About Matthew Buckland

Recent Posts by Matthew Buckland

Twitter is ‘Not a Social Network’

Twitter is not a social network says Twitter Vice President for Business and Corporate development Kevin Thau, it’s all about news.

“Twitter is news. It is information. Twitter is actually transforming the nature of news. It’s transforming the way you are consuming information and think about news. When it comes to breaking news I don’t think there has ever been a platform as interesting as Twitter,” he said.

Speaking at Nokia World 2010 in London, Thau also spoke about how it has become the norm that when there is a “disaster or revolution it gets broadcast on Twitter first”.

Thau noted that now for the first time, Tweets are becoming part of history. The US Library of Congresstakes a dedicated, specialised feed from Twitter, officially storing every single tweet for posterity.

He said that Twitter’s attempts at monetisation via promoted Tweets is “working really, really well”.

“Monetisation is something we have started to emphasise quite a bit at the company,” he said.

The service, which now boasts 145-million users and is the world’s 9th biggest website (Alexa), is growing faster outside the US, than in the US. Upwards of 60% of Twitter’s traffic now originates from outside US. Thau noted that Twitter was “exploding” in countries like Japan, India, Brazil and Indonesia.

Thau mentioned that twitter.com’s unique user figure stood at around 210-million, which means millions of people use the service to just browse Tweets, rather actively use the service to Tweet themselves.

He also spoke about how the company’s “mobile DNA” is still a strong part of its culture, and how the company doesn’t make a big distinction between their mobile site and desktop site.

“We are an example of a successful internet company that started as mobile first. We started off as an SMS service. We won’t treat mobile any differently from how we treat our website. We don’t have a separate strategy for monetisation on mobile. It will be the same as that of the web,” he said.

How Computer Games Make Us Better People

Computer games can make us better people, argues renowned futurist and game designer Jane McGonigal.

In an impeccably researched and delivered presentation at the 2010 London Nokia World Forum, McGonigal spoke about how computer gaming can positively impact the world, turning people into “super-empowered, hopeful individuals”.

Gaming is mainstream. And if there is anyone who doubts this, the figures speak for themselves. By age 21, an average person in a developed economy would have spent more than 10,000 hours playing computer games — this is comparable to the total time we spend at school.

McGonigal says the world, on average, is investing upwards of three-billion hours a week playing online games. Gamers have so far spent a total of about 6.93-million years playing the massively popular multiplayer online role-playing game, World of Warcraft. This is in fact the equivalent amount of time it has taken man to evolve.

The bottom line is that we are spending more time than ever engaging with online and offline computer games.

The Palo Alto-based McGonigal spoke about how games can instill “a sense of productivity and purpose” in people’s lives. Games can work to build “social fabric” and create a sense of “epic meaning” in society, making us feel we are part of a bigger picture, much like a game.

McGonical cites five studies that shows gaming is influencing reality for the better:

1. Games bring out the best in us: Research shows that if people play games where they do good things, it can influence them to do good things in real life. In an experiment, children aged 4-9 played Super Mario Sunshine where their tasks included cleaning up litter and pollution. The research found that, after playing this game, these kids were three times more likely to help out around the house, clean up spills etc in real life. (However, could the converse be true for children who play violent games?)
2. Games are a positive gateway to real-life: A study was conducted amongst people who played games which involved playing a virtual musical instrument, such as Guitar Hero. The study found that gamers who owned musical instruments were more likely to play them in real life after playing a related computer game. Those that didn’t own musical instruments were more likely to go out and buy a musical instrument and start playing.
3. Games can change who we think we really are: Studies have shown that having an attractive avatar in a virtual world game, such as Second Life, can make “you more confident in real-life”. The findings show that this improved a person’s self-image — and their chances of starting and building a successful relationship.
4. Games can protect us from real harm: Another study looked at US soldiers in wartime who used computer games to cope with the stresses of war. Playing games for 3-4 hours a day had the most dramatically positive impact on their mental health — more than any other activity (such as reading a book or walking etc). In fact, the only other activity that had as much positive benefit as gaming was doing exercise — but this only achieved similar positive effects when working out for as much as six hours a day.
5. Games give us real-life super powers, make us feel in control: McGonigal cited a Canadian study that showed lucid dreaming was highest amongst gamers. The Canadian psychology researcher found that gamers reported lower instances of nightmares, and they had the ability to control their dreams.

