I am not a heavy user of Facebook but I am aware that Facebook is big (500 Million users) and that many people are spending half of their internet hours on facebook.
The question for me is, why got Facebook so much bigger than other social networks. Surely the rollout concept was brilliant. Allowing only school by school to access FB gave Mark Z. and team to control the growth. This was an important step for FB to grow with demand. The idea that everybody uses his real name instead of an alias was another important step to give FB a tool we trust.
Not allowing ads at the beginning and even now only limited helped as well.
But I think the biggest strategic step was to build a cloud portal open for all kind of developers. The best applications in FB are not developed by FB, they are developed from some of the 50.000 developers who are contributing to FB. Facebook has right now over 550.000 applications.
This was the most important success for FB.
But when FB started there was no real smart phone and not much possibility to use the Facebook applications outside of FB. Facebook has a mobile version and a touch version but many of the games are not working on mobile devices. The Facebook application for iPhone is too limited for my understanding.
Now let us make some assumptions. If FB does not go public in the next 12 months and is not able to bind developers to FB what could happen?
Facebook has only one product, which is their website and is relying heavily on 3rd party applications. Most users spend their majority of time on applications on facebook.
What if the developers are getting pretty upset about FB because one or the other way they have to give FB 30% of their revenue.
What if the top 10 developers would take all their games and apps out of facebook and develop their own social gaming platform with all games either available over their own Internet hub or as mobile download?
FB would lose instantly $300 to $500 million revenue. FB would lose 510,000,000 MAU. MAU stands for monthly active users. The number is of course not reflecting that an user does uses multiple apps. Therefore I make it easy and just take one Zynga game. Farmville has 61 million MAU (source: allfacebook.com) just taking the traffic away of these users playing Farmville would take Facebook tons of ad space, time spent and visited pages away.
Top Developers
Name MAU Daily MAU Growth Weekly MAU Growth
1. Zynga 220,812,452 172,702 17,822,700
2. CrowdStar 58,224,256 663 -2,121,063
3. Electronic Arts 47,178,980 1,509 -490,560
4. Pencake Limited 37,135,404 233 21,925,435
5. Playdom 36,387,171 57,571 4,548,663
6. Causes 25,146,256 0 -135,653
7. @Apps 23,930,049 0 29,183
8. RockYou! 22,943,006 5,931 5,532,436
9. Research In Motion, Ltd. 22,815,107 0 253,064
10. iLike, inc 17,110,749 0 547,274
Many people compare FB with Google story, but google was different. They had just a search engine but did not depend on 3rd party to get their website attraction. And google did fast understand that they need other income sources than ads on search results. The result is that google bought over 82 companies and is investing in many news things like Tesla or offshore wind energy. Most of the investment is only possible because of their IPO. Google was profitable before but the IPO brought much more cash in.
Facebook on the other hand did need the developers. Aware of the situation they started to develop an API for other websites to connect with FB and to allow them to have a page in FB to be not anymore so dependent on applications.
However brands will eventual find ways to their consumers without FB and if there are no games anymore not much is left for users to spend so much time on Facebook.
FB has one of the biggest server farms with over 50,000 servers and a lot of knowledge of cloud computing, maybe another product could be to offer cloud computing which is not integrated into facebook.
I am not a stock broker and i don't know a lot of about the stock market but I would set FB to middle risk if they don't find new products which are outside of their portal but could utilize their big user base.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Facebook offers throw away password
Facebook allows now to use a one time password for public computer uses and allows the user to see in which device they are logged in.
Both features are great to make Facebook moore secure.
From their blog:
First, we're launching one-time passwords to make it safer to use public computers in places like hotels, cafes or airports. If you have any concerns about security of the computer you're using while accessing Facebook, we can text you a one-time password to use instead of your regular password.
Simply text "otp" to 32665 on your mobile phone, and you'll immediately receive a password that can be used only once and expires in 20 minutes. In order to access this feature, you'll need a mobile phone number in your account. We're rolling this out gradually, and it should be available to everyone in the coming weeks.
