KeithTeare
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As always, very thoughtful Hamish. Great reading.
Thank You for the thoughtful piece Hamish. Especially this bit:
"Just.me is one of the first social communications product that looks like it has been built for 2013. It is borderless, so non-users can access the messages too (they just won’t be able to save them or publish their own). It’s designed around the smartphone while being accessible on the open Web and is HTML5-friendly. Importantly, it also puts privacy controls squarely, and unambiguously, in your hands."
But you also ask some good questions:
"There is also some muddle of mission. Is it an email app or a chat app? A social network, or a rich-media-enabled address book? Teare calls it a publishing tool. That’s fine, but the world already has an abundance of publishing tools: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google+, to name the most obvious. There’s no guarantee that consumers will be willing to embrace yet another, let alone replace the ones they’re already using. And Lord knows we already have too many apps."
My own thinking evolves on this. My strong belief is that on mobile, messaging IS social. And that the connected web of smartphones IS a social network. Its called the human race and communication is the expression of our socialness. So to that extent just.me is embracing the most social behavior on earth and trying to upgrade and extend it. Chat, Email, SMS, and public posts are all features of what we as humans do, and the phone is the best so far to do it. I hope just.me is the best tool on the best device for what we already do.
Path is a beautiful mess. Well designed but with no purpose anybody needs.
@eringriffith Something bigger....Apple has revenue from phones and software, so doesn't need ads. Facebook is a social sharing platform, largely cloud based. It isn't optimized for mobile use, rather for desktop use. Apple has most of the things a user needs to be social from the phone - address book, message creation and sending, photo taking and sharing, video taking and sharing. It is even bringing in FB and Twitter contacts into the address book with IOS6. One wonders where Facebook fits into an iPhone world. In the Android world Google plays a similar role. Facebook could literally implode without a strategy for domination of the mobile user experience when it comes to social. Ad revenue would be the least of their problems. Relevance precedes monetization as an issue.
This is a really good piece Erin. And brave ahead of the call today. I think that the shift of traffic to mobile underlays all of the problems here. Google too is suffering. If Facebook can figure out mobile revenue and ensure that is, and not Apple or Google, is the social platform of choice for Android and iPhone users, it wins. If not it is toast. It is a zero sum game. And timing isn't good. They have to do it now. Of course Google, even though it has Android, it itself challenged to monetize mobile as desktop traffic shrinks as a proportion of the total mix. Despite their protests to the contrary, this is a big issue for them. Apple is definitely best placed.
" A bigger question, however, is whether Americans will one day take to a mobile platform that offers an all-in-one solution, or if they prefer to stick to a more fragmented ecosystem, where they use devices’ proprietary apps for messaging, Facebook for social, and Instagram for photo sharing."
A great question Hamish. I wonder... Hmmmm :-)
Congrats guys. Nice timing.
Totally agree Sarah, good piece
@hamishmckenzie Keith at Teare dot com
Hamish Hi
For insight into just.me see here - http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/12/techcrunchs-other-founder-previews-just-me-a-privacy-focused-social-network/. Awesome piece (although I don't think we are privacy focused, more control focused). I'd be happy to give you a pre-launch sneak preview any time. I agree with many of your assumptions in this piece.