McGonigal mentioned that gamers on average spend 80% of their time failing in a game. Only 20% of their gaming time is spent achieving by, for example, going to the next level, cracking a code or beating a boss. Despite this, the game is still enjoyable, the gamer remains optimistic and productive — and this has positive spin-offs in real life.

Related:

• A blog about why games make us happy and can change the world

McGonigal at TED:

Sir Tim Berners-Lee on Mobile, Net Neutrality and Privacy

Anyone with some web pedigree will know who Sir Tim Berners-Lee is. He’s a computer scientist and MIT professor credited with inventing the World Wide Web, making the first proposal for it way back in 1989.

He’s also a director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an absolutely critical body that oversees standards and the internet’s overall development.

At the Nokia World Forum in London on Thursday, Berners-Lee spoke about mobile innovation, calling location-based services on mobile phones “just the tip of the iceberg”.

Surprisingly, it was a somewhat unstructured talk that rambled a bit from a man world-famous for his work on the net. Berners-Lee is not a natural speaker and his poor, mumbled delivery did not do justice to the important ideas he shared with the audience gathered at the Nokia-hosted event.

Here are a few key points:

Mobile devices get to know us
Berners-Lee envisages a time in the future where that thing in our pockets knows all about us. They become sensing devices. Our phones will not only know our location, but would have sensors that could detect our emotions, for example by monitoring our heart rate, gleaning medical information from our bodies, and even detecting if we were on a bumpy ride or not (presumably from a sensitive accelerometer). He looks forward to the day where the internet, powered by the mobile phone, is truly integrated with our lives.

Data is key
We spend most of our time on the web at a surface level, but what about the underlying data? Web services have flourished on a good data base. Using protocols like Linked Data and SPARQL, the web is transforming from a “single bus system” into a “double bus system”. Berners-Lee believes the next stage of the internet’s growth will come from putting raw data online to help the developer community create applications and programs: “We now need to get more data on the web”.

HTML 5 and scalable vector graphics
The web is set to becoming an increasingly powerful and beautiful space with HTML 5, and now with the increasing adoption of scalable vector graphics — now finally being adopted by the world’s leading browsers.

Privacy and accountability
Privacy issues are not just about social networks, but what all companies and governments do with our private and public information. Context is key. We share information in different contexts and for different reasons: Information shared at an office party would be very different from that you shared in the office. We need to develop systems that make companies more accountable and respectful of users’ information. Users need to understand why and in what context their personal data will be used by third-party applications.

“Sometimes users don’t realise what information they are giving away, and it’s all about reaching a balance between how many hoops we want users to go through to ensure they realise what data about themselves they are revealing,” he said.

Neutrality of the net
This is what makes the internet work — it’s what makes the internet an entrepreneurial medium of equal opportunity. To be on the web you don’t need to register with an organisation or get permission. Berners-Lee reminds us that there are companies and governments who would love to control aspects of the web. For example, some companies would love to block or “slow down” voice over IP if it gave them a competitive advantage.

“There are lots of businesses out there that would like to make their sites load faster than rivals’, or governments that would love to be able to restrict or slow down access to certain sites for political reasons, but the moment you let go of net neutrality you lose the web as it is,” he said.

Accessibility
We think of the web as a global medium, yet just 20% of the world is on the web. What about the other 80%? It’s not a signal problem, because thanks to mobile telephony most of the world is near a landline or cellphone tower. It’s not a device cost issue, because we’re at a point where a 10$ phone now has a mobile browser.

Berners-Lee sees it as a data pricing issue — and urged mobile phone operators to include low-bandwidth data plans on every mobile phone package to allow people in developing-world countries access to the internet.

How SEO is Breaking the Web (and Killing Google)

The web is in trouble. Big trouble. It’s not the first time. It was also in trouble in the mid ’90s. But then Google saved it, ushering in a new era of search. People forget how impossible good content was to find in those days. Critics routinely lambasted the web for the rubbish on it.

