Market Analysis - Cloud storage in ecosystem war?

Even though the social network war isn't over yet, latest war ongoing with the big guys, is who gets to own the data of people. The players are not totally the same than in the social network war, but most of them are there still. Social network war is about persons connections, which can't be easily divided to many services. Data on the other hand is personal and what friend select as cloud provider is not that important than social network. Both social network war and cloud storage war play big part on the big ecosystem game ongoing between Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook.

The main similarity to these both wars is, that changing sides is difficult when you have picked a side. When you decide to store all or most of your data to some cloud storage, it will take lot of effort to change it another. Same is true with social networks, when you build connections to one service, changing completely to another is near to impossible.

The second similarity is that big part of the companies offering their services today, will not be there in five years. There used to be many social network tryouts there five years ago. Some of them lived to see today, most of them not. Same will happen to cloud storage. Today, there's hundreds if not thousands of players offering cloud storage. Doing it profitably is costly and many services will go bankruptcy in coming years. I just hope people don't lose their data on that point.

Ecosystems needs ways to lock or at least tie people closely to their ecosystem. Until now physical devices and operating systems have been good ways to lock people to ecosystems. World is changing to the direction that completing a purpose is more important than the tool used. For example when you want to check what your friends are doing, you do it with any tool available. Or if you want to show your photos from last years vacation to someone, you just show those through cloud. Data needs to be available always.

So, will cloud storage play a role in ecosystem war by the big ecosystems and players?

Facebook

The market leader in social networks, Facebook, haven't gone to the cloud storage business yet. I see that as a bit of a surprise. It's not their core competence or not even close to core business, but still it's a pretty good way to lock people in. If they are not going for all the data, I would see owning the memories, like photos and videos would be a perfect match for their current offering. Connection with others are all about visual nowadays and what would be better way that to share photos and videos that having all those in the service already.

Definitely this would be big change on their strategy. Currently they are heading more on the knowedge business with open graph, than to data business. Still I wouldn't be too surprised if they would acquire some big cloud storage player.

Google

Google, the challenger in social networks war has taken totally different approach. They already have people's email and now they are trying to get to own their data. When they get people to load their data including pictures and videos, people will be tightly connected to Google services. Maybe their thinking is something like this: If we get them to trust their data on us, we get people to use Chrome and Android first. Next maybe they will buy a Chromebook laptop, because usage of their data is so much easier that way. Then eventually people might change also Google+. People don't really care about what social media they are actually using, if only they get connected to the people they want. If everyone would be in google+, why wouldn't they use that.

Microsoft

Then there is Microsoft. They seem to be losing the consumer business war. They are next to non-existing in the social network war (did you know they do have social network called So.cl? ). Internet Explorer is dropping it's shares. Windows Phone share of smartphones is ridiculously low. Microsoft Account counts for nothing. Their competitive edge comes from the Windows platform. They are still dominant on that with over 84% market share.

As long as data remains stored in local drives and applications are running on local machines, Microsoft will be important player due to Windows platform. When data will be in clouds and applications are run from clouds, operating system doesn't really matter anymore. On that point Microsoft will be in trouble. I believe they know this and have been aggressively trying to get into people's life's with Skydrive cloud storage and Windows 8 ecosystem. They need to tie people to some Microsoft brand soon, Windows OS will not be the tie it used to be.

Apple

Apple ecosystem is strong. Their way to lock people to their ecosystem has been through the proprietary OS and devices and excellent services they provide. When person have come in to Apple world, it is not have been easy to switch out from there. Still Apple haven't been able or willing to try to get to own the social networks of the people. They have been locking people in with data previously with their own OS. Now they are trying to get people to use their iCloud services. Main question with iCloud remains, will it ever be fully functional and available for Mac user's other devices. That's a key question on the ecosystem game. Winning the game with fully Apple created products will be hard.

Case Dropbox

Dropbox is the hot potato currently. It is a successfull service on it's own currently. Soon still there will be pressure to enlarge even more. On that point some one might buy it to get to own important part of people's life.

Best guesses who would have interest to buy them are Facebook and Amazon. Facebook, because they currently "only" own the social network of person, but nothing else. Having persons data would make Facebook even much bigger part persons life.

