Windows 8 A Springboard For Enterprise Facebook?

If today’s enterprise Windows users move onto Windows 8-oriented hardware, enterprise workgroup software might become very very differetn:

How Windows 8 Transforms Enterprise Computing - Quentin Hardy via NYTimes.com

Windows 8 could mean a lot of changes for business computing, in particular touch computing, like the swipes on an iPad. Microsoft appears to have adopted a refreshing awareness of current events, and with a nod to Apple and Google, designed a user interface that is also centered on apps. If you don’t like that you can go back to the old drag-and-drop desktop-era screen, but it is the new default.

H.P. is not talking about its future designs, but Dell sees the next version of Windows encouraging sales of ultrabooks. These lightweight laptops running Windows 8 are likely to adopt touch screens, like an iPad, while keeping the keyboard preferred for working on things like corporate spreadsheets. “Our view is that the mobile endpoint devices will become more important,” said David Johnson, Dell’s vice president of corporate strategy. “When you are creating content, a keyboard is critical.” For other things, like reading a newspaper, he says, the keyboard might go away.

In the demo, Microsoft showed personalization features that included instant feeds of information from Web-based accounts, including Facebook and Twitter, as well as Microsoft’s own cloud-storage system, called Skydrive. There is every reason to think that an enterprise version of this idea would instantly load updated workflow and task information that is stored elsewhere. That could be very attractive to companies, possibly leading to system-wide upgrades.

Mr. Sherlund said he thought the integration with Facebook, in which Microsoft bought a 1.5 percent stake for $240 million in 2007, could mean that Facebook could begin to have a workgroup function, something Google is also after in its Google+ social networking software. “With the touch capabilities thrown in, this is all about the cloud,” he said.

Imagine Microsoft building an enterprise Facebook, and attacking the work media market with it. Given their position with Office and Sharepoint, they could make a lot of trouble for Yammer, IBM, and the two dozen other start ups and established players trying to dominate that exploding market.

However, I wonder if Microsoft can move fast enough. I won’t rule them out, though.

But the real battle here is Windows 8 versus iOS (and Mac OS X) and versus Android.

The ultrabook niche — especially the arrival of convertible ultrabooks, like Lenovo’s IdeaPad Yoga — will have to compete against the iPad and MacBook Air. These devices have touch sensitive screens — like the iPad — but also allow a conventional keyboard to be used, as well.

My prediction is that Apple will develop a convertible product — what I call the iAir — and it will become the next killer device, the one that defines the post-pc era.

Learning From The Google+ Experiment: Operating System, Platform, Apps

As part of the chorus singing about Google+ (see Armano’s insightful The Social Layer: Six Thoughts On Where Google Plus Is Going as just the most recent example), let me make a few observations:

It’s very hard to separate foundational concepts of Google+ from what might considered features or apps. Foundational elements would include identity, following, streams, and sparks. But Circles, Hangouts, and Huddle are best considered apps, in the broadest sense. So apps are a foundational element of the Google+ architecture, and they can closely integrate into the user experience of Google+, like Circles does.

But we are moving toward a world where most of the foundational elements of Google+ will be part of a next generation version of Android, and the things that feel like apps on Google+ will be, in fact, apps running on that future social OS.

This means that I could drop Circles, and use some other app as a mechanism for organizing my sociality. Imagine an imaginary app, called Groupings, that works very differently than Circles, but does build on the foundational elements of identity, following, streams and sparks.

But I would want to follow people not just on the Google+ enhanced version of Android, but the Twitter-enhanced, social versions of iOS and OS X, as well. So long as these two operating systems provide similar social foundations, Groupings could run on my OS X laptop and on my pal’s Android smartphone.

In this model, the operating systems become the platform, and apps like Circles or Groupings could run on either, or on a future, social Windows 9 (once Facebook acquires the phone parts of Microsoft). 

I could opt to follow someone, with a globally unique identity provided by the operating system of choice: in my case, let’s say by OS X, and the person I want to follow, David Armano, by Android. We would also be able to use those identities on any device.

Once I opt to follow, the basics are provided: I will get what he drops in his public stream, and it will appear in my ‘upstream’ — the unfiltered collation of all those I follow. What I post or repost falls into my ‘downstream’ which would be directed to everyone who is following me.

Obviously, the various operating systems have to support the fundamental protocols for this social messaging to work, and we will see this in due course, although it’s likely that we will see several contending models that don’t interoperate, and closed worlds built by the various operating systems providers.

We need the social operating system equivalent of http and email protocols to arise, so that an open social web can emerge.

We need the social operating system equivalent of http and email protocols to arise, so that an open social web can emerge.

So one thing we can learn from the Google+ experiment is this: I shouldn’t have to login to Google+, and use Circles, to follow David Armano’s writing over there. The works of those I follow should find me no matter what applications or operating systems I use. I don’t have to have Outlook running to read Armano’s email, and I don’t have to browse his website with Chrome, just because those are the tools he uses. 

And the developers of these applications, platforms, and operating systems need to be pushing aggressively in that direction, because in the meantime we are dividing the space for social discourse online into a maze of contending, non-interoperable models that don’t harmonize yet.

Fooling With plus.google (Google+): What Does ‘Share’ Mean?

I got invited to the plus.google beta (I begged my way in and Bradley Horowitz caved).

I am calling it ‘plus.google’ because that’s the URL, and avoids the problems with searching for a name with a plus sign in it.

It’s too early for more definitive thoughts, but here’s something I posted there:

‘Share’ in plus.google doesn’t have the same semantics as in the outside world, where it leads to a list of services. I guess there is no integration with Instapaper, Tumblr, Twitter? We are confronted with a gigantic plus.google system, where things can be shared among its parts, but not externally? (Ditto on pushing stuff into plus.google).

Someone may tell me that plus.google is in test phase, that those features will come later, etc.

But operating in the context of my existing flows will be the only true test for me.

This sort of experiment might be good for people to compare plus.google to another world-straddling social network — Facebook — that has attempted to do everything, but it isn’t for me, because I don’t rely on Facebook.

So I see the ‘share’ shift of meaning as indicative. plus.google is intended as a Facebook killer, but I have already defected from Facebook and I don’t believe in a single, monolithic, all-encompassing social world in the hands of one bunch of overlords, however benevolent.

I also think that the real angle for Google isn’t his giant social Disneyland they have constructed, but the primitives that underlie it, and the way that those will be built into Android, so that other app developers can take advantage of them.

Imagine how much more interesting this would have been if five partners had built social apps that were accessible on plus.google right now. Imagine if Instagram or a With were integrated?

And the rift between iOS and Android pops up in here even at this early date: I can’t upload photos from my iPhone because Google decided not to put that functionality out, yet, or ever.

So the apparent competition with Facebook may turn out to be the big florid opening act, while the long term war is with Apple over the social operating system of the near future.

So, instead of clicking the ‘share’ button and posting this to Tumblr, I will cut and paste from the closed world — at least currently — of plus.google.

More to follow.

related

• Google Introduces Facebook Competitor, Emphasizing Privacy (nytimes.com)
• Does The Google+ Interface Remind You Of Facebook? You’re Not The Only One (techcrunch.com)
• Google’s Facebook Competitor, The Google+ Social Network, Finally Arrives (search engine land)
• What Google+ Learned from Buzz and Wave (smarterware)