Those were the days of Altavista, Hotbot, Lycos and a host of search engines that would regularly return results of dodgy, random websites. It’s not that there wasn’t good content on the web, it’s just that we couldn’t find it very easily.

Google, with its lauded PageRank algorithm, was able to mine the beautiful diamonds in a very rough rough, mercifully elevating them to front pages of search results. Suddenly, when we searched, we found the good stuff. The bad stuff didn’t disappear, it was relegated to its justified position in the content hierarchy: Obscurity. It’s why Google suddenly emerged as the undisputed king of search and, all around it, rivals crumbled.

But now, it’s back to the future. Once again, the web is threatened. And there is doubt about whether this time a knight in shining armour like the Google of the 90s will be able to fix it. It seems an impossible problem to solve.

Companies like Facebook and Apple would have you think the solution lies in their closed walled-garden platforms where quality is policed and options are limited. These are controlled, rigid and templated worlds – or “velvet prisons” as Newsweek columnist Jacob Weisberg eloquently puts it.

So what’s changed? Well for one, the internet has exploded. There are more people using the internet than ever before. Close to two-billion people are online, which on a global scale, means about 30% penetration amongst a world population that is approaching seven billion.

Humans are now producing and distributing more online content than ever before. In the days of the early web this was given expression via bulletin boards, then forums, and then broadly the so-called “Web 2.0” movement. Now it’s called social media. It’s democratised content, given voice to the voiceless, and it’s smashing traditional power and information structures. This is a good thing. It’s good for diversity.

But we’ve also discovered that, in the words of former Lead Digg Architect Joe Stump at a recent Johannesburg tech conference, “humans like to produce a lot of crap”. There is a dystopian fact of life here — people, not trained, versed or sensitised in the skill of content production are producing content at an alarming rate with scant respect or understanding of the craft.

The content game is wide-open. It’s no longer monopolised by professional writers and journalists, and yes, it should never be again. But with this, an uncomfortable, nagging truth has emerged: People who don’t really have content’s best interests at heart are producing content at a furious rate.

This doesn’t bother respected media commentator Clay Shirky who puts this into the “Let it happen” category. Much of the nonsense is innocuous, and some of it serves important sub-cultural functions beyond the actual form of that content. LoLCats is an important meme and phenomenon, regardless of what the elite may think of it.

So, let it happen then. Why be a control freak about it? Why take an elite view? We are not censors. But there is a problem: When content like this clogs search engines, suffocates search results and gets in the way of the good stuff.

Google appears to be losing the battle. For years its sharp engineers seemed to stay ahead of the spammers, the gamers and the so-called black-hat search engine optimisers who were bent on manipulating search engine rankings.

But Google can’t win because it is outnumbered: It’s the web versus Google. No matter how ingenious its engineers or how complex its Pagerank algorithms, people seem to be cracking the search engine. And it’s not Google’s fault. It’s the result of a practice called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

SEO is killing the web. SEO is pushing search result quality down and artificially inflating junk. It’s breaking the web. In an age where every person and every company is effectively a media company, quality is being overrun by quantity. Many SEO practitioners seem to care less about the quality of their service or content than their Google rank.

Some companies tack search engine-friendly WordPress blogs to their main sites for no reason other than to elevate their rankings in search results. These WordPress sites are then shovelled full of content with the primary aim of getting into search engines and getting the user to their site to purchase. Educating and informing the user is a secondary aim, or at worst not a consideration.

SEO should be 20% of a site’s effort. The other 80% of search engine attraction should be driven by quality and relevance of content or a service.

And here is the crux of the problem: Content is not the end-in-itself, but becomes a means-to-an-end. It’s not content meant to give you — the user, viewer, consumer — independent advice produced with care, balance and objectivity. Its primary reason is for SEO.

There will be those who argue that there is no reason why they can’t do both. I argue they can’t. They are compromised. Quality content is always an end in itself. If it’s a means to an end – it has another agenda. It’s not content I want to read. In the end, these sites risk merely becoming nothing more than “content farms”.

Maybe this is why closed, quality search niches like Google News and Google Scholar were created? Maybe this is the real future of Google, the real future of search, the real future of the web? If this is the case, we’ve come full circle as a civilisation. We’ve said goodbye to the anarchic, chaotic experiment that was the web and hello to controlled, monitored platforms.

