in their determination to invest or not invest and the presence may even affect the valuation determined during the investment round. Hence, in this scenario, an inventor is again incentivized to obtain a patent quickly in order to capitalize on the potential financial benefits of the granted patent.
In both of the preceding scenarios, the inventor/entrepreneur benefits by having a patent issued quickly. To address the application speed issue, the USPTO has developed two processes that permit significantly faster examination but utilize distinct rules and additional fees.
At a high level, the Track One and Accelerated examination processes appear quite similar. They both require prompt response to all communication by the applicant (or attorneys) and a specific strategy. If certain criteria (prompt responses or claim amendments) aren’t followed during the process, the application will be removed from the expedited track and placed into the standard track.
Differences between the two expedited tracks emerge when looking deeper into the details. Track One is similar to the Standard track (again, covered in part 1 of the series), except the reviews and timelines are much quicker for Track One at an added cost of several thousand dollars. The Accelerated process differs from the Track One and Standard processes in that a pre-examination search is performed prior to submitting the application. The search is performed by the patent attorney or staff and comes at an extra up-front cost (up to $5,000), but it can result in significantly lower processing fees during prosecution.
With the pre-examination search, the claims of the patent application can be specifically tailored to an invention such that the patent has a higher likelihood of being granted by the USPTO. Hence, fewer office actions (back-and-forth responses between the attorneys/inventors and the USPTO) are expected, which reduces the overall prosecution costs. The result is that an accelerated application may be about the same cost as a standard application, with the benefit that the granted patent may be achieved much quicker (less than 1 year compared to 3-4 years), but the downside is the application costs and fees are due within that first year rather than distributed among the entire prosecution time (3-4 years).
The Accelerated process can deliver a granted patent within one year at an overall cost that may be similar to that of the standard application and several thousand dollars cheaper than the Track One process. Given the various start-up strategies that can benefit from obtaining a patent as quickly as possible (see two examples provided previously), it would be wise to consider filing an accelerated application for the first application on each unique invention/patent family.
It should be noted that an accelerated application often has more narrowly written claims than would be included in a standard application. This is to increase the speed with which the patent may be granted. Hence, it may be wise to file a continuation application (at standard priority) with a more broadly written claim scope. The continuation will also allow the patent family to stay active, so further applications can be written toward the initial disclosure. This is highly desirable by a potential acquirer of the patent portfolio as they may have substantially more financial resources and can file additional applications that are tailored to their specific embodiments. Thus, the flexibility of keeping the patent family active can raise the value of the entire patent portfolio.
Editor’s note: Tadhg Kelly is a game designer with 20 years experience. He is the creator of leading game design blog What Games Are, and consults for many companies on game design and development. You can follow him on Twitter here.
My gamification post two weeks ago (which described everything you really need to know) struck some nerves, especially as it came out just before a Gartner report claiming that 80 percent of gamified projects would fail. I received emails from several folks who had unsuccessfully tried to gamify their service and found the process frustrating, or felt that they had been sold some snake oil. Most commonly this was because they got caught up in the seductive fantasy of the engaged user who interacts on multiple levels rather than focusing on specific outcomes. So they had levels and badges and achievements and whatever, and no earthly idea how those things were supposed to improve their service.
That post also led to a short Twitter debate with Gabe Zichermann (the love-him/hate-him figure who evangelises for gamification) on whether it was fair to criticise gamification on the grounds of game design (in my opinion: yes), and what that meant. In particular I talked about the perpetual vagueness surrounding the gamification scene, such as the slippery nature of “game mechanics.” As far as I can tell, the mysteries of mechanics are the reason why gamification seems like voodoo. And it shouldn’t be.
Gamification mechanics should be simple to understand. All they are are the actions that players take (“agency”) and the rules that limit those actions to create pressure (“urgency”). Between those two poles lie an interplay that is described as a “loop” (“I hit ball, see if ball stays inside the court and if opponent returns ball, I hit ball again”), and a whole bunch of loops produces a “dynamic” (we trade the ball many times until one of us makes a mistake and loses a point).
In principle this is straightforward. But a slightly icky secret among game designers is that the term “mechanic” is often made intentionally vague. We tend to use it as a catch-all for operations and effects, but also emergence, behaviours, feel and other areas. Anything that seems related to how a game does what it does gets labelled a “mechanic” by the unwary or the undisciplined, often to vamp while thinking of a solution to a specific problem.