Amazon then on the other hand, doesn't really own much of persons life. They are trying all the time to connect more  and more with people with Kindle Fire, own currency and knowledge what you might like. So they do have a drive for having tighter connection to people, even at the end their profit would come from sales of physical goods. And on the other hand they already host the service for Dropbox.

Other big players

Eventhough Twitter is social media, it's not in the owning a persons data game. It is a strong player in the persons brand came, but that's a bit different game.

Mobile manufacturers have almost miraculously lost the game. None, other than Apple, have persons data or social network at their hands. Nokia had a change one day, but it lost it.

The small new players

Like stated, everyone is offering cloud storage currently. Within few years I believe there will be even more player in the field. In this playground there is more room for variety, but not for everyone. Definitely there will room for niche players who get people to store their data either with cheap price, extended security, really good privacy, back-up features, excellent user interface or something else that makes them special. This market is not only for few players, but still amount of players is not infinite. Services need certain scale to be profitable.

Conclusion

I believe owning people's data will play a major role in ecosystem war between Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft ecosystems. Data about people themselves, even though it is opening up all the time, it is still valuable to person. Contracts, bills, pictures, videos, resumes, contacts, medical history and other similar will always be important to people. All of these will never be opened for everybody else. Whom people will trust with their data will be a long term contract. Everyone will not see cloud storage provider to be so important at first, but when big part, if not all, of one's data will be stored in cloud, trusting the provider is important.

It will be interesting coming years to see how the cloud storage market will turn out to be. I have made my own journey to the cloud already. All the personal data that I own is stored in Google cloud. I trusted the big player.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Facebook - the thing our parents used to do

Will Facebook become "the thing our parents used to do"? Idea that our kids will talk in 15 years from now about Facebook as the thing our parents used to use seems bit amusing, but it might become reality soon.

I think it's quite likely that this will actually happen. I can't actually tell a one thing in media that is the same now that was with our parents. They didn't have mobile, TV barely had colors, not to mention Internet and everything there. So why in earth wouldn't change happen as fast with social media also.

Surely there's a lot value in Facebook currently, but will it really last for 10-15 years? I doubt it.. It's now about eight years old and most of the users have been there less than 3 years. So it's easy to say it's still fresh and new. When it will be 15-20 years old, there will definitely be other viable options to keep in touch with friends.

Facebook surely might be live and kicking in 10-15 years from now for sure, but it's not definitely going to be the cool thing out there the young kids will use. I bet it will become the "thing our parents used to do". And as we all know, kids definitely don't want to be like their parents.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Innovation is all about execution

Innovation is often misthought to be all about ideas. Often people think that great ideas means great innovations. Actually ideas as such don't have much value. Ideas are easy to come up with, but what makes a difference is the execution.

One consequence of this false thinking of ideas being the important thing on creating innovative products, are all the systematic innovation methods and processes that are seen with companies and other organisations. From the book Inside Steve's brain I loved Steve Jobs citate:"trying to systemize innovation, is like somebody not cool, trying to be cool". That's exactly what I've felt on these innovation boosting systems what I've seen in many different places. They are focused on gathering new ideas. Often those even give the greatest value to ideas which are most original and are most weird and out of the current world. Revolution is quite rare, evolution is happening all the time.

Best projects where I've take part have had a real focus on details. Those have had a vision of an idea and then we've all been together working hard to get all the smallest details right. That have required lot of iterations and lot of errors. Making a mistake is a key thing on creating great innovative products. If you never make a mistake when creating something new and innovative, then you've just never realised the importance of learning and mistakes on you creation process.

I learned from the same book Inside Steve's brain another great quote, this one is from Pablo Picasso: "Good artist copy, great artist steal". This tells exactly what innovation is mainly about. If you think companies like Apple, they haven't really ever invented anything totally new. They've just taken good ideas from others and owned those and made those perfect. Same is true almost about any products or companies that are thought to be innovative. If you think Facebook, there's been social networks before them, they just executed theirs perfectly. Same is true about Toyota Prius. This innovative hybrid car was not the first or only car on the market that time, Toyota just executed perfectly and kept improving their early prototypes. Innovation is often about stealing, undesrtanding a great idea and improving it to be perfect when creating the product.