Second, the ability to sign out of Facebook remotely is now available to everyone. These session controls can be useful if you log into Facebook from a friend's phone or computer and then forget to sign out. From your Account Settings, you can check if you're still logged in on other devices and remotely log out.
Under the Account Security section of your Account Settings page you'll see all of your active sessions, along with information about each session. In the unlikely event that someone accesses your account without your permission, you can also shut down the unauthorized login before resetting your password and taking other steps to secure your account and computer.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Both features are great to make Facebook moore secure.
From their blog:
First, we're launching one-time passwords to make it safer to use public computers in places like hotels, cafes or airports. If you have any concerns about security of the computer you're using while accessing Facebook, we can text you a one-time password to use instead of your regular password.
Simply text "otp" to 32665 on your mobile phone, and you'll immediately receive a password that can be used only once and expires in 20 minutes. In order to access this feature, you'll need a mobile phone number in your account. We're rolling this out gradually, and it should be available to everyone in the coming weeks.
Second, the ability to sign out of Facebook remotely is now available to everyone. These session controls can be useful if you log into Facebook from a friend's phone or computer and then forget to sign out. From your Account Settings, you can check if you're still logged in on other devices and remotely log out.
Under the Account Security section of your Account Settings page you'll see all of your active sessions, along with information about each session. In the unlikely event that someone accesses your account without your permission, you can also shut down the unauthorized login before resetting your password and taking other steps to secure your account and computer.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Social gaming is heating up
DeNA, a Japanese social game company, said on Tuesday that it would acquire Ngmoco (the maker of "We Farm" and "We Rule"),
a Silicon Valley iPhone game developer, for $400 million — one of the largest deals involving an iPhone software company and another sign that Apple’s products are fast becoming the hottest mobile game devices on the market.
The acquisition is also the latest in an overseas spending spree by DeNA, which is little known outside of Japan but aims to be a global rival to the big names in social networking and games, including Facebook and Zynga, which makes the FarmVille games.
The really interesting part is that at least Japan does understand how important social games will be in the future.
Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter are Social 1.5 (instant messaging 1.0 and forums 0.5 - my definition).
Social Games are Social 2.0
Facebook is big and will get bigger, but in terms of generating money, FB is heavily relying on ads and their payment system (Facebook credits).
Games like Farmville have three income sources. Advertisement placements, product placements and virtual goods.
Zynga (the maker of Farmville and the other top 10 facebook games) will have this year an estimated revenue of at least $500 million by selling virtual goods. The Zynga social games are free to make the user "hungry". The user can buy virtual items for the games, if he wants to get to a better level.
FB did grow because of the open developer network the thousand cool application and games. Unfortunately the games made more money than FB likes to see. Mark Zuckerberg mentioned many times that he does not care about revenue, but despite this, Facebook found multiple ways to participate from the games revenue.
The first way Facebook makes money from partners is through advertising. The best way for companies like Zynga to attract new game players is to advertise heavily on Facebook. So as soon as Zynga rakes in money from its users, it turns around and pumps some of that money back into Facebook to buy ad space. As a result, Zynga is not only a leading developer of games on Facebook, it’s also one of Facebook’s biggest single sources of revenue.
Facebook squeezes yet more money from Zynga and other partners by getting them to accept payments from game players using an online currency that Facebook has created, called Facebook Credits. Instead of buying virtual goods directly from game developers, players buy Facebook Credits—and Facebook keeps a 30 percent slice of the transaction.
By the end of this year most of the big apps will be using Facebook Credits, says Justin Smith, founder of Inside Network, a research firm that tracks the Facebook ecosystem. That could generate $300 million in new annual revenues for Facebook, since users by next year will be spending about $1 billion on social gaming on Facebook.
Game developers surely do not like having to give up 30 percent of their revenue, but what choice do they have?