Newspass: Why Google’s Paywall Plans May Just Work

Google has been quietly testing a new paywall system for publishers it is calling “Newspass”. According to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Google has been piloting the service with publishers in Italy. The search giant will apparently launch an integrated payment system, allowing users to buy news content with just one click. Newspass would allow publishers to use a single infrastructure for Web, mobile and tablet computers to monetise their content.

Importantly, La Repubblica reports that consumers will have a single log-in across a multitude of news sites that would be flexible enough to accommodate various kinds of payments, including long-term subscriptions and one-time micropayments. It would be a one-click payment for access, not too dissimilar from Google Checkout.

Paywalling systems on news sites have been controversial for a better part of a decade. There is justified scepticism about whether they work or not. A handful of publications around the world, largely in the specialist finance field, have got it more-or-less right, but for the most part, paywalls have not been a success.

Google’s new effort is an acute case of Déjà vu. In the early 2000s many online publishers tried to paywall their content, but were forced to retreat in the face of what became known as the “web 2.0″ era. This saw a tidal wave of user generated content and blogging content hit the net, a source of traffic for publishers. Google News, an aggregator of the formal online publishing sector and a big source of referral traffic, launched in 2001. Quite simply, publishers did not want to miss out on all the eyeballs that were being sent their way by putting paywalls in place.

Now, driven by a slowdown in advertising, a financial crisis and an inability to make significant revenue out of online advertising, the paywall debate has resurfaced with vigour — with much of the noise coming from the Rupert Murdoch camp.

What’s different about Newspass

Google’s new initiative is however significantly different from the failed paywall attempts at the start of the decade. Its paywall initiative does not follow a silo approach which involves each individual online publication creating their own bespoke paywall and payment system. This, it could be argued, contributed to the failure of many paywall systems in the past because it was a barrier to entry, causing complication and admin for users who just wanted to get their story.

Google’s initiative involves a comprehensive solution across multiple sites — and a simpler, streamlined combined value proposition than many individual website paywalls. This is also a better fit with web content consumption behaviour patterns, because readers consume content across a broad range of sites. They don’t like to be siloed to just a few publications — that’s the print world. A Newspass that grants access to multiple sites may just represent fair value for a user.

Take the analogy of satellite TV. You pay once and you get a bouquet of hundreds of channels. The transaction is simple and easy. You know you’re getting good value for money too because there is an economy-of-scale effect at work. Now imagine another scenario: What if you have to pay individually for each TV channel and go through the effort, time and extra cost to do so. It’s a no brainer really.

Whether Newspass will work really depends on the publishing sector and whether they embrace the initiative. If they take a combined decision under the auspices of global publishing bodies like the World Association of Newspapers or IFRA to support the move, which then leads to rapid adoption, then it may work.

But if viewed with suspicion because it involves a third-party like Google or because publishers are keen to implement their own systems on an individual basis — then, once again, paywall attempts will fail.

A colleague of mine once described Google as the “crack cocaine” of the online publishing industry. Many traditional online publications have a love-hate relationship with the search engine. On the one hand Google sends a rush of traffic, but on the other aggregates content that it does not pay for. Then there is the sticky issue of advertising. Google has the better model — and one that disintermediates publishers from their advertisers. Quite simply, the online publishing industry has no idea what to do about it.
I’m a paywall skeptic, but I feel the pain of online publishers who want to generate more revenue to ultimately increase quality and value for their readers.

This, a third party, neutral service, offers the best chance of a paywall system working. Google is probably the only internet player able to implement such a broad-ranging initiative. Of course the news industry could come up with their own paywall system, but would the industry ever be able to come together to agree? A paywall system needs a dispassionate third party like Google.
Should there be a strong take up of Newspass in formal online publishing sector, you may eventually see publications clamour to be part of it — because it may even become an indication of quality for the user.

Then as more publications join, so the free options narrow for the user. Consequently users will find that there may be simply no choice but to buy a Google Newspass. There is no shortage of content and distraction on the web. What’s often harder to find is quality content. If Google’s paywall initiative contributes to increasing quality, then it’s good for the industry.

