Category: Tech

As ? aims to become the world’s number one Internet services company …

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

A lot of people not in Asia will probably not know who the company representing the question mark is. I myself didn’t really take notice of this company till they bought Viki – just due to the fact that it was a Singapore deal in the video space. Anyone who has ever been to Japan will have heard of Rakuten and of course all around Asia they have been launching various initiatives and buying up companies.

Now they buy Viber for some serious cash.

Where is this going?

This is their statement regarding the Viber deal:

“As Rakuten aims to become the world’s number one Internet services company, this acquisition will enable Rakuten to penetrate new markets with multiple digital content offerings, in combination with its e-commerce and financial services platforms,” the company says.

At first you could just pass that comment off as PR hubris but when you look at who they are buying and if you have ever heard Hiroshi Mikitani talk, one must take the statement somewhat seriously.

Rakuten wants to go global and it looks like they are going to buy and build whatever they need to get there.

I still don’t see the cohesive vision or how all the pieces fit together but for sure they are trying to make it happen.

This is going to be fun to watch.

One app store to rule them all?

~ michael_msft ~ 5 Comments

Not talking about mobile phones but about TV’s. I won’t hide my disdain for the TV ecosystem and the supposed smart TV mess. Nothing smart about it really. I was recently at a telco in Singapore on their pipe, meaning a very fast line, using a new TV and when I clicked the app store button I looked at a spinner for about 3 mins. Imagine doing that on a normal internet line.

This TV stuff is a mess. Apple TV, Roku and Google are trying to cut through it but all have their flaws. Apple is Apple only, Roku is not an open platform and Google didnt make chromecast as easy as implementing AirPlay is for iOS. Yes I know chromecast is android and iOS and that it has some sense of apps but they didn’t make it dead simple to build on. Bummer. They also did not take into account DRM and encryption as much as they should have.

So the TV’s and their app stores will still exist and they suck but they are not going away just yet. So I am liking a little of what I am hearing from Opera – yes Opera. http://www.operasoftware.com/products/tv-store

Opera wants to try to build one TV app store and then get various TV manufacturers and OEM’s to embed it. Then you go to one app store, QA it and launch it – hopefully getting all the platforms that Opera is running on. Still a pain but not as bad as going to each TV vendor for each QA and legal process. Yes – legal. Unlike iOS and android app stores you have to sign contracts that lawyers make. It is a silly, silly process.

Can Opera do it? I am not sure. I am cheering them on though.

You add that Roku is doing the same thing with their stuff by getting it into TV’s. True but the Roku platform is a proprietary non HTML stack and they don’t take all apps due to there cozy DISH relationship. So Roku might have a similar plan as Opera but it won’t work is my guess due to the way they have tackled it.

We shall see.

I still want the TV is dumb glass scenario and I just project on it. One can hope.

Wonder if the new CEO will seriously overhaul Windows?

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Before I rant – I am cheering MSFT on to win a lot more than they do :: http://www.nokpis.com/2014/02/06/microsoft/

In order to do that they need to fix the turd that is Windows at some point.

Gruber linked to this, from a MSFT fanboy at – scathing indeed :: http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/what-heck-happening-windows

I don’t own a windoze box. Got rid of the last HP netbook we had laying around cause it ceased to boot anymore.

So I run Parallels and had windoze 7 on it. Then I bought windoze 8. Tried upgrade and couldn’t. Tried a clean install and couldn’t.

Finally discovered I had to upgrade over win 7 but I needed to use the win 8 32 disks cause for some reason my win 7 was 32 bit.

Horribly confusing, very slow process and lots of rebooting.

Windows needs to be redone from the ground up at some point.

Or maybe it is too late?

We shall see what the new dude does.

Microsoft

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

Microsoft has a new CEO. I know little about him but he seems to curry favor with the troops and judging by what is being written about him I am guessing he looks to be the right guy to turn the place around. Yes – it needs turning around. Why you might ask? Cause tech folks like myself don’t really use anything from Microsoft anymore. I practically cut my computing teeth on everything Microsoft but now I use mostly Apple products, iOS (and the many made for iOS apps), and lots of other services in the cloud of which none of them are made by Microsoft.

However the world needs competition. A google and apple world is not great for any of us.

BB is dead – let’s not even pretend to think otherwise.

I would love to see bing compete.

I would love to see windows phone compete.

I would love, also very surprised, to see windows wow me with stuff that might tease me away from OSX.

I would love to see azure, or whatever name you call Microsoft cloud services, compete head on with AWS.

I would love to see xbox own the living room, I don’t give a SHIT about gaming, and challenge the notions of what a home entertainment (console) device could do when everything is connected up.