A really big one, they could build mobile applications outside from facebook (like farmville) and build their own player database totally independent from facebook.
DeNA is understanding this concept and is building a platform for game developer which works on the two biggest mobile gaming OS, which is Android and iOS.
The games can use (on mobile devices) their own currency, they can run their own ads and totally control product placements. Which could reduce FB revenue extreme.
Japan is much further than the US in terms of mobile devices. In japan everybody is playing since years games on their phone or watching shows on their small 3inch screens.
But America is not far away to be a mobile country.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
a Silicon Valley iPhone game developer, for $400 million — one of the largest deals involving an iPhone software company and another sign that Apple’s products are fast becoming the hottest mobile game devices on the market.
The acquisition is also the latest in an overseas spending spree by DeNA, which is little known outside of Japan but aims to be a global rival to the big names in social networking and games, including Facebook and Zynga, which makes the FarmVille games.
The really interesting part is that at least Japan does understand how important social games will be in the future.
Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter are Social 1.5 (instant messaging 1.0 and forums 0.5 - my definition).
Social Games are Social 2.0
Facebook is big and will get bigger, but in terms of generating money, FB is heavily relying on ads and their payment system (Facebook credits).
Games like Farmville have three income sources. Advertisement placements, product placements and virtual goods.
Zynga (the maker of Farmville and the other top 10 facebook games) will have this year an estimated revenue of at least $500 million by selling virtual goods. The Zynga social games are free to make the user "hungry". The user can buy virtual items for the games, if he wants to get to a better level.
FB did grow because of the open developer network the thousand cool application and games. Unfortunately the games made more money than FB likes to see. Mark Zuckerberg mentioned many times that he does not care about revenue, but despite this, Facebook found multiple ways to participate from the games revenue.
The first way Facebook makes money from partners is through advertising. The best way for companies like Zynga to attract new game players is to advertise heavily on Facebook. So as soon as Zynga rakes in money from its users, it turns around and pumps some of that money back into Facebook to buy ad space. As a result, Zynga is not only a leading developer of games on Facebook, it’s also one of Facebook’s biggest single sources of revenue.
Facebook squeezes yet more money from Zynga and other partners by getting them to accept payments from game players using an online currency that Facebook has created, called Facebook Credits. Instead of buying virtual goods directly from game developers, players buy Facebook Credits—and Facebook keeps a 30 percent slice of the transaction.
By the end of this year most of the big apps will be using Facebook Credits, says Justin Smith, founder of Inside Network, a research firm that tracks the Facebook ecosystem. That could generate $300 million in new annual revenues for Facebook, since users by next year will be spending about $1 billion on social gaming on Facebook.
Game developers surely do not like having to give up 30 percent of their revenue, but what choice do they have?
A really big one, they could build mobile applications outside from facebook (like farmville) and build their own player database totally independent from facebook.
DeNA is understanding this concept and is building a platform for game developer which works on the two biggest mobile gaming OS, which is Android and iOS.
The games can use (on mobile devices) their own currency, they can run their own ads and totally control product placements. Which could reduce FB revenue extreme.
Japan is much further than the US in terms of mobile devices. In japan everybody is playing since years games on their phone or watching shows on their small 3inch screens.
But America is not far away to be a mobile country.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Monday, October 11, 2010
Did you see, the Twitter ads?
As i wrote last week, Twitter is starting to have advertisement on their page. Twitter will more than double their advertisers till end of the year. An advertiser has to pay up $100k for a day lockout (means exclusive advertisement).
Twitter will have three types of advertisement revenue streams.
Search results ads (as shown in screenshot which I finally could snag), banner ads in their mobile applications and ads in featured tweets.
All ads are clearly defined as ads (as "promoted by XYZ")
Twitter is serious with their ad business, they went from 3 sales people to 30 and still hiring (http://twitter.com/jobs). Chicago seems to need still a few Sales people.
Coca Cola and other twitter advertisers are reporting much higher click rate from over 5% in comparison of 0.12% market average.