But whether Newspass will work or not is, well, entirely up to the publishing industry. More good reading: Google’s Newspass, another salvo in the battle for paid-for content domination. (TheDailyMaverick)

Could Social Networking Actually be a Threat to Democracy?

Most analysis about social networking tends to focus on the phenomenon’s utopian qualities, but rarely take the dystopian view which focuses on its negative side effects on society. A more critical view holds that social media in fact works more against democracy rather than for it.

The idealists tell us that social media is “democracy in action”, giving voice to millions and breaking down traditional information distribution channels and power structures.

At the Fortune Time CNN Global forum in Cape Town on Sunday, we heard a different view.

CEO of emerging market media giant Naspers, Koos Bekker, reckons the social networking revolution, now truly a global phenomenon, may actually be breaking down “cohesion” in society — a cohesion vital for functioning democracies.

Naspers is a US$15-billion media company focused on internet investments in emerging markets. Bekker was joined on stage by reknown Silicon Valley Angel Investor Esther Dyson and Kenyan mobile entrepreneur Nathan Eagle.

Bekker pointed to the two-party system in the United States, which he argued was supported by a pre-internet media environment less fragmented than that of today where there were only a handful of TV networks and and newspapers. Although less choice for people, from a sociological point of view this worked to create “cohesion” and common points of view in society.

“The problem with social networks is that they are fragmenting the world… it breaks the common conversation or vernacular. That ’standardising effect’ of the past is falling apart. It’s a bad thing for democracy,” he said.

Bekker predicts that this fragmenting or siloing effect on society would most likely cause the United States’ two-party system to “break up”. The result would be many political options reflecting niche and fragmented views. He asked the question: Is this actually good for democracy?

Dyson was quick to point out that in fact the US’s two-party system existed long before the existence of mass media in the US, suggesting that Bekker was overstating his argument, but agreed that social networks were “not nirvana”.

Jon Fortt, a senior writer at Fortune Magazine and moderator of the panel, summed up the paradox nicely: On the one hand social networks bring people together, but on the other, have a siloing effect on people — a myopia that repeatedly reinforced users’ world views, insulated by their network.

It’s not just about Facebook

Bekker forcefully dispelled the notion that social networking was a “US phenomenon”, pointing to large social networks in Russia, China and Japan.

His company, once a South African-focused newspaper company, acquired a 46.5% stake in Chinese social networking giant TenCent, whose instant messenger and social network QQ claims to have more than one-billion users. This is roughly double that of acclaimed social networking leader, Facebook.

Apple’s folly: Why the iPhone is in trouble

On the surface Apple looks set to rule the world. The pedigreed Silicon Valley computing company has created what is indisputably the most sophisticated mobile device and operating system (OS) in history. The iPhone, and now the iPad, has forever altered the mobile computing paradigm and these are arguably devices most manufacturers try to emulate.

Recently, Apple surpassed its old rival in Microsoft to become the largest technology company in the world by market capitalisation. Who would dare criticise what appears to be one of the most innovative technology companies in history?

But a look at history reveals a deep flaw in the company’s DNA that could spell its downfall. It happened in the 1980s, and it could happen again now. The flaw lies in a hard, cold truth: You may have the shiniest gadget in town — but that won’t necessarily translate into long-term market domination if the business you spin around your products is flawed.

Apple is in danger. That danger is rooted in the largely closed and controlled business networks Apple spins around its products. Newsweek’s Jacob Weisberg recently put it quite eloquently when he pointed a finger at Apple CEO Steve Jobs for attempting to “replace the chaos of the Web with his own velvet prison”.

This encapsulates mounting criticism of a company that until a few years ago could do little wrong. It’s a growing paradox: the very brand that barely needs to spend a cent on formal marketing is developing an image problem as a result of its ruthless, walled-garden approach to business. It threatens to reach bizarre proportions: Apple is making Microsoft look like the good guys.

History is littered with examples of the more open business networks winning the day. Sony learnt the hard way when its technically superior, but proprietary Betamax was trounced by the more open, standardised VHS format during the VCR wars of the 1970s. And more recently, few were surprised to hear that Google’s open-source mobile operating system Android had overtaken that of the iPhone as the more dominant smartphone mobile OS. Perhaps a sign of things to come?

