Using Google Lattitude to Catch a Thief

Interesting news report of a woman who used Google Latitude to track down the thief of her phone. Smart user, smart technology:

Video is here

(sorry for the link... the CBS affiliate won't allow embedding)

New role, new markets

Some big news on the job front:

I wanted to share with you that as of April 1st I have transitioned from Google’s Strategic Partnerships group into a new role leading Google’s expansion across EMEA as our Head of New Markets.

I am very excited about the entrepreneurial nature of building out Google’s presence from scratch in over a dozen countries (or as “from scratch” as a $20B company allows), of leading a diverse and distributed team of country managers and account executives, and of the amazing upside in terms of revenue but also in terms of adoption of Google services and properties. This, combined with the ability to travel and do business across various emerging markets, made this an opportunity very attractive.

For the past 11 years I have had a job in which the primary focus has been the development, marketing or sales of mobile and wireless technology. I have seen the space mature from the days of WAP 1.1 to pure HTML 5, Blackberry going from a two way pager to the addictive e-mail business fixture it has become, Microsoft CE evolving into Windows Mobile, Palm being bought by USRobotics which became 3COM which became Palm, which became PalmONE, which became Palm and Apple finally getting rid of the Newton skeleton with the resounding success of the iPhone. As many of you can attest, I am passionate about mobile and, for the past 10 years, have been claiming that “this” was the year of mobile.

I do believe that 2008 was a transformational year in mobile as the iPhone, Android and mobile advertising all came of age. While this new role expands my scope across all of Google’s products, it will still allows me to continue evangelising mobile as wireless becomes a primary access point to Google across emerging markets.

As I return from my first trip to Croatia in my new capacity, I am amazed about the opportunity that lies ahead in these markets where users actively choose Google search, Maps and Youtube as their preferred properties, but where advertisers have yet to embrace digital marketing as a significant tool to reach the consumer.

Planned trips to Ukraine, Slovenia, Romania, Turkey and Bulgaria are already in the works.

Kennet puts €6.5 million into GoViral's branded video network

Go Viral, a social video network that happens to hire very, very smart people (including my friend Rene) has received funding from Kennet.

This is a very interesting space... a bit like SEO for the beginning of search, handholding advertisers and linking them up with the networks...for a fee. As the Brits say, "watch this space."

Kennet puts €6.5 million into GoViral’s branded video network

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Tencent in the news

Most folks outside of China have never heard of Tencent, or their hyper-popular service, QQ.

Tencent is the most sucesful Chinese internet firm with a market cap of $80 BILLION (4x Yahoo!'s current value).

In terms of value to investors Oliver Wymann recently ranked them as the highest value creating firm in the Telecom and Media space, followed closely by the South African Media conglomerate Naspers...which happens to own 40%+ of Tencent.

Their success comes not only from their massive number of users, (355M according to this recent post by Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital) but more importantly by the revenue they generate per user ($3.38 in real dollars, which Bill equates to $17 on a cost-of-living adjusted basis).

Maybe it's a cultural thing, maybe it's an education thing, but QQ's over the top, in your-face selling of Avatars, gifts, virtual goods and cute penguins... but it works! Tencent's mobile deals and ability for users to extend their network from PC (internet cafe as primary PC based access point) to mobile with significant success.

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Evan Williams of Twitter on Charlie Rose

Interesting vision of the "human need" for communication driving Twitter and, 5 years from now "normal people" using Twitter like "normal people" use Facebook and MySpace.

Looking at "normal people" around me (wife, father, non-techie friends) I accept the notion of a need for communication and a general acceptance of social networks as a way of sharing more than we would have been comfortable with 5 years ago... The evolution from a phone call to an email to a text message to a facebook wall post to a tweet does sound natural. The question is whether the platform for that outreach will be Twitter or not.

Eric Schmidt seems to believe that GMail could take that place.

You know [the economy] is bad when...

The Economist, Facebook and the Dunbar number

The Economist has an article this week entitled "Primates on Facebook" which talks about the size of the average network on Facebook (120 "friends") and the connection to the often quoted (mis-quoted perhaps?) Dunbar's number in which British Anthropologist Robert Dunbar claimed that the human brain (more specifically the size of the neocortex) could only keep track of 148 connections in its network.

The question raised by the article is whether mediation of these networks by a computer makes the "cost" to keep each relationship alive lower. I might be dating myself, but in my early teenage years, I still wrote real actual letters to my friends across the world. My group of "friends" therefore was lept fairly small due to the cost of staying in touch.