Twitter ads are like google ads, no money necessary for creative in the ads which keeps the production costs low.
But new Twitter webpage allows now prevue of videos and images in the text tweets which give advertisers new great platform to be creative. When you click on a tweet, you can see in the right rail the video for the embedded link.
Twitter will eventually extend their ad system for small companies that they can book local tweet ads through a website and pay with credit cards.
I believe the click rate is right now so high because it is new, not many ads displayed and user don't know what to expect. But even if the click rate goes down to normal it could be a good revenue stream. Twitter has over 160 million users, there must be a way to make a lot of money. Even if Twitter does only generate a revenue of $1 per user, it would be $160 million with a staff of 300 people. This is over $533K per employee which is more than Adobe does per employee (click to see source). Twitter would be in top 30% of NASDAQ companies per revenue by employee.
But Twitter must get their offline problems under control. Half of my tweets (and i don't tweet a lot) are not getting through because of technical issues at Twitter.
Twitter has nevertheless improved its uptime in the last 12 months. The site was up 99.30% (down around 61 hours) in the last 12 months, according to Web monitoring firm, Pingdom. In 2008, according to Pingdom, Twitter was down for 84 hours, worst of 15 major social networking sites. 61 hours down can cost a lot of money and confidence.
Most people might not like if they can't tweet but more important users will stop using the twitter website if the downtime does not get better.
In comparison, Facebook was up 99.85% with a much bigger and complex system.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Twitter will have three types of advertisement revenue streams.
Search results ads (as shown in screenshot which I finally could snag), banner ads in their mobile applications and ads in featured tweets.
All ads are clearly defined as ads (as "promoted by XYZ")
Twitter is serious with their ad business, they went from 3 sales people to 30 and still hiring (http://twitter.com/jobs). Chicago seems to need still a few Sales people.
Coca Cola and other twitter advertisers are reporting much higher click rate from over 5% in comparison of 0.12% market average.
Twitter ads are like google ads, no money necessary for creative in the ads which keeps the production costs low.
But new Twitter webpage allows now prevue of videos and images in the text tweets which give advertisers new great platform to be creative. When you click on a tweet, you can see in the right rail the video for the embedded link.
Twitter will eventually extend their ad system for small companies that they can book local tweet ads through a website and pay with credit cards.
I believe the click rate is right now so high because it is new, not many ads displayed and user don't know what to expect. But even if the click rate goes down to normal it could be a good revenue stream. Twitter has over 160 million users, there must be a way to make a lot of money. Even if Twitter does only generate a revenue of $1 per user, it would be $160 million with a staff of 300 people. This is over $533K per employee which is more than Adobe does per employee (click to see source). Twitter would be in top 30% of NASDAQ companies per revenue by employee.
But Twitter must get their offline problems under control. Half of my tweets (and i don't tweet a lot) are not getting through because of technical issues at Twitter.
Twitter has nevertheless improved its uptime in the last 12 months. The site was up 99.30% (down around 61 hours) in the last 12 months, according to Web monitoring firm, Pingdom. In 2008, according to Pingdom, Twitter was down for 84 hours, worst of 15 major social networking sites. 61 hours down can cost a lot of money and confidence.
Most people might not like if they can't tweet but more important users will stop using the twitter website if the downtime does not get better.
In comparison, Facebook was up 99.85% with a much bigger and complex system.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Microsoft Mobile 7 phones - all what iPhone and Android have and more
Microsoft released new mobile platform. According to Microsoft their last attempt in mobile. Microsoft will not take another try when it fails, but I believe the new OS will be a very strong contester.
Microsoft worked many years on their new mobile platform and the result is Windows Phone 7, which will make its debut in some European markets on Oct. 21 and in the U.S. Nov. 8. The phone uses an elegant operating system that is very different from the current trend toward app-focused phones. Instead it provides active and configurable interface elements called tiles that update on the fly with real information, allowing users to place the tiles that interest them most where they want on their Start screen. Facebook photos, music and contacts are pulled into the phone and distributed appropriately across Hubs. It also brings together many of Microsoft’s popular offerings from other platforms, including Xbox, Zune, Office and Bing and Sharepoint.