To find out how history is in danger of repeating itself, we need to go back to the Apple versus Microsoft battle of the 1980s. The companies are old foes and their history goes this far back. There were several dominant computing platforms in those days, but there was one computing platform that stood head and shoulders above the rest. It was the Apple Macintosh.

The Macintosh was a remarkable piece of equipment for its time. It was a small, powerful computer with an intuitive, aesthetically appealing operating system that no-one came close to. The archetype of innovation, it was the first commercially successful computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface that worked with intuitive window layers. It was ahead of its time and arguably what most of today’s computer interface work is based on.

In contrast, its main competitor was Microsoft’s DOS, the precursor to Windows, which relied on an antiquated command-line interface. DOS was ugly, geeky and impossible to use if you were not technically literate. It involved a series of computer commands on a stark black background. DOS was Macintosh’s polar opposite in terms of aesthetic appeal and usability. It was a case of beauty and a particularly ugly beast.

History would have you think that Apple wiped the floor with Microsoft’s, frankly, inferior offering – but this was not the case. The better product did not win. The company with the more open business practice won. Apple adopted a proprietary approach, keeping its OS and device tightly bundled, refusing to open it up. Microsoft, on the other hand, proceeded to licence its OS out to computer manufacturers, then set about building an ecosystem by incentivising the developer network to build software and applications on its platform.

And who was the winner? Microsoft. Much to the frustration of millions of consumers world-wide, only years later did Microsoft transform DOS into Windows, finally bringing it to a similar standard to that of that first Macintosh of the 80s. For years Microsoft triumphed over Apple’s superior computer with an OS that was simply sub-standard. Windows Me was a blue-screened, bug-ridden sorry excuse for software. Vista was a disaster. Some would argue that it’s taken the company till now, 2010, to finally catch up to Apple’s Mac OS with the release of Windows 7 — a good looking, light-weight operating system that’s finally stable.

Could this be a repeat of the mobile phone and tablet wars of today? Could the iPhone be the Apple Macintosh of the 1980s? Apple have created a vastly superior device and operating system -– but the company’s walled-garden approach is in stark contrast to its main challenger of today, Google’s Android — the search behemoth’s mobile operating system.

Google has been crafty. Much like Microsoft in the 80s, the company is pushing Android to multiple phone manufacturers, with Google embedded as the default search and mail provider. The examples are not identical, but are analogous.

Apple, on the other hand, appears again to be following its same old “closed” approach, keeping its operating system and platform closely tied together, closely tied to the company.

So, just like Apple had the edge with its 1980s Macintosh, the company indisputably has the edge in its iPhone, but as the world catches up, that advantage is increasingly eroded. This means that the slick iPhone device will become increasingly commoditised. As manufacturers catch on and catch up, Apple loses its exclusivity.

Moreover, as Android weaves its way through platform after platform, is adopted and adapted by manufacturers across the world, so it spins its open business web wider, creating an ecosystem of inter-dependence with its indirect competitors. Apple in contrast remains that island of innovation: It’s Apple versus rest, not Apple and the rest. Few realise this, but in many respects Google is emulating Microsoft’s business practices of the 1980s.

But can Apple learn from history and change its course, or will history repeat itself, like it so often does? Jobs is a renowned control freak — and this personality trait is reflected in the way his company does business and guards its platforms. It’s a characteristic that translates into excellent products, but does it translate into sustainable business?

The acclaimed company has a paradigm-smashing platform, but now it needs to look at a model that takes its business even further. Otherwise, in 10 year’s time we’ll be talking about how the iPhone had the advantage, but lost it. We’ll be talking about Android, because Android phones will be everywhere and the iPhone will be nowhere.

New Jack Parow video

Afrikaner-Gangsta** rapper Jack Parow makes me laugh out loud… ie “Ek is America, jy’s Iraq”… I mean, where does he come up with this crap?

I wish I had a better handle of Afrikaans, but I manage to pick up most of it –the videos are hilarious. He should consider singing a few more in the international language… I reckon he could go viral like Die Antwoord if it hit the spot.

** Gangsta in the leafy suburban-Stellenbosch sense of the word.

Video below and linketjie here:

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