So “mechanics” takes on lots of equivocal meta-meanings, and gamification theory has gone especially wild in this regard. While the essential idea of gamification is “just add game mechanics,” when you don’t know what you mean by “mechanic” then it all becomes hazy very quickly. This mess needs to be untangled.
The following are often listed as gamification mechanics: Achievements, Behavioural Momentum, Blissful Productivity, Community Collaboration, Discovery, Epic Meaning, Urgent Optimism, Surprise Delight, Being the Hero, Pattern Recognition and Badges. There are several similar lists, gathering everything from the emotional highs of winning to the compulsive need to check in at certain times of the day. To the outsider it appears that gamification is essentially a process of picking from these lists (such as with a mechanics deck) and baking a pizza of engagement. I’d like a double helping of Discovery, a few slices of Being the Hero, and hold the Behavioural Momentum.
None of the above are game mechanics. Not a single one. They are either rewards (achievements, badges), emergent effects (community collaboration) or observations of psychological states. None of them is an action or rule that specifically contributes to agency or urgency, and they would be better described as “neat things you sometimes see in games.” However because we tend to propagate the idea that they are mechanics, a lot of folks out there think that points, badges, level, hope and dreams are all equivalent. This way trouble lies.
A real game mechanic is short and specific, and describes either a thing you can do or a limit. Rolling the dice to take your move in Monopoly is a game mechanic. So is the rule that says that if you pass Go, you get $200. So is the instruction on the Chance card that sends you to jail. Every mechanic should be as easily explained as any of the above, and if it’s not then likely it is not a mechanic at all.
While gamification rarely wants to be as complex as Monopoly, the same easy explanation rule applies. If you’re thinking about gamifying, and you’re following my previous instructions (keep it simple, stop getting it lost in the meta, focus on making one number go up) then it should be pretty clear that you need mechanics that are as easily described as “roll the dice to take your move.” Fortunately there are many real-world examples of gamification that work to show you how.
1. Voting: The X-Factor gamifies the process of finding musical talent by turning it into a competition. Every week contestants sing for votes, and the bottom two have to sing for survival. They are then then subjected to a further round of voting by judges, and the loser is eliminated. At the end of the competition, the winner gets a recording contract.
The X-Factor is all based on one mechanic: voting. Viewers pick up the phone and vote for their favourite acts, and this helps keep their act in the race. The mechanic also satisfies the condition of making one number go up (as all successful gamification does). That number is revenue. X-Factor’s owners make millions of dollars from constructing an elaborate experience to encourage those at home to make a premium phone call. It’s that simple.
Likes, retweets, +1s, Diggs (remember them?) and so on are all versions of the same mechanic. They are used when a user posts some content to a site, and a reader takes an action to contribute to the sharing and curation of that content. Unlike X-Factor, however, these kinds of votes are not about raising revenue. They are about raising the number of quality content submissions, as quality content is why most users return to any given service.
2. Follow: A variation on voting (a second stage if you like) is following. If, for example, you like this post then maybe you will follow me on Twitter. So my follower number goes up, which I like because it makes me think that my reach is expanding. Although moderated by others, follower, friend or subscriber numbers gamify popularity. They reflect a sense of clout and influence for the followee, and to some people that sense is very important.
The benefit (the number which is meant to go up) for the provider of the mechanic is the increase in connection nodes. According to Metcalfe’s Law the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes in that network. However in a social network not all nodes are connected. So gamified activity connects them, increasing the value of the network both to the provider and the user.
3. Collect: A few years ago I wrote a post about the need for gamification to keep it real, and I used the example of Air Miles. Air Miles gamify travel by encouraging users to collect a resource (miles) that they can then exchange for goods and services. It is the prospect of this exchange that makes miles worth collecting (such as upgraded flights) and sometimes customers even buy extra flights to build up points. Ticket sales are the number that the airlines want to see increase.
While the rewards that the airlines end up paying can be high, schemes like Air Miles are generally judged worth it for the loyalty benefits. Of course the same model applies to thousands of other loyalty schemes in one form or another.
4. Unlock: The bad thing about alternate reality games (or ARGs) was how they basically dragged users along through elaborate stories. However what worked well was their treasure-hunting dynamic. They were about finding clues and solving puzzles, and this activity was moderated by a rule: A solved puzzle unlocked the next puzzle.
Unlocks are not rewards like high scores or achievements. They are rule mechanics that change the state of a game to set new challenges. In social games, levels are often used to unlock new items that the player can purchase, for example. When Google used math puzzles as part of their recruitment ads in 2004, they were using an unlock mechanic to find qualified applicants for their position. The prize at the end was a possible job at Google. The number that goes up is the number of qualified users.
