The world’s favourite 800 pound gorilla is mobile enough

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Nov 4, 2010 in Default, Geo Networking, Mobile, Social Networks | 0 comments

Facebook held a Mobile event yesterday where they had a bunch of announcements?:

• Application updates for Android and iPhone, both now have access to Places and Groups
• Single Sign On API which means you can log in to any application on your phone with 2 taps; no usernames, no passwords, no captchas.
• Open access to places API – so far most applications could only read into the API, now all applications can write and search.
• Deals platform – allowing business to have special deals/offers for users.
• Oh and they also announced that there are 200 million users who use Facebook on Mobile. So there’s at least 25% of the Facebook population using Facebook mobile (I’m going by high estimates for total 600million users).

These were the announcements made by Facebook but there are heavy implications and strong insights that can be derived from these. Here’s what I make of it.

Facebook makes Foursquare irrelevant

Facebook, the world’s largest social network and platform was seen as lagging behind Geo Location earlier this year. Everyone’s favourite geo location darling was Foursquare who had a great idea. But that was it; all Foursquare had was a great idea. Foursquare has been unable to adapt and improve considerably since its launch. The idea of mayorships and points got stale quickly and the only thing that could have people sticking around is the idea of rewards. Unfortunately with slow approval times for businesses (some like Wild Peeta had it in a week, I had to wait 3-4 weeks) the service wasn’t quick enough and this definitely could have a thorn in its growth path. Some local businesses in the UAE did get specials onto Foursquare but that took a while too. This is a luxury Foursquare cannot afford since that is its main selling point. Even the newly international app SCVNGR (which I am super excited about) has challenges, treks and rewards going for which are a lot of fun, but faces stiff competition. Facebook however has the entire social element  going to keep its huge user base busy while they roll our Places worldwide. In the mean time Facebook went ahead and launched Deals which added real utility to the location element. Facebook wins, even if it is in a few weeks/months of from today and Foursquare starts to become irrelevant.

Facebook wins by solving the Geo Networking fragmentation

By opening up access to the Read, Write and Search API to all applications, Facebook has essentially turned most Geo Networking applications into clients that use the Facebook Places service, assuming this is what they do and they would be stupid not to. You can now check in to Foursquare, tag your Facebook friends on it and your friend on Gowalla can see where you checked in. Of course Facebook wins and they do it by bringing the Geo Networking fragmentation at one locus point; Facebook Places.

Mobile! Social! Local!   Mobile! Social! Local!

These are three words Eric Tseng, Head of Mobile repeated a few times and for good reason too. Facebook has more than tripled its mobile userbase from around 65 million this time last year to about 200 million yesterday. If that won’t make you a believer in mobile than not much else will. Mobile by its very essence is local and the growing numbers point people want to be social, locally. Businesses that understand and adapt to this will succeed. Groupon is a business that gets it; they’re local by nature, social by strategy and now increasingly mobile thanks to Facebook.

My blog title of course talks about Facebook’s (and the entire industry’s) growing emphasis on Mobile but it also talks about how mobile (quick to move) Facebook has been at rolling out new products. The 2000 person company has been agile enough to adapt and evolve to just as well as it leads the industry and that has been a major factor for it’s success. This is why Twitter and Google are so far behind in location and why they should feel threatened.

A quote from The Social Network stuck by me which describes Facebook perfectly – “It’s never finished“. My last post talks about how I feel Facebook might have less conversation and more activity on the platform now, and maybe it might have had a negative connotation to it. But now I feel, and as the platform is growing, that might not be a bad thing. Social doesn’t necessarily mean just talking and conversing, it can mean doing things together and sharing the things we do ourselves. It’s about bringing our connections deeper into our lives and enhancing our social lives further.

The evolution of Facebook from a Conversational to a ‘Social’ platform

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Oct 29, 2010 in Default | 2 comments

The Social Network finally released in theaters in Dubai yesterday and Team Clique in association with anayou held a viewing of it for a few of our agency friends. Watching the journey of the growth of the Facebook reminded me of how I came to know of it. I was first told of it by a few friends who were studying in the USA and I remember being envious; it did sound cool.  I signed up to be notified when it became available to my university and I remember being extremely excited when it finally did open up to my network (Birmingham, UK). My facebook ID tells me I was user #6 to register on my network, my best friend was #9. It opened up to my university during the  examination period and it still took less than 2 weeks to hit critical mass. The excitement lasted for quite some time.