The new phone is an important step for Microsoft in four ways. To begin, it is a completely fresh start for Microsoft in smartphones. Second, it represents a new approach from Microsoft toward integrating products and services from across the company into the phone to create a richer experience and greater productivity. Hence the presence of Office, Zune and Xbox LIVE and their integration within the Hub model. Third the new phone approach is critical to Microsoft’s efforts to make new gains in the huge smartphone market, which despite the success of the iPhone and Android is still relatively untapped globally.
But finally Microsoft does understand that their PC market share is over 95% and a big advantage in comparison to Android and iPhone.
A lot of consumers might switch to Microsoft, if Mobile 7 does seamlessly connect and integrate with Windows OS on PC and at the same time offers same functions for social and games like the competition.
I am only using the iPhone because all my other hardware is Apple and my media hub is iTunes. If I would not be so much relying on Apple I might have switch to an Android phone. Pretty sure a lot of potential Android users would switch to a Microsoft phone if the phone has similar service but better integration to their OS, it should be a no-brainer.
Then we have the business world, the new Mobile 7 phones will be a big threat for Blackberry if a seamless integration to Exchange works. Plus many companies are using Enterprise solutions from Microsoft. To access them through mobile is many times pretty expensive because they won't work on other browsers than IE and companies have to buy expensive 3rd party software for their mobile devices to access MS Enterprise products. This expensive cost could instantly go away with mobile 7 and IE.
Last but not least mobile does not stop with phones there is as well the keyboard less tablets business, which is right now dominated by the iPad but imagine all would be MS.
In order that I can use my iPad for work, i had to buy tons of software like numbers, pages, keynote, iConnect, logMeIn and more software to integrate the iPad for work. This was at least $100. MS could offer this for just $30 if you already have an office license for PC. And because none of these products are Microsoft native I can't convert them 100% and always lose a lot of functions.
I can see MS will get in the business world a market share of 70% within 2 years and in consumer market a 30% share within 3 years, if the concept is right and the phones offer enough service.
We will have again three main platforms and RIM will not be one of these.
Microsoft just needs to stay ahead and keep focused on mobile as an important business.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Microsoft worked many years on their new mobile platform and the result is Windows Phone 7, which will make its debut in some European markets on Oct. 21 and in the U.S. Nov. 8. The phone uses an elegant operating system that is very different from the current trend toward app-focused phones. Instead it provides active and configurable interface elements called tiles that update on the fly with real information, allowing users to place the tiles that interest them most where they want on their Start screen. Facebook photos, music and contacts are pulled into the phone and distributed appropriately across Hubs. It also brings together many of Microsoft’s popular offerings from other platforms, including Xbox, Zune, Office and Bing and Sharepoint.
The new phone is an important step for Microsoft in four ways. To begin, it is a completely fresh start for Microsoft in smartphones. Second, it represents a new approach from Microsoft toward integrating products and services from across the company into the phone to create a richer experience and greater productivity. Hence the presence of Office, Zune and Xbox LIVE and their integration within the Hub model. Third the new phone approach is critical to Microsoft’s efforts to make new gains in the huge smartphone market, which despite the success of the iPhone and Android is still relatively untapped globally.
But finally Microsoft does understand that their PC market share is over 95% and a big advantage in comparison to Android and iPhone.
A lot of consumers might switch to Microsoft, if Mobile 7 does seamlessly connect and integrate with Windows OS on PC and at the same time offers same functions for social and games like the competition.
I am only using the iPhone because all my other hardware is Apple and my media hub is iTunes. If I would not be so much relying on Apple I might have switch to an Android phone. Pretty sure a lot of potential Android users would switch to a Microsoft phone if the phone has similar service but better integration to their OS, it should be a no-brainer.
