Future * Convergence * ThinkPLANK

Why Facebook Makes Sense

Nobody needs to be reminded that Facebook is the flavour of the month. You probably know they refused bids of close to a billion dollars from Yahoo and Viacom. And that they were started in a Harvard Dormitories (who says business schools don't produce great businesses!). They're currently growing 3 times as fast as MySpace (remember - last years social networking phenomenon? It's so 2006, dah-ling!) And more interesting details in this article in the Time Magazine.

In my view Facebook has a few pieces of the puzzle absolutely spot on. First, by restricting the usage for the first couple of years, they've built up a core of loyal users and created a culture of actually connecting with real friends, instead of random strangers who might become friends in a disembodied sort of way. Second, by opening up the platform and allowing people to write simple apps, they've tapped into a huge well of creative and technical resources which has propelled new ideas, apps and usage. Third, by enabling simple, and apparently trivial capabilities like "Poke" - they've hit a very important vein of social networking - a need to connect. Personally, it's a meaningless, but somehow an intimate act that you would do only if you knew a person.

Actually my personal experiences on Facebook have been very rewarding. For example I haven't met Avinash for 6 years or more, although I always liked him when we worked in the same office way back when. Now, I'm playing scrabble with him - we haven't yet caught up and exchanged news, updates or swapped life-stories, but through the ludic experience of scrabble, it's a comfortable re-entry into each other's universe. I occasionally poke Amit, who now teaches at the Indian School of Business at Hyderabad, but with who I spent many of my college afternoons. Or although one doesn't get to meet one's friends sometimes for months and years, its nice to know what they're up to on an almost daily or hourly basis. S has workers in her house, J is attending an event in a bar this weekend, my cousin is bored, R is reading the book I just finished... it's the little things with the important people, and not the other way around, as some social networks seem to push you into. (sharing important things with inconsequential people).

Harry Potter Magic Doesn't work for Publishers

According to the FT, Bloomsbury "...which signed up Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone when bigger publishers had passed on the book, has seen its revenues transformed, but the £53m cash pile it accumulated by last year has not translated into a strong stock market performance.

Bloomsbury’s shares peaked in 2005, just before the launch of the sixth book, and fell heavily late last year as it revealed delays to rights deals in its reference book division.

Scholastic, which holds the US rights to the series, has also been a volatile performer, whose shares have yet to regain the peak they reached in 2002. Analysts have expressed concerns that the performance of both companies may be “uneven” now the last book in the bestselling series has been written."

My questions:

1. how have the print runs gone up, and how has this affected the prices and margins?

2. what is the purpose of fatter and fatter books - just to weave out the stories?

3. what happens after this? is there a long tail waiting for the Harry Industry?

4. the article says the Harry Potter book (Deathly Hallows) will make more than the entire Hollywood industry, on the opening weekend. Is this a "blockbuster" model for books as well?

Mobility

Much of the thinking on Mobile applications has been based on shoehorning onto the mobile phone all the things we can think of doing in a PC or on a TV - watch sports, play games, write email etc. We never learn. A combination of Location based services and new thinking by a clutch of companies as reported in the NMA (cannot point to the site since they have suddenly stopped recognizing me as a paying subscriber) suggests that hope is at hand. What people really want on the road are maps, information (especially when we're in new places) or the ability to access other systems. Truly intuitive are the examples of using your phone to point at a building and getting back information on the building - using a combination of LBS and a digital compass.

Also interesting is the idea of using the mobile phone as a personal gateway - when you have intelligent clothing, a music player and who knows what other gadget tucked away in your belt, you will become a walking network, if these devices can communicate (as they should! - why can't your t-shirt change colour with the music you play?) the phone becomes the personal gateway to this moving network that you carry with you. Haven't read anything about this yet, but no doubt, I shall, soon enough!