Lately I have been somewhat surprised at working with Microsoft around some Spuul stuff. They have engineered some good tech and offer good support but they still seem to focus everything around windows versus windows phone. Mobile and cloud is where it is at. Bottom line – they need to sort that out quick.

Office – yes I still use it unfortunately but I am miffed they don’t properly support it across all of my iOS devices well. I am guessing the new guy will change that.

So Microsoft is back in the spotlight and people like me are quietly cheering them on. Maybe even less quietly now that they have a CEO that isn’t going to mock or berate people like me.

The clock is ticking but I expect to see the new Microsoft slowly appear this year.

Wishing for more powerful app store payments

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Was sent this article by my bro @groovemonkey (with a lot more followers than me) and it got me thinking more about app stores and payments.

This is the read: http://dancounsell.com/articles/paid-paymium-or-freemium.

Paymium is still relatively unknown and gets pretty much no press coverage compared to freemium. Paymium is going to become increasingly more widespread over the coming year, and incase you’re wondering exactly what paymium is, here’s my definition:

Paymium: An app that is paid for up-front, with additional revenue being generated by charging for extra features via In-App Purchase.

As with freemium this type of model can work perfectly well in place of yearly paid upgrades as you can add new features overtime with IAP to continue to earn revenue from your existing customers.

Paymium apps currently only account for 2% of apps on the App Store, yet they generate the same amount of revenue as paid apps. I believe now is a good time for developers to start experimenting more with this revenue model, I know It’s something we’ll be doing with a few of our apps at Realmac Software over the coming months.

This is a very interesting model and was wondering how to apply it to Spuul but I don’t see a fit, however part of that reason is I think both app stores, Google and Apple (is there any other?), don’t offer a lot of flexibility when it comes to payments and customers. What I mean is everything is so rigid when it comes to subscription based payments.

For example with Apple they don’t offer any sort of trial capability. Example. Please buy this monthly subscription and you can use it for free for 7 days and if you like it just keep using it and we bill you after the trial period. If you can cancel during the trail period you don’t get charged but you get your 7 days. Google, Facebook and Amazon (they don’t let you set the time period though) all offer it with good results. People tend to try it and the conversion rates are good.

The other problem with almost all of these systems is that they offer fairly rigid subscription SKUs that do not transfer or modify across lines. For example – I have a 1.99 payment tier for a monthly subscription and I also have a 4.99. Customer A buys the 1.99 tier and a month later wants the 4.99. The app stores should provide an automatic upgrade SKU and just start billing the user at 4.99. Even be smart enough to charge the difference if customer A upgrades within the month. There is little intelligence in the subscription SKUs so usually one has to cancel one to get another versus upgrading or downgrading.

So when I think of the paymium stuff I think of interesting use cases like you buy the app for 1.99 and later if you upgrade in app to another tier the 1.99 could be credited by the system since the customers used the same app store for the whole process. There are other examples along this line I can think of.

What I am looking for is the app stores to provide all the bells and whistles to allow us, the developer, to craft any sort of payment and decision flow we want knowing the user is able to pay with the app store and we are able to offer what we want real time based on what the data is telling us might sell. Standard consumer sales type of stuff.

Bottom line is the app stores are generally taking 30% and I think the should offer more value for it. Don’t get me wrong – app stores are doing good things and the payment mechanisms make it easy to build mobile apps and extract money for services but their overall intelligence and feature level is still pretty rudimentary.

Thinking about TV’s

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

The TV ecosystem really is a mess. What I am talking about is the way consumers can easily consume OTT content on their TV set.

I myself use Apple TV and I mostly love it. I can throw anything from my iOS device onto it, I can buy things from iTunes, and I can use some of the apps on it to watch things but I must say I don’t use it that way much. I have played with Google Chromecast and it works well. If only Google would open it up like Apple TV to developers to cast to it. It is funny to me that in this regard Apple is currently more OPEN than Google.

I was reading Benedict’s latest Mobile newsletter for this nugget:

YouTube ‘Pair’ – turn the YouTube app on your smart TV into a mirror to whatever you do on your smartphone. This approach seems to me to make the most sense – use the sophisticated touch screen in your hand to control what appears on the TV and make the TV itself ‘dumb glass’ – whether it’s via Airplay, Chromecast, YouTube or something else, either embedded or via a cheap HDMI widget.

What I love is the dumb glass comment. This is really what we all want. The ability to easily throw on to the glass whatever we are doing on our mobile phone, computer, tablet, or device connected to the TV. What we don’t want is to click a button, with this shitty remote, to bring up a plethora of things we don’t want, and an app store that is hard to search saddled with the performance of a 1990’s computer. Looking at you all the Smart TV platforms in the world.