Then we have the business world, the new Mobile 7 phones will be a big threat for Blackberry if a seamless integration to Exchange works. Plus many companies are using Enterprise solutions from Microsoft. To access them through mobile is many times pretty expensive because they won't work on other browsers than IE and companies have to buy expensive 3rd party software for their mobile devices to access MS Enterprise products. This expensive cost could instantly go away with mobile 7 and IE.
Last but not least mobile does not stop with phones there is as well the keyboard less tablets business, which is right now dominated by the iPad but imagine all would be MS.
In order that I can use my iPad for work, i had to buy tons of software like numbers, pages, keynote, iConnect, logMeIn and more software to integrate the iPad for work. This was at least $100. MS could offer this for just $30 if you already have an office license for PC. And because none of these products are Microsoft native I can't convert them 100% and always lose a lot of functions.
I can see MS will get in the business world a market share of 70% within 2 years and in consumer market a 30% share within 3 years, if the concept is right and the phones offer enough service.
We will have again three main platforms and RIM will not be one of these.
Microsoft just needs to stay ahead and keep focused on mobile as an important business.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Is the new yahoo app a facetime killer?
Facetime today does only work from iPhone/iPod touch over wifi. Steve Jobs said that facetime will be open standard but till now there are no other devices using facetime.
Instead more and more smartphones begin to sport front facing video cameras, the market for apps that handle video messaging efficiently has becoming increasingly attractive.
Many options such as Fring, Tango, and Qik are available, but the only big player right now is Apple with Facetime.
Qik is an android application but not as good integrated into OS like facetime and is not preinstalled as standards on android phones.
In a press release announcing T-Mobile’s new myTouch smartphone, there was a mention of users’ ability to video chat through Yahoo! Messenger.
Recently, David Katz, Yahoo’s VP of Mobile for the Americas region, gave the low down to Reuters in terms of what smartphone owners can expect from the revamped Yahoo! Messenger app. The app is expected to be released for Android users in the near future with the ability to work across 3G and Wi-Fi. Interestingly, the video part of the app will work with PC and Mac users running Yahoo! Messenger—finally making video chat from smartphone to desktop/laptop a reality.
Rumors are out there that the new yahoo app is coming to the Apple app store.
But Apple is very adamant about video apps running only over Wi-Fi, as its native FaceTime only operates on Wi-Fi.
Apple will earlier or later extend facetime to 3G but it is doubtful that Apple will approve the new yahoo messenger.
In case yahoo messenger will only work on Wifi, it will still be a big competition to Facetime because of the ability to make video calls cross phones and PCs which Facetime does not offer yet.
The question is why does Apple not already open facetime to other platforms and why does it not support 3G.
It is a tough call, and I find no sense why my MacOs X iChat does not work with facetime or why other messengers are not allowed to work facetime.
I could find two reason why not supporting 3G. Apple wants to have always best user experience, 3G is often too slow and most of the iPhone users are living in big cities where the 3G network is already pretty busy, video chat would not help the 3G network.
Then there are the costs for the consumer. If a consumer does not have the old unlimited ATT contract then the 2GB are pretty fast used for video chatting. After this it gets expensive for the user or 3G is unavailable till next payment circle.
The other reason could be that Apple wants to show strengths to the carriers to show that an user does not need a calling or data plan to make calls. The future is not to need a carrier and Apple does know it. It is since a while an issue for Apple that the phone bills are so high. Apple does not like that others are charging high for their service and Apple does not make money out of it.
Their dream is that all services are going through Apple and that they dominate the price.
If they can't deliver all services then at least the 3rd party has to go by Apple's rule.
We will see if Apple is approving the new yahoo messenger and if people will use it. I personally like that facetime is so perfect integrated into the OS, and if iChat on Mac would work with facetime, this would be great, but if i could use facetime to call my sisters in Germany to their Skype or AOL messenger my life would be almost perfect.