Of course Facebook has evolved a great deal since then. The biggest thing that excited us, and what the original idea was based upon – exclusivity, has since gone. I remembering being disappointed when it opened up to schools and later everyone but accepted it as part of the site’s growth. But it’s not just that; the way I, and many of friends too, use Facebook has changed considerably. We no longer write on walls all day or have a long list of unreturned pokes.My facebook inbox is contains updates from the groups I have joined, similarly my news feed contains as many posts from pages I have liked as it contain updates from games my friends are playing or quizzes they are taking. The photos stream often contains my friends tagged in images that are contests or in one of those ‘Tag your friend who is grumpy/happy/ etc’ images; in short, pictures that aren’t them.

While I still check Facebook multiple times a day, I just browse through rather than interact with my friends. This may be because I’m bored of it, or maybe because my friends are boring, or maybe because I may have outgrown the games/quizzes (I do take a few but not nearly as many as there are on my stream), or maybe, just maybe that the Facebook platform has evolved dramatically. It has evolved from something what was once a conversational platform into one that is merely social; when I say social, I mean involving in and sharing with our connections what we’re doing, but not engaging and interacting with them. Or maybe as I am – as with a lot of other things – simply nostalgic and yearn for the ‘good old days’

I’m curious to know your thoughts on this. Have your Facebook habits changed in the last few years?

I give my 2 cents on Cloud Computing

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Oct 17, 2010 in Default, Published | 2 comments

Gulf News had a supplement for GITEX with news and reviews of the annual technology exhibition. One of the sections was on Cloud Computing and its adoption among users in the region. I, and a few other users, were asked to write a short piece each on the role Cloud Computing has played in our lives.

Click the image to read the piece

5 Important numbers from the Facebook Groups launch

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Oct 6, 2010 in Default | 0 comments

Facebook announced a new feature to encourage more interactions between users in an environment of fewer people. The feature confusingly labeled Groups lets users have a shared space, group chat and group email address to allow for closer conversation and maybe even feature collaboration. Detailed coverage of the feature can be found at the usual sources.

There however numbers and statistics thrown about throughout the conference by various speakers, I’ve listed 5 of them which I think should be information worthy.

Why I’m supporting the UAE Blackberry ban

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Sep 24, 2010 in Default | 1 comment

We’re just over 2 weeks away from the final decision about the Blackberry ban in the UAE and as we draw closer to the date, I find myself supporting the ban. Now I know this sounds absolutely ludicrous but hear me out, there is a (partly) sound logic behind this.

There is no doubt that the Blackberry does email like no other device and to businesses it is practically irreplaceable, but the reason it has picked up steam among end consumers – at least here in the UAE – is the Blackberry Messenger service. The instant messaging service has been a rage, especially among younger consumers, reducing their spend to a fraction of what it would be over text messaging. However, apart from these two capabilities, the Blackberry doesn’t put up much of a fight against the iPhone and Android devices. (The physical keyboard is fantastic but that’s hardly the decisive factor for end consumers) Bar a few, the applications on Blackberry don’t come close to matching those on the iPhone and Android, both in terms of functionality and a visual experience. More importantly the browser on the Blackberries (both OS4.x and OS5) makes browsing a chore and leaves a lot to be desired. Compare this to the speed and fluidity of the Android and iPhone browser and the Blackberry browser seems bloated and clunky.

Should the ban go into effect, a major chunk of the users who have tasted the mobile internet blood will move to a data enabled device; hopefully an iPhone or an Android. And with that happening, these users will spend more time browsing the internet on their mobiles and engaging with apps and games. This state of increased mobile web consumption is what I’m looking forward to so the region can move – albeit forcefully – towards being a more developed mobile audience.

Now I know that the Blackberry OS6 supports Webkit browsing and is a dramatic improvement over the previous versions but how many users can we really expect to make the jump? A survey by YouGov Siraj says about 2/3rd of the users will switch from their Blackberries should the ban come into effect.

At the end of it, I do hope that there is some form of a resolution, atleast for corporate users. But as consumers, I believe users stand to gain a lot more than they know, technologically speaking of course.