5. Lottery Draw: Everyone has their secret plan for what they would do if they won $50 million in the state or national lottery. But of course you can’t win without a ticket. So you buy one, and then around comes the draw where six numbers are chosen and your dreams turn to dust once more. The way in which the draw operates is the mechanic that powers the lottery. It works in two ways.
First, splitting a draw into multiple moments heightens urgency, making that last ball seem crucial. (A variant of this is the way boxes are opened in Deal or No Deal). Second, high prizes upend our sense of probability. Even though the chances of you winning the lottery are likely lower than of being killed by lightning, you figure you’ll have a go anyway. These two factors make the number of ticket sales skyrocket, and that is the number that is supposed to go up.
6. Grades: For a while last year the DailyBurn app made me feel bad. It’s one of many apps that lets you enter your weight and height and set goals for weight loss. It computes a calorie count that you should aim for each day, which you validate by entering what food you’re eating into its system. It then shows you little bar-graphs of your progress, and if you blow your limit (say on carbs) it turns red. I saw a lot of red.
Nobody likes red just as nobody likes receiving a D on an exam. We instinctively want good grades, and in certain circumstances, that can be a very effective mechanic. The danger is that grades often distort user activity toward getting a better grade rather than getting the benefit that the grade is supposed to represent. So grades work best when they are associated with making a number go up (in DailyBurn’s case that’s retention – users enter their nutrition every day) rather that achieving a holistic effect.
7. Clearing: When iOS6 finally launched I was disappointed by the Do Not Disturb feature. I’d wanted it to shut off all intruding notifications, not just phone and Facetime calls, so that I could use my iPad to write in peace without being disturbed. The reason I bring it up is that it lets me talk about one of the most effective gamified mechanics out there: Clearing.
Like many of you, I find fire-engine-red numbers compelling. I have seen what that new mail is, that new notification from Tweetbot, and I must clear it. Clearing, ordering, and upkeep are compulsive behaviours for many of us, especially in areas that are relative to our personal lives, and the action of clearing makes us feel like we’re keeping good order. Of course the number that this make mechanic is designed to make go up is retention. More clearing means more visits to the app/service/site, which is an opportunity to engage further.
When you think about it, gamification is not new. It’s just a way of looking at a lot of simple operations, analysing why they work, and then figuring out ways to implement them in other settings. In the modern era lots of things can be gamified (and lots can’t) but it only proves useful if we know the outcome for which we are designing, as well as the simple mechanic that’s supposed to make that outcome happen.
If you can explain your mechanics as simple actions or rules with defined outcomes, then perhaps you will see delight or blissful productivity as a consequence. If you can’t, all the levels and badges in the world won’t save you.
You may have heard the disappointing news that Instagram (now a Facebook property) recently decided to tweak its support for Twitter cards such that users will no longer see their artistically-filtered iPhone photos in all their majestic glory.
Instagram’s stinginess means that Twitter cards will be cropped, stripping them of their visual appeal. CEO Kevin Systrom says it was a move made to drive traffic to Instagram.com, so adding some friction seemed a good way to do that. Or it could have been Facebook’s influence.
Regardless of the reason, what should aggrieved Twitter and Instagram users do? Go out and actually buy an old Polaroid camera or develop their own film?? HA! No no no, that’s a ridiculous idea that might have helped save two iconic American companies.
Luckily, IFTTT user djbentley came up with an awesome workaround to turn the tables on this Twitter card cropping fiasco. All you have to do is, well, sign up for IFTTT first, connect your Instagram and Twitter accounts, then create the recipe. It may sound complicated for first-timers, but it’s not.
When posting your Instagram photo, include a tag of your choice, and it will post to Twitter as a native image with a card. Bada bing, bada boom.
good workaround RT @davidlee: Try this @IFTTT Recipe: A recipe to bypass @Instagram turning off @Twitter cards. ifttt.com/recipes/68915
—
chris dixon (@cdixon) December 08, 2012
For those unfamiliar with IFTTT, beyond being the sound you’d make if someone were to punch you in the throat, it stands for “if this, then that” and allows you to connect your various accounts/channels, like Evernote, Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox, etc. and create recipes to make them work together.
Huh? Basically, IFTTT is a command interface that enables you to set triggers for specific actions like, “if I post a photo, automatically save it to Dropbox,” or in this case, “if I post a photo on Instagram tagged with “#twitterpic,” then post it to Twitter (with a card). This conditional statement/equation is called a recipe, and IFTTT has a ton of awesome ones for a whole mess of things.
