Having seen Robert Scoble interview dozens of startups and founders, it was fascinating to get him on the other side of the camera for a Decoding the New Economy interview.
One of areas I was keen to explore with Scoble was his experience of moving from his blogging platform to Facebook and particularly the risk of being locked in a silo, something previously discussed with Doc Searls.
“I’d rather all my content wasn’t in Facebook,” Scoble observes, “but those days are over.”
Unlike Searls, Scoble sees the social media networks — particularly Facebook — as being a useful distribution tool while accepting their limitations; “I find I get a lot more engagement and distribution on Facebook.”
“Unlike a lot of other journalists I don’t have to make my money out of advertising so I don’t care about taking my eyeballs off the blog and onto Facebook.”
“It does limit my storytelling ability because you can only use one video and I can’t do a lot of typographic stuff,” says Scoble, “people are seeing these on mobile phones anyway so they don’t want to see all of this stuff anyway.”
The mobile aspect is key to the business world going forward, we stopped midway through the interview to buy an iPhone 6 which went on pre-order right in the middle of the discussion.
For the mobile world Scoble sees the rise of various ecosystems like Google’s and Apple’s forcing people to make choices about which camp they are going to join.
Like many in the tech industry, Scoble is very cautious about looking too far ahead; “none of the people, even the investors, are looking more than five years ahead.”
The key though is miniaturization as devices get smaller and more portable, the potential for technology becomes greater.
Whether that potential is limited by the desire of vendors to lock users into silos remains to be seen.
“The key though is miniaturization as devices get smaller and more portable, the potential for technology becomes greater.”
Had to laugh…here’s one notable exception that proves your rule 🙂
iPhone 4 < iPhone 5 < iPhone 6 < iPhone 6 plus
Not a trend I'm overly happy with …. why anyone wants a phone bigger than an iPhone 4 is beyond me.
2 webinars that might interest all and which are interconnected. 1st by Futorologist and Marketing Consultant would show-Embrace Change and Get Things Going(http://mediacontent.sitecore.net/brightcove.html?video=3752099166001). Four key points there are Speed, Individualism (H2H), Simplicity (like smart phones-Steve Jobs came out with it as a phone but it’s more than a phone) and Connectivity including cross channel marketing/PR and integrated marketing/PR.
2nd, connected to the previous 1 is https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/5910/119203 (The CMO + Technology Connection). It shows the specifics in integrating the different apps through platforms and the need to use strategies (and that includes couple of landscapes including Marketing Technology Landscape as well as the fact that there are more than 1600+ apps out there within this area). It also shows the need of senior management and leaders coming together to make those strategies including for choosing right tools including integration which also involves both CIO and CMO. And it also shows that these steps are necessary as customers these days are definitely the kings and so to know their needs, it must be even more personalised by using analytics and intelligence (As previous webinar showed, B2B and B2C are out and now it’s H2H). If you need to login to watch it, go ahead as it’s free and they have loads more webinars there for free.
I remember a cartoon in the South Morning China Post years back titled ‘phases in a man’s life’ where it showed a guy at each stage of life saying “mine is bigger than yours” until the final pane where two executives are standing at a urinal with one waving his mobile shouting “mine is smaller that yours.”
The tide is certainly towards larger handsets, how much is driven by vendors and how much by the market remains to be seen.