But I guess instead, I have to buy them new iPod touchs. I have 4 sisters each of them gets an $229 iPod touch which is in total $916 which would be equivalent to
45,800 minutes or 32 days straight call to landline (based on 2 cent a minute).
I think i skip the iPod touch. Better choice might me Apple TV and a camera. And using facetime to call their living room or i just use the Skype app on my iPhone, without video chat.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Instead more and more smartphones begin to sport front facing video cameras, the market for apps that handle video messaging efficiently has becoming increasingly attractive.
Many options such as Fring, Tango, and Qik are available, but the only big player right now is Apple with Facetime.
Qik is an android application but not as good integrated into OS like facetime and is not preinstalled as standards on android phones.
In a press release announcing T-Mobile’s new myTouch smartphone, there was a mention of users’ ability to video chat through Yahoo! Messenger.
Recently, David Katz, Yahoo’s VP of Mobile for the Americas region, gave the low down to Reuters in terms of what smartphone owners can expect from the revamped Yahoo! Messenger app. The app is expected to be released for Android users in the near future with the ability to work across 3G and Wi-Fi. Interestingly, the video part of the app will work with PC and Mac users running Yahoo! Messenger—finally making video chat from smartphone to desktop/laptop a reality.
Rumors are out there that the new yahoo app is coming to the Apple app store.
But Apple is very adamant about video apps running only over Wi-Fi, as its native FaceTime only operates on Wi-Fi.
Apple will earlier or later extend facetime to 3G but it is doubtful that Apple will approve the new yahoo messenger.
In case yahoo messenger will only work on Wifi, it will still be a big competition to Facetime because of the ability to make video calls cross phones and PCs which Facetime does not offer yet.
The question is why does Apple not already open facetime to other platforms and why does it not support 3G.
It is a tough call, and I find no sense why my MacOs X iChat does not work with facetime or why other messengers are not allowed to work facetime.
I could find two reason why not supporting 3G. Apple wants to have always best user experience, 3G is often too slow and most of the iPhone users are living in big cities where the 3G network is already pretty busy, video chat would not help the 3G network.
Then there are the costs for the consumer. If a consumer does not have the old unlimited ATT contract then the 2GB are pretty fast used for video chatting. After this it gets expensive for the user or 3G is unavailable till next payment circle.
The other reason could be that Apple wants to show strengths to the carriers to show that an user does not need a calling or data plan to make calls. The future is not to need a carrier and Apple does know it. It is since a while an issue for Apple that the phone bills are so high. Apple does not like that others are charging high for their service and Apple does not make money out of it.
Their dream is that all services are going through Apple and that they dominate the price.
If they can't deliver all services then at least the 3rd party has to go by Apple's rule.
We will see if Apple is approving the new yahoo messenger and if people will use it. I personally like that facetime is so perfect integrated into the OS, and if iChat on Mac would work with facetime, this would be great, but if i could use facetime to call my sisters in Germany to their Skype or AOL messenger my life would be almost perfect.
But I guess instead, I have to buy them new iPod touchs. I have 4 sisters each of them gets an $229 iPod touch which is in total $916 which would be equivalent to
45,800 minutes or 32 days straight call to landline (based on 2 cent a minute).
I think i skip the iPod touch. Better choice might me Apple TV and a camera. And using facetime to call their living room or i just use the Skype app on my iPhone, without video chat.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
Saturday, October 9, 2010
250,000 apps but not so much for iPad
When Steven Jobs announced that the iPad will arrive and that all applications for the iPhone will work on the iPad, he forgot just a little note that these app will run in iPhone size and that we need to magnify to double but that these apps are looking really bad. And that it makes no fun to use them.
We are now in month 7 of the iPad and most of my applications (around 150) are still not built in hybrid for iPhone and iPad.
I am pretty disappointed from the developers and from Apple. Apple could have build the SDK better that at least the text renders for bigger size when I magnify a native iPhone application to double size on my iPad. Instead the text looks pretty bad, like using a magnifier in Photoshop. I can see now each pixel instead of smooth text.