As you can see in the image to the right, I used djbentley’s IFTTT recipe to auto-post a ‘gram to Twitter, and the Twitter card showed up in full, without the crop.
Hallelujah!
I managed to mess up the tweet syntactically and spell “IFTTT” wrong, but, hey, it was a first effort. I’ll get there eventually, and so can you, reader. So can you.
It’s too bad that there has to be a workaround at all, but rather than wax on those implications, I’ll let Drew and Captain #Poohead explain what it all means and why it’s bad for We The User.
Luckily Twitter hasn’t yet turned off support for IFTTT. It allows inbound but not outbound. If inbound support goes out the window, we’ll know that Twitter-gram are really out to give users a thorough screwing.
Or, according to Mike Isaac, Twitter is just instead going to add its own photo filters. Who needs Instagram, says a sad, persecuted Twitter, as it scrambles to add what will probably be a crappy, cobbled-together offering. It’ll be like Apple Maps to Google Maps.
Editor’s note: Rajat Paharia is the founder of Bunchball, a provider of online gamification solutions. Follow him on Twitter @rajatrocks.
Gartner recently issued a press release that made the following provocative assertion: “Gamification is currently being driven by novelty and hype. Gartner predicts that by 2014, 80 percent of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives primarily because of poor design.”
While the rest of the release discusses the various ways that gamification can effectively be used to drive behavior change, skill development, and innovation, the only thing that sticks in most readers’ minds is, “80 percent of gamification will fail.” This couldn’t be further from the truth.
First off, there is still a misconception about what gamification is, and the prefix “game” probably doesn’t help. Gamification is the process of taking something that already exists – that has some core, intrinsic value – and integrating game mechanics into it to motivate participation, engagement, and loyalty.
Let me share with you some other phrases that we use when we describe it to people: “measure and motivate,” “recognition and reward,” “loyalty,” “reputation,” “guiding and amplifying high-value behavior.” I don’t think that anyone would disagree that these are good things, and smart businesses have been doing many of them very effectively for years. The core theme that runs through these, and the mission that gets my colleagues and I out of bed every morning, is motivating people through data. And in this case, we’re specifically talking about user-activity data.
One way that you can use user-activity data to motivate people is by enabling them to visualize and derive some insight from it, which will hopefully motivate behavior change (aka “Quantified Self”). Companies like RescueTime and Mint do this to get people to waste less time on their computers and manage their personal finances better.
Another way that you can use this data to motivate people is to supplement the visualization with goals to work toward, real-time feedback as they progress, rewards for their achievements and a community of people to compete and collaborate with. This is gamification, and companies like Khan Academy, USA Network, and Nike are using it very effectively to motivate consumers, students and employees. There are also several technology vendors in the space, including Bunchball (my company), Gigya, Badgeville and BigDoor among others.
Like anything else, gamification can be done well and it can be done poorly. In any new field that captures the collective imagination like gamification has, you will see companies, driven by the “novelty and hype”, copying what they see others doing, doing it poorly, and failing. And they do this without any real understanding of why they’re doing it, just with a blind faith that if it worked for someone else, it will work for them. Both big and small companies are susceptible to this – look no further than Google News Badges (now, thankfully deceased) for a great example of this kind of thinking.
I agree with Gartner’s implicit assertion that poor design will lead to failed gamification programs. I’ll even go out on a limb and say that poor design also leads to failed enterprise software applications, silverware, and airplanes. How do you prevent this failure? You don’t ask people like me to design your silverware or your airplanes, you ask people with experience. Having people with gamification experience on your side, who have seen what works and doesn’t work, have made all the mistakes and who understand how to craft compelling motivation programs, can substantially reduce the risk of failure.
But what kind of experience should you be looking for? Here’s where Gartner and several of the companies in the gamification space have it completely wrong, and it’s part of the problem of listening to people with no real-world experience. They believe that it’s a “game design” problem, so they recommend hiring game designers and they tout the fact that they have people from Electronic Arts, Zynga and Playdom on their payroll.
Do you know what game designers do? They make games. They start with a blank sheet of paper and they create something out of nothing, an experience whose sole purpose is to entertain. Gamification is not a game design problem. If anyone tries to sell you a game designer to design your gamification program, you should run screaming. And any game designer worth his salt would run screaming from you – gamification is the last thing in the world they want to do.