When you are working on innovative products, concentrate on details and vision of a problem you are solving. Overall all innovative products are solving real user problems. Some of these problems are just problems that will come obvious in the future and people don't really understand having those yet. If you think of mobile phones as an example, people didn't know twenty years ago, that they would need to be able to communicate with others everywhere. With mobile phones, the problem has always been there, people just didn't think that it could be solved.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Facebook happy birthday wishes

I had my birthday couple days ago. On that day I received 36 birthday wishes in Facebook. All of those where just because people noticed from top right corner in Facebook that it was my birthday on that day. None, or maybe 1 or 2, might have actually known that it is my birthday on that day.

At first, I didn't really give any value to those and I was even bit irritated, knowing the fact that they have just noticed my birthday on the Events sections on top right of FB. When I kept on receiving those wishes during the day, I started to get glad. Some of the wishes came from persons who I haven't been in real life contact for years, but those have been part of my life in some point at past. At the end of the day, I actually felt happy receiving those birthday wishes, even my thinking started off from the complete opposite side.

I started to analyze this bit more (I do have a bad habit for that). Noticing one's birthday is a one thing, sending a birthday wish is another. It requires an action. Really small, I must say, but still it requires you to act based on what you saw and actually type something. I for example, I've wished for a birthday once in past year in Facebook. All the rest birthday's I've just skipped.

So these people have first seen that it's my birthday. Then they have somehow associated me to their memories and then thought that I could wish for a good birthday for Henkka (me). So even as it seems as such a meaningless act, people are not wishing good birthday for anyone in the world, but only for those, who have some meaning or memory in their life.

At that day, I was able to convince myself, that birthday wishes in Facebook are real ones and I really can be happy about those. It's a small gesture, but I believe small gestures are the ones that make us show that we care. Most often big ones are just showing off.

Happy belated birthday to myself!


Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Digital identity, many views to single person. Is it about to change?

I noticed that Jeff Jarvis had blogged about identity (One identity or more) bit before I blogged about social media making people specialists. It's bit lame to say, but that post from Jeff is exactly the things I have been thinking and also I tried to come across on my post. Jeff is talking about inner self and outer self as the ones that you know you are and what you want people to see you as. I don't believe anyone can argue that there are different side of ourselves depending in a context.  Is social media now changing this?

Facebook comments is an example where your different outer selves would start to mix. If you start to you extensively FB comments on everything you comment about, you start to reveal much wider picture of yourself and your interests than you would only using FB like and status updates. For example most of my FB friends don't know (and or don't really care) about my blogging and also about the issues I follow and which I comment to. If I would start using FB comments it would mix my FB me with blogging me or twitter me.

There's nothing secret in these different sides of me, but those are mainly my own interpretation of the people I interact with in those media's. So I tend to think most of the FB friends don't really care about my interests towards high tech or innovations or having conversations like this one. And on the other hand I tend to think that readers of this blog don't care about huge amounts of sports I follow, so I don't blog about those here. That's the reason I've decided to have so many different ways to interact with me in the web.

Now I think this might slowly start to change. People will start to use more and more the same point of view (outer self) to all things they are interested. So with one look you would be able to see all from humiliating photos to the specialized interests and knowledge of a one person. This will make all of us more human, but it also will make it harder to find information based on source. There is a need to have still much better ways to get specialized updates based on subjects and not only by sources

I would be really happy if one day I could have all of my friends, coworkers and those who want to follow me for specific reasons under one tool. I could use the same tool to share and write about kids, sports, exercising, high tech, humorous, photography, UX and everything else that interests me. Currently I'm still too afraid that most of these subjects wouldn't suit most of you in this media, so I've decided to use different tools for different subjects.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Can you live your life without ever trying Facebook?

I have still many real life friends who have refused to join Facebook or Twitter due to principle. I think they still see it childish or something. This got me thinking what's gonna happen to them.

These guys are men of principle (there's lot of those in Finland) and they might be so stubborn that they'll never join FB. I think FB is there for good. It's going to change over time for sure, but I don't see it ever going away. FB or something similar will be part of our lifes for a long time.

If they will never join FB I think they will somehow get isolated. That's really the question. Will they be isolated or not? Is FB account like email, you just need to have one. Or is it just for fun. Will they be dissed in future job interviews if they are not part of social media. I'm not saying FB equals social media, but it often is the first step to interact elsewhere in the web also.

What FB has really brought to me is the different level of friendship and communication. There's lot of people who I follow and who I interact with, I would almost never talk otherwise. This is the aspect they might not ever really understand. I just see it a pity.