And the developers of the application don't do anything to modify the application for both devices.
Most of them even felt that they have to charge extra to have an iPad version.
I have a few apps which are free for the iPhone but cost money for the iPad.
Some are thinking they are really clever and charge you twice. Once for the iPhone and now for the iPad version if you download the second version.
The iPad native apps are still in the low 25,000 which is less than 10%(source wikipedia.org - September 1, 2010 there were 25000 iPad specific apps on the AppStore).
This is pretty low for a device which is approx. sold 4.5 Million a quarter, over 9 Million till today.
I am wondering why there are not so many applications, and the only thing i could come up with, is that an iPad is a device we use a few hours a day but we never carry it all the time with us like the iPhone, and therefore we are more selective what we download and developers are not willing to develop for a big screen device without making decent money.
Or everybody thinks that the display is so big, that consumers want to use Internet browser instead of an application. I personally would prefer an application most of the time.
Either way I don't like the fact, that i don't find so many good softwares for my iPad.
There are some really good applications for the iPhone which are missing for the iPad.
The few apps I am using a lot and which are developed for the iPad are not working as good as I would expect.
Even applications developed from Apple like, numbers, pages and keynote. They are not easy to use and miss a lot of functionality.
Importing from their big brothers from Mac/PC works only partly, and import from complex Excel or Powerpoint documents is futile. I got many times frustrated that the iPad apps could not open them.
Then there are newspapers like NYTimes or USA Today, which don't allow me in an easy way to zoom in. And when i close the applications because i want to open another, they don't remember were i left them. They always default to home page.
All of them are using different navigation methods that i always have to relearn them.
The iPad is such a great device and could be so much better if all apps would work native on the iPad. And if developers would take more time on usability.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
We are now in month 7 of the iPad and most of my applications (around 150) are still not built in hybrid for iPhone and iPad.
I am pretty disappointed from the developers and from Apple. Apple could have build the SDK better that at least the text renders for bigger size when I magnify a native iPhone application to double size on my iPad. Instead the text looks pretty bad, like using a magnifier in Photoshop. I can see now each pixel instead of smooth text.
And the developers of the application don't do anything to modify the application for both devices.
Most of them even felt that they have to charge extra to have an iPad version.
I have a few apps which are free for the iPhone but cost money for the iPad.
Some are thinking they are really clever and charge you twice. Once for the iPhone and now for the iPad version if you download the second version.
The iPad native apps are still in the low 25,000 which is less than 10%(source wikipedia.org - September 1, 2010 there were 25000 iPad specific apps on the AppStore).
This is pretty low for a device which is approx. sold 4.5 Million a quarter, over 9 Million till today.
I am wondering why there are not so many applications, and the only thing i could come up with, is that an iPad is a device we use a few hours a day but we never carry it all the time with us like the iPhone, and therefore we are more selective what we download and developers are not willing to develop for a big screen device without making decent money.
Or everybody thinks that the display is so big, that consumers want to use Internet browser instead of an application. I personally would prefer an application most of the time.
Either way I don't like the fact, that i don't find so many good softwares for my iPad.
There are some really good applications for the iPhone which are missing for the iPad.
The few apps I am using a lot and which are developed for the iPad are not working as good as I would expect.
Even applications developed from Apple like, numbers, pages and keynote. They are not easy to use and miss a lot of functionality.
Importing from their big brothers from Mac/PC works only partly, and import from complex Excel or Powerpoint documents is futile. I got many times frustrated that the iPad apps could not open them.
Then there are newspapers like NYTimes or USA Today, which don't allow me in an easy way to zoom in. And when i close the applications because i want to open another, they don't remember were i left them. They always default to home page.
All of them are using different navigation methods that i always have to relearn them.
The iPad is such a great device and could be so much better if all apps would work native on the iPad. And if developers would take more time on usability.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.
Please visit my blog http://www.new-kid-on-the-blog.com
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