Interfaces that enhance serendipity

John Hagel had a great tweet:

maps are powerful interfaces focusing on relationships, not objects - applies to people and ideas, not just places - enhances serendipity

This inspired me to think about interfaces. Serendipity doesn't happen in a vacuum. It requires a medium that conveys the flow of information, the diversity of views and the connections to the edge. The interface, in fact, is a vital point that potentially enhances or limits the extend of discovery. It is the difference between enhanced serendipity and random browsing the Web.

The serendipitous service of the moment is Twitter. Through the 'river of news' style of presenting thoughts, links, conversations etc, one can easily discover stuff that are outside their normal web of interest. The value of discovery, however, depends greatly on the people you follow. If you pick the right ones like John Hagel above, you will find your perspectives being extended in ways you have not thought before. The challenge is, of course, to pick those people and that is why we will recommendation services like ReTweetRank and Mr Tweet becoming more important.

One other interface I can think of that enhances serendipity is the calender view from events companies like upcoming.com. They enhance discovery of events, and in the process, makes physical connections between people. Such interfaces are great for maximising discovery of time based items.

The common thread running through the two interfaces is the diverse source of information and how they are being compressed for easy scanning.
Specifically:

-sources of information are diverse
-information is stripped down to its bare minimum
-display is compact with little wastage of space
-format of display is in time format, either zoom in as in minutes updates to twitter or zoom out as in monthly displays in calender

Using these principle ( I am sure there are many more), we can design for better interfaces that enhances serendipity. Conversely, interfaces that do not do so are limited in discovery. Consider the disqus interface below: (i) information is not compresses with too much space that hinders scanning, (ii) no way to discover comments made on other blogs by the same commentor.




















In summary, interfaces are a great place to uncover new ideas that may form the basis of different products/services. What other great interfaces have you seen that maximises serendipity?

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Using mobile to create connections

I have blogged before about the potential of mobile to create closer connections between artists and their fans. Mobile is our most personal communication device and exploiting that to bring about real conversations is a powerful lever in exploring connections.

Recently, I have seen magazine publishers tapping on the power of mobile. Variety, for example, just launched an iPhone app powered by Newsgator. People magazine is also launching an iPhone application. While useful, I feel that these efforts are missing the bigger opportunity. The mobile is not just another distribution platform. It represents a whole new way to create value for both artists and fans.

This mobile pearl talks about how Interscope Geffen A&M is launching iPhone applications for five of its key artists. It is a more powerful example of how mobile can be used:

"Kyte allows us to easily deliver iPhone and iPod touch apps that connect our artists with their fans in a fully immersive, interactive experience,”

Going forward, there is plenty of room to create mobiles/services that enable meaningful connections between artists and fans, between fans and fans, between metadata and fans. If you are into media startups, think connections, not transactions.

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Twitter is cooler when it becomes mainstream

Alan Patrick wrote an interesting post that touches on whether Twitter is still 'cool', given that it seems to gaining mass adoption. Personally, I think the opposite. I feel that technology can only be cool once it becomes transparent and merges into our daily lives. This is when we can start to do interesting and useful things.

StockTwits, TweetDeck etc are only the beginning. They are early hints on what is possible when we move to real time, human to human conversations. In fact, we will see much more powerful changes as the web becomes more real time.

How will things change when we get real time feedback about our work? What would happen when companies can tap into conversations anytime to discuss about their product designs, the pain points of their customers, the way that things should be done? Will education be enhanced with real time conversations between students and their peers on the topic of their interest? Can we change how we are organised based on real time communications?

As I said, Twitter become interesting when it is mainstream. Only then can we have a platform to truly explore how things can be better with real time conversations.

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The challenges from the crisis and our response to it

After talking to numerous companies and startups about how the current climate are affecting them, a couple of major issues have emerged. From these challenges, we have fine tune our Future of Media effort to address them.

Lack of access to bigger players
The crisis has bought about a bigger need to scale faster and to build a real business. One of the ways to do that is to leverage on platform players such as Facebook and iPhone. Unfortunately in Singapore, our bigger companies such as Singtel and MediaCorps are not as open.