If I check from their perspective, I don't think they'll really miss anything, since they don't know what to miss. And I'm not saying that's wrong at all. That's just selection of life.

And don't get me wrong, some of these are really my best friends and really smart guys. It's just so funny that they see something like FB or Twitter so differently than I.

Everyone just needs to make their own mistakes, like Geraint Andersson said.

Is Facebook usage changing ?

Is it just me, but I have this gut feeling that amount of Facebook status updates has been going down. At least amongst my friends there used to be much more status updates during one day than there has been in last month or so.

I tried so search from web some tools or websites, which could prove my point, but there wasn't any. Almost got the impression that this is information Facebook is not sharing with us. Or then they just don't store old status updates.

Also I haven't received any new FB friend invites for some time and also the amount of others making friends are calming down. Could it be that now in FB usage has calmed down. Most of those who will join have joined and rest won't join due to principle.

I'm not saying that FB is in any ways dying, but maybe the dynamics of usage are changing. I would say there's bit more interaction, meaning more comments on posts and then there's much more links shared than previously and discussion is going around those.

Maybe this is specific to Finland or then this is just my imagination, but let's see, if this is one ff these silent signs on social media usage changing. If my guess on this usage pattern is correct, next step could be Twitter having easier way to follow up tweets related to specific links somehow. Kind of like comments on blogs or comments on FB or Buzz updates.

I'll keep on following if this is really a trend.

Facebook posts I hate

I bet there's hundreds of these types of lists already existing, but still here's mine. There are certain type of facebook updates i really hate.

1. Ridlles
These updates which doesn't really tell anything, but are there to tease and make people ask questions. Those are just annoying way to try to people interested about someone. If you have something to say, just say it!

2. Repeatition
You know these updates, Again goint to work.. going to work.. going to work. Week after week same update. OK, maybe that's the only thing happening in someone's life, but it's just so boring..

3 Gooooaalll.....
Someone is watching some games or sports in TV and then have urgent need to tell about every fucking goal and happening to all friends in FB.

Anything else come to your mind?

Day my dad joined Facebook

I knew this day would come some time, but still I wasn't properly prepared. My dad joined Facebook and asked to be friends with me (of course). I'm quite knowledgeable of my privacy, so my concerns are not about there being inappropriate material about me on FB, but something else.

I really love my parents and think they are great. Still I've somehow thought that FB and others are my private area :) I get this teenish feeling that parents shouldn't be doing the same stuff I do. Or at least liking it. I get this feeling that somehow dad is watching me. Truth may be that my dad couldn't care less about what I'm posting there. I do have kids of my own and I should understand that parents can have life too, but I don't. Something just doesn't feel right. Generations just shouldn't mix like that. Damn Facebook.

Maybe I just need to let go. Maybe I can continue using the service as I'm used to. Maybe the problem is just me and how I wanna overanalyse things. Maybe it's just about me trying to control too much. Maybe I can get over it. Maybe this is the way world will go.

One thing for sure, it's been the friend request that made me think the most. There's many "friends" I barely know or care, but those are still easy to accept or ignore. I guess what makes this so hard is the fact I care. I guess at the end I just need to go and accept the invitation. It's too much of problem, if I don't and try to explain why.

I promise here, that I won't do the same for my daughters. I'll let them to invite me their online social networks if they like, I'll never invite them. Luckily that time is not there yet. Some years still to wait.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Facebook, Ning, Grou.ps...

I've been following quite closely this discussion about Facebook privacy controls and people quitting and thinking about quitting Facebook. I have to admit I'm one of those who would like to really control what part of my web me is visible to all and what is to only my friends.

For me Facebook is kind of a collection of people who I've bumbed into during the years. There's a people as "my friends" who in real life I might not even say hi, since I've not seen them for a so long time.

What has happened few times is, that someone is asking to accept me to be their friend and I really don't recognise from their name that who is this person. Then the next thing I do is, check mutual friends, and from that list I often realise what is the context I should this person. And often I do accept the invitation. For me, Facebook really isn't that personal.

With my offline life friends we have set our own social network. First it was in Ning, but then they decided to ask money for it, so we change to Grou.ps. I think this excellent setup, then I do have lot more of control with whom I share what. I truely recommend to give Grou.ps a try if you are fed up with facebook privacy changing every month.