Gamification is an “interaction design” problem. According to Wikipedia interaction design is: “The practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services. Like many other design fields interaction design also has an interest in form but its main focus is on behavior… Interaction design is heavily focused on satisfying the needs and desires of the people who will use the product.”
I predict that in a couple of years, “motivating people through data” is going to be called “good design,” and it’s going to be a critical part of any interaction designer’s toolkit. Why do I think this? Because all the macro trends are pointing that way. Here are three of the big ones:
So I’d encourage you to look beyond the headlines, because this particular analysis does everyone a disservice, while the results companies are achieving with gamification speak for themselves. Using gamification, companies like Eloqua are seeing a 55 percent lift in active users in their user communities, companies like Zamzee are motivating kids to exercise 59 percent more, and companies like Bluewolf are experiencing a 68 percent increase in traffic to their website. Well-designed gamification programs work, or these companies and others including NBCUniversal, Intuit, MTV, Salesforce, Adobe, and others, wouldn’t be funding gamification initiatives. At the end of the day, the market will be the best judge.
USA Network, Zamzee, Bluewolf, NBCUniversal, Intuit, MTV, Salesforce, Adobe and Eloqua are all Bunchball customers, either directly or through a partner.
In this series titled “Defining a growth hacker,” I explore the meaning and practical application of growth hacking through a number of interviews with prominent growth hackers. This is the fifth and final post in the series. The previous posts are as follows: common characteristics among growth hackers here, growth hacking’s impact on marketing here and product here, and how to build a growth into a team here.
With any buzz, popular sentiment can become detached from reality. Thought leaders in a burgeoning space can be blown up with grand expectations that can embellish the truth that lies underneath the surface.
Today, growth has become a regular topic of conversation in Silicon Valley. More and more startups are looking to hire growth hackers or to develop their own growth strategies. However, there are a handful of myths about the purpose and function of growth hacking itself that have gained traction. In this article, I will explore six of the more common myths ones that serve to misconstrue growth hacking methods and goals and set false expectations.
Reality: The “secret” is the mindset, not the toolset.
Growth hackers are often viewed as the key part of a secret recipe to create a rocketship startup. Growth is frequently viewed as something like a book of “secrets” on how to find and leverage channels. These “secrets” are locked away in the mind of a growth hacker, but this myth masks growth as magical dust over hard work and prioritization.
“Often, my suggestions are like basic product marketing because it’s never about a particular trick,” said Jesse Farmer of DevBootcamp.
The magic of a growth hacker is not a mysterious power but rather a mindset that focuses on what most startups deprioritize: distribution. When a growth hacker lends advice, it will most likely jog your memory of features left on the product backburner. With an endless list of possible product roadmaps, growth features tend to be forgotten and under-optimized until it matters most.
Dave McClure, founder of 500 startups, said that most startup founders focus heavily on product but most of a startup’s risk lies in distribution.
Reality: Growth hacking is not done overnight and cannot solve systemic product issues.
Growth does not happen overnight. It is iterative. Viral-type growth is not a one-size-fits-all strategy. It cannot be applied from company to company as an add-on. “Not everything can be made viral,” said Michael Birch, co-founder of Bebo. “A great deal of perseverance is required. There are a huge number of failed experiments before success. There is a fine line between failure and success.”
There are different types of growth — small wins and big wins. Growth hackers look beyond the obvious optimizations into deep product assumptions and usage for a feature that will be a game changer. This means that growth cannot be something that is tacked on easily, especially when understanding the importance of user retention to growth.
“If you are trying to hire a growth hacker, don’t hire one that only does A/B testing and focuses on the local maxima,” said Nabeel Hyatt, venture partner at Spark Capital. “Find a growth hacker that can ask the deeper questions and find the long-run sustainable growth path for your product.”
Answering these deeper product questions steepens the learning curve through a relentless focus on moving metrics and fast iterations. Tactically, a good growth strategy is found through testing, not reading a book.
“It is like investing in the stock market. If there were some formula for success, those that knew the formula wouldn’t talk about it,” said Ivan Kirigin, who worked on growth at Dropbox. “I think all these strategies are about creating a process to learn as much as you can as fast as possible which makes winning far more likely.”
Reality: Growth hacking is not an entirely new thing.
Hi5, Slide, Bebo, Facebook, and LinkedIn were some of the first teams to have a strong emphasis on user growth and engagement, long before the phrase “growth hacking” was coined.
“Definitely not a new thing; it’s just a new title,” said Birch. “We have a name for it now, but it has been happening for a while,” added Hiten Shah, co-founder of KISSmetrics.