Our respond: Our Future of Media initiative brings in the bigger companies as partners. As part of the network, they are committed to open up their market access to the smaller guys. In this way, we have effectively open up our relationships with the bigger companies to the rest of the industry. I think this is more useful than our grants because in this new economy, useful relationships are the new capital.


Difficulty in starting up
To get things started or to build things from scratch is actually very hard. Even with open source software, knowing what to use, how to put things together, where to start etc is a tough challenge, especially for first time entreprenuer.

Our respond: Our experienced partners in the Future of Media intiative is offering support beyond technology platform and market access. They are offering valuable mentorship through technical and market advice. Through the network, startups can gain guidance from fellow partners that will make it easier to startup.


Global marketing
For a startup to penetrate global markets is actually quite challenging. Even with the Web, the amount of localisation is still considerable. You will need local partnerships and connections. However, for a small startup, securing such relationships is difficult.

Our respond: With the network in place, we can market the network itself to our global counterparts. It is difficult to promote one or two companies but as a network of say 100 companies, we are in a position to make our deal more convincing. A network also means that the offerings will be more complete.


We sincerely think that the Future of Media initiative can bring great benefits to our industry. If you think we can do better, do drop me a comment.

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The economics of viral loops

Viral loops are now a big part of product design. In looking at the various ways loops are modeled in various services, I realise there is a big point of failure: the email invite.






Email invites have effectively turned everyone into a spammer. In this age of increasing attention deficit, this current form of email invites cannot be sustained. The attention costs are too high such that people will ignore them all together.

To create better viral loops, we need to rethink about value adding. How can we create loops that benefits the recipients, instead of imposing more costs on them? If we rethink invites as a form of advertisement, can we apply the economics of branding here?

One way is to think of invites (advertisements) as content. Is that possible?

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Admin note: carnival of mobilists #162

The latest edition of the carnival is up, with my post on the shortcomings of mobile ebook applications being one of the selected links.

http://sachendra.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/carnival-of-the-mobilists-162/

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5 reasons why you should start a blog before doing a startup

Here is what I always tell first time entrepreneurs: start a blog in your area first and aim to attract x number of readers before attempting the startup. To me, blogging is the best way to test your idea as well as is the ideal training ground for your subsequent entrepreneurial journey. Here are five reasons why:

Blogging tests your commitment and fosters discipline
If you want to attract a certain number of readers, you will discover that daily blogging is almost a must. This is where you will know whether you have the necessary discipline to sit down and do the hard work of writing every night. This is where you will stop dreaming about success and start doing real work. If you find that you don't have the passion or motivation to write every day about your startup area, you are probably not suited as an entrepreneur or your current idea isn't right for you.

Blogging forces you to gain domain expertise
The most successful blogger picked a niche and dominate that. You will find that to be successful, you really need to be the best in your niche. This means every blog post must be thoroughly researched on. You will start to read books, hunt down relevant blogs, join discussions etc. You will gain more domain expertise through blogging about your startup area.

Blogging forces you to be customer centric from day one
It is easy to talk about customer centric than to actually live like one. Blogging forces you to think about what your readers really want. It puts you in their perspective. Practice enough of this and thinking from the other side becomes natural. Blogging also forces you to be value adding. You can't just write nonsensical posts and hope to attract an audience. You will need to be mindful of how your posts add value and that mindset will go a long way in helping you build a better product in the future.

Blogging teaches you about how online marketing works
In order to reach your target of X readers, you will begin to think about reaching your potential audience. You might start off with blatant advertising but you will soon discover that it is not sustainable. You will need to start reaching out to online conversations and add value to them. That is where real marketing begins. You will soon learn of the importance of linking, retweeting, aggregating etc that will be useful to you when you want to market your actual product.

Blogging builds your connections
Through blogging, you will earn new connections. Some of them can be your first customers . Some can be your most vocal supporters, helping you to spread your product around if it is good. Others might give you new ideas or perspectives or connect you to other important people. These connections will be better than any promotion or advertising dollars can bring.


So, if you are a first time entrepreneur, do start a blog first. It is the cheapest test bed for your business. If you cannot make a blog work, you probably cannot make your startup work as well. Have fun blogging!

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