Sure – maybe someone wants this but I think it is mostly just the TV manufacturers wishing for an app store economy like what Apple and Google have but they can keep dreaming because they will never have it. And FYI – the economics they demand from the developers are worse usually than what Apple and Google offer. So the pitch is not very good. For example – asking for a cut of payments when they don’t even offer the payment engine.

So where do we go from here? I expect the TV guys to keep pushing since they seem to claiming successes like this: http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2014/01/06/samsung-declares-a-million-smart-uk-users/#more-96531

However I am guessing we will see more of Apple TV and Google chromecast, Roku and everything else trying to cut out the TV for something easier to use. Of course Roku is trying to land inside the TV but the end result is the same. Problem with all this stuff is there is no real cross platform standard to adhere to. Google does it one way, Apple another, Samsung another and of course Roku uses their own stack through and through. I won’t even get into what each TV stack has – every set is like a totally different platform. HTML 5 is the tool but requires a lot of cross platform troubleshooting.

Users want to walk up to their screen and just watch shit. Purpose built boxes help make this easier and Google with Android TV is making this a very possible reality. Apple needs to open up Apple TV to apps and speed up their position in the home cause Google is moving faster than Apple right now when it comes to the home. Looks no further than the Nest acquisition as an example of that. My guts says the Apple users will have an Apple home and the Google users will have a Google home. Of course Microsoft could disrupt this with X Box but it is not really open enough in my opinion.

Users want to stream on their TV – right now this is a mess.

Let’s see what happens next.

Is Path slowly diminishing in global relevance?

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

I will admit to being a fan of Path but I used to use it more than I do now. I have no specific reason for it but I tend to open it less and less. However when this latest issue happened, http://en.dailysocial.net/post/outrage-over-announcement-that-path-accepted-investment-from-bakrie-group – one of the first things my Mom said when I was complaining about Bakrie was that my Dad would be bummed if I started to use Path less. My Dad uses it to keep tabs on all of us and to see pics of his grandkids. Basically this is the only reason I use Path. My Dad is not on Facebook and Facebook is so complicated these days that a product like Path serves a very real purpose.

Problem is Path has become a social mobile network with privacy being less important than it was originally was. Usually now when I look at Path I just see a mini version of what people are doing on Facebook. I have taken to removing anyone that I don’t want to share moments with and I probably need to prune it down even more.

Now add the Bakrie thing into the mix and I feel less enthusiastic about Path. Long story short is Path raised another round and part of the money came from the well known corrupt Bakrie family. To me this means one of two things. Path is not doing well and they knew Bakrie was a mess but they just want the money. I tend to think this is the reason. The other reason could be Path and it’s execs were not aware that the Bakrie family has a bad reputation and just didn’t realize the ramifications. I find this hard to believe since a simple google search will quickly show you what the world and Indonesians think of the Bakrie family. Not well regarded.

My take is Path is blowing through tons of money on advertising and on growing. However I think they are growing in pockets or specific regions and the global appeal of the product is waning. Taking money from Indonesian investors and focusing on Indonesia only further cements that view in my mind since if Path was growing well globally they would not need an Indonesia specific focus. My point is Path shot for global dominance and didn’t make it. So now they are retrenching some to grow where they are strong but if that country is Indonesia it would mean that Path is stepping down a bit cause Indonesia for a company that was on a global path is not the great prize – it is just another large country to add to the list. Meaning the monetization is low and the bigger they get in specific countries, like Indonesia, further diminishes the global appeal because a product becomes too focused on a country versus the globe.

I could be all wrong on this but I feel Path is struggling to find a global footprint so they are beginning to focus more on where they are having success. That to me is not what Path set out to do. Now add in the Bakrie thing and it all looks a little desperate.

Or perhaps it is just all about greed. Which leads me to think that Path and Bakrie make good bedfellows.

In the meantime I moved Path off of my home screen.

Tim Bray’s 2014 outlook

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

For the techies out there – this is a fantastic read.

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/01/01/Software-in-2014

Couple of things to note.

He seems to be endorsing Go – he does not love it but plans on using it more. I need to check it out:

Go has made a deep impression on me, even though it doesn’t make me smile, the way C and Java and Ruby and Clojure did successively over the years. My intuition is that its types offer enough object-flavored utility to get by. And my strong intuition is that Goroutines and typed pipes hit a huge 80/20 point, ushering developers smoothly into writing functional code just because it’s easy and straightforward and readable. The next substantial server-side piece of software I build will be in Go.