While the pursuit of viral growth has been a focus since the dawn of the web, Birch said that the best product teams have always focused on growth, especially since the Facebook platform was announced in 2008.
Reality: Growth hacking has marketing goals but different tactics.
Growth comes from a well-executed and data-driven product strategy, not a marketing strategy. Greg Tseng, co-founder of Tagged, said that growth hackers should be involved in anything that touches product — from design to engineering.
Both marketers and growth hackers have common goals; they work closely together on a daily basis to push metrics in different ways. However, growth hackers are looking for growth through product utilization and product iterations instead of a marketers’ outbound- and inbound-based strategies.
“Some people think growth hacking is the same as marketing optimization; they are quite different,” said Spark Capital’s Hyatt. “If I’m given 1,000 visitors and I’m trying to convert as many as possible to customers, that’s lead gen optimization. If I’m tuning the product to convert 1,000 visitors into 10,000 customers, that’s growth. Growth hacking is a new name for the latter camp; the first camp is inbound marketing. Growth usually does not come from bounces off a landing page but in product engagement and virality.”
Reality: Some growth hackers are coders but many are not.
The use of the word “hacker” suggests that coding ability is a requirement to be a growth hacker. But Sean Ellis, founder and CEO of Qualaroo, coined the phrase “growth hacker” with a different intention in mind. “I used the word ‘hacker’ to be an attitude of scrappiness rather than being a coder. In other words, a growth hacker ‘hacks’ a way to move metrics,” said Ellis.
A growth strategy will succeed if it finds an unseen advantage in distribution. Finding this advantage comes from rapid testing. “The ‘hacker’ part of growth hacking is communicating you need to be a constant hustler and get things done quickly, not being a coder,” said Blake Commagere, founder of MediaSpike.
It is not a coincidence that there are several growth hackers that have engineering backgrounds, such as Jesse Farmer, Matt Humphrey, Dan Martell, Jim Young, and Mike Greenfield. This correlation is due to the need to apply engineering-like precision to marketing for growth.
“The use of the word ‘hacking’ relates to the question ‘how can we solve the problem differently,’” said Danielle Morrill, co-founder and CEO of Referly. “Hacking is creative disruption. Growth hackers do tend to be engineers as it gives them the ability to apply rigor to marketing, but it is not necessary.”
Reality: Growth is not about one person.
Growth comes in different flavors depending on the stage of the company, such as a co-founder to a growth team at a late-stage company. “A growth hacker is not a lone ranger but should be apart of a greater team,” said KISSmetrics’ Shah. “Companies should look to build a growth team rather than just an individual; however, different company stages require different types of growth teams.”
Growth is holistic and cross-functional, because long-term growth hardly ever resides in one part of a company. Growth is complex and often involves several tests before a winner is found. Without aligning the company around a set of metrics to push, a growth strategy will be hampered by conflicting team priorities and goals.
Adopting a culture of growth will challenge the way a product is traditionally made and prioritized. It is not an easy task because growth typically changes a company’s culture and what it considers important.
If this series has inspired you to hire a growth hacker or learn to be one, the one key takeaway is to do something, learn from it, and leave your ego at the door. Growth hackers may come in different flavors, but they all learned the same way. They went out, tried something, found product-market fit, and optimized the hell out of it.
Aaron Ginn is currently Head of Growth at StumbleUpon and former growth hacker for Mitt Romney. You can read more on growth on his blog.
Air travel would be a profoundly dangerous practice if any kid who turned on a Game Boy during takeoff could bring a multimillion dollar jetliner to its fiery doom. The Federal Aviation Administration, which mandates that nice airline stewards must pester you to turn off your electronics, has reluctantly agreed to review the electronics policy in light of increased press attention.
Now, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has decided to increase the public pressure in a diplomatically worded letter to the FAA that calls to “enable greater use of tablets, e-readers, and other portable devices.”
“This review comes at a time of tremendous innovation, as mobile devices are increasingly interwoven in our daily lives,” Genachowski continues. “They empower people to stay informed and connected with friends and family, and they enable both large and small businesses to be more productive and efficient, helping drive economic growth and boost U.S. competitiveness.”
Some readers may be happy to know that the FAA will not consider whether to permit voice calls. To be sure, social etiquette has not kept up with the pace of technology, and sitting next to a loud talker might be enough to cause simmering insanity, if not an outright brawl.
Still, if iPads and Kindles are found to be a real threat to public safety, I’m never flying again. Otherwise, let us boot up and jack in when we sit down and buckle up.