Email lists allowed me to employ one-way communication and share my life with a much broader group (some were avid readers, others considered it spam). Now with Facebook, I feel that I have two networks: My friends (those that would have been on the one way email blast) who now have a 2 way dialogue thanks to wall updates, pictures, and social apps, and my "other" contacts, people that I would never add to my email but whom I am OK having on the periphery of my social network (they can consume but it is unlikely to be two way).

So, yes the article is correct that "people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are 'broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,'" but I still disagree with the notion of a static number... and believe that social networks, twitter and the like do allow us to have less costly (and thus more frequent) interactions with a greater number of people.

A great book on some of the science behind social networks, made consumable for the common man, is Duncan Watts Six Degrees. Duncan had joined Yahoo! Research...I wonder whether he is still there.

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Top highlights from Mobile World Congress 2009

 

47,000 of us from 189 countries (down over 15% over last year) gathered in Barcelona last week for the 2009 version of the Mobile World Congress, formerly 3GSM. The tone, as many have stated, was muted relative to past years and there was certainly a different kind of buzz this year. Then again maybe it's just me being cynical after so many of these shows.

Looking back at the event I wanted to summarize my perception of the "Top 10" from Barcelona. in no specific order:

1. Nokia Ovi store 
   Yes, Nokia launched a store... no surprise there. Promise of personalization and cross selling makes it a bit more interesting than the other 1/2 dozen app stores launched in the last months
   
   
2. Skype – Nokia deal 
   Skype has been talking about mobile in a big way as of late, and made some noise at CES launching an Android app. The Nokia deal gives them the potential of large distribution but how Nokia and Skype's incentives align, and the role of the operator in all of this is still TBD.
   
   
3. Palm Pre GSM
   Despite expectations, Palm did not announce a GSM version of the device, but leaked videos did show a Pre running on a Vodafone SIM. 
   
   
4. Palm Pre supports HTML 5 (Google Maps demo)
   My personal (very biased) favorite was Vic Gundotra showing off Google Maps running directly off the Palm Pre browser on full AJAX with panning, two-pinch zooming and all of that... without a single line of on-device code. Again: The browser is the platfom.
   
   
5. Android for Vodafone (HTC Magic)
   A lot of expectations about the "G2" were finally realized when Vodafone and HTC announced the HTC Magic, the second device running Android. The key here is the marked difference between the G1 and the Magic as far as design and the ability to innovate quickly on the platform to incorporate new usage profiles (touch-pad keyboard rather than physical one). 
   
   
6. Nokia ad layoffs
   Not announced at MWC but it did hit the news last week and I found it particularly important...as Nokia spoke at MWC about the importance of services, it also sent a clear message that it was regrouping and refocusing on what it does well (shipping millions of phones) and stepping away from an over-crowded mobile display ads space.  
   
   
7. INQ1 wins GSMA handset award
   Impressive that a relatively unknown "ODM" would win the GSMA award for best handset but a testament to the success that a simple consumer value proposition ("skype phone") can have in driving sales and adoption.
   
   
8. Microsoft myphone 
   Badly leaked prior to the show, Ballmer did announce MyPhone and promised the integration of services along with OSs (see below)
   
   
9. Windows Mobile 6.5
   No comments on my former colleagues. 6.5 was announced and will be seen live "in the near future." Unfortunately, still the same old browser.
   
   
10. Sol Trujillo vs Google and Skype
    Sol seems to have something against services and hasn't been Google's biggest ally in the past. His quips and discussion with Josh Silverman from Skype was particularly sharp (and amusing?

Vic demo @ MWC 09: The browser is the platform

I will post more on my thoughts on the Mobile World Congress, but I did want to share this video of Vic Gundotra's demo of Google Maps on the Palm Pre...



Google has been talking for a long time of the browser as the platform... Wekbit + HTML 5 plus millions of iPhones, Android, Pres (and yes eventually Nokia's) make this statement a reality.

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Dear Nokia: Servers fail, get used to it

I will first state that I admire Nokia and that it is one of the few companies that has managed to reinvent itself so many times in the past 100 years: From lumber to rubber boots, radios and eventually mobile phones and mobile networks.

It is currently in the midst of its latest transformation evolving from a hardware manufacturer to a service provider via its new Ovi brand. In a late night conversation with a Nokia executive last January a Google colleague made a bold statement about how Nokia would quickly realize that being service provider is harder than just launching a website and how we would realize that being in the phone business is harder than just launching a phone.

The statement seems to be holding true, as Nokia learnt yesterday when its Ovi Contacts system crashed because of a broken cooler. Folks, its not like just getting rid of defective phones.. ... build redudancy and backup capabilities. People might forgive a dropped call here and there but they will not forgive you loosing their contacts database!

Maybe Nokia will want to co-locate their data center along with Google's supposed new data center in Finland.

In any case, I look forward to having a front row seat to Nokia's latest evolution.

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