He is not giving Node a ringing endorsement but does not seem to be shutting it down either:

NodeJS isn’t really functional, but if everything’s a callback and you’re single threaded, who cares? Anyhow, my biggest gripe with Node is the JS part at the end; more on that later.

He really gets into how the client side stuff is a mess – I don’t disagree but at the same time I am not sure why everyone thinks it should be easy or a cross platform solution is what is needed. Platforms exist and user’s benefit from their offerings. So yes – keeping up with this is hard but such is life:

The client-side mess · Things are bad. You have to build everything three times: Web, iOS, Android. We’re talent-starved, this is egregious waste, and it’s really hurting us.

I love that he said this – because it is so true:

Browsers suck too · This is an unfashionable opinion, but I can’t see why it’s controversial.

He ends it all with this:

What’s next? · On the server side, no drama I think; everything gets smoother and better. These are the good old days.

On the client, I just totally don’t know. Historical periods featuring rococo engineering outbursts of colorful duplicative complexity usually end up converging on something simpler that hits the right 80/20 points. But if that’s what’s coming, it’s not coming from any direction I’m looking, so color me baffled. Maybe we’re stuck with clients-in-triplicate for the long haul.

I tend to agree. For some of us doing major multi-platform work it is even more intensive since we have to support the three (web, iOS, and android) plus TV’s (STB, consoles) and probably even Windows Phone. A super big chunk of work. If you are good some of this can all be built on the same back end and some of it, using HTML 5 and responsive web, can also share client code.

Is this how the future will look – I think so. Cause the platform folks want the lock in and the users want great experiences that for the time being only happen when the code is mostly native. Maybe this will change someday but not anytime soon is my guess.

And of course – it is just a guess.

Read the whole post though – it is very well thought out take on the current state of development.

Video: 3 Growth “Hacks”: The Secrets to Driving Massive User Growth

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

This is an awesome video:

http://growthhackers.com/videos/3-growth-hacks-secrets-massive-user-growth/

It’s obvious Josh has a wealth of experience and was able to hone is craft at the beginning of some amazing companies. I bet sitting across from him at a pitch meeting is tough – he knows his shit. I have watched this once and I am planning to again while taking some notes.

However – it seems to me a lot of his ideas stem from working on social networks. I always struggle to see how best to apply theories like these when the product is not a social product. It may be easy to think everything is social or uses social but not everything at its core is a social network. FB, LinkedIn and twitter are.

Don’t get me wrong – there are ideas to apply that might help any product but I am grinding on how to tease the best out of this on a non social network product. Not as easy. Let me define what that means to be clear – yes someone can share something to a social network but it may not be that users see each other or each other’s activity in every product. So there may be users but they are not networked within the product.

It leads to me some thinking – maybe everything needs a little of the network poured into it – even if your product is not a network.

Back to grinding…

Freemium

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

I am trying to blog more this year but I also said that last year as well. What can I say – I try.

I read this on SplatF and mostly agree about not wanting to waste time on social but write more – even if in smaller chunks.

I love twitter though cause it kicks of nice conversations that spurn me to write something. Yesterday was no exception.

Thanks to Chris and Dave for the inspiration.

Here is the string of tweets :: https://twitter.com/myeggnoodles/status/420423888342749186

I think Chris is making a great point and one I have always subscribed to when I considered joining or building a startup. The business goals of such startup should be to generate revenue. Within this framework though I think freemium is an accepted model. Because some startups, Spuul for example, are building in an area where piracy is rampant and the user population in places like India or Pakistan is not accustomed to having to pay. Or maybe they want to or would pay but the payment methods are not there.

I think other business models also run into the same hurdles so offering a free to use product that strives to convert the free user into some sort of paid user is an acceptable model. In our case we are also putting an ad business around the free model so it will also generate revenue.

All that being said. This is hard stuff. A lot of what we launched with has changed. We offer more subscription tiers than originally expected. We had to learn how to upsell. Had to decide over time on which features to make free and which features to make available only to paid users. We had to learn how to not try and attract only free users but users who wanted to kick the tires for purposes of deciding for themselves if they would eventually upgrade. Meaning there is a big difference in marketing to get a free user and marketing to get a user who starts as free but has the propensity to pay.

Lots of work to sort all these flows out and to build a business around freemium but I think in emerging markets and for some business verticals – freemium can work.

The other school of thought says only build something people want to pay for. This for some business verticals might also be doable but it may not always work. Either way I think it takes time to do either of these well and at scale. Generally startups are rushed to sort this out and don’t have the time to experiment to see what sticks.

After all an early stage startup really is just an experiment.

happy building!