The Social Operating System: A Reader

For the sake of my pal Valdis Krebs, I am collating a list of posts I’ve made in recent years on the idea of a social operating system. The basic notion:

Stowe Boyd, Rockmelt: Why The Social Browser Won’t Matter

The next generation of operating systems will be social at the core.We won’t be fooling with files and folders. We will be connecting with others, reading streams from our friends, and tossing observations and hopes and insights into the wake we leave behind, spreading out to all that think we matter.

So here’s some links to pieces I’ve written mentioning the idea:

Please send along any references to other people writing on the subject.

Just In The Nook Of Time?

Microsoft settles some patent disputes with Barnes & Noble’s Nook division by investing $300M into the company. The market cheers. Am I missing something?

Microsoft’s Nook Deal, Aiming at Amazon, Sets Up Battle in E-Books - Michael De La Merced and Julie Bosman via NYTimes.com

Microsoft agreed to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Barnes & Noble’s Nook division on Monday, giving the bookstore chain stronger footing in the hotly contested electronic book market and creating an alliance that could intensify the fight over the future of digital reading.

The deal, which gives Microsoft a 17.6 percent stake, values the Nook unit at $1.7 billion — roughly double Barnes & Noble’s entire market value as of last Friday — and bolsters the bookseller’s efforts to make its digital business the linchpin of its future growth.

The announcement was the latest surprise in an unpredictable and rapidly shifting e-book market, which is crowded with technology giants trying to chip away at Amazon.com’s dominance. Amazon once had close to 90 percent of the e-book market, but since then, a handful of players, including Apple, Google and now Microsoft, have edged in.

So, B & N is a bookseller, with hundreds of stores. Remember when Borders went bankrupt? And Tower Records? The days of blazing a new trail in retail by undifferentiated sales are done.

Stowe Boyd via stoweboyd.com

Successful retail in the US is falling into two categories: companies selling their own products, like Apple, and focused specialty providers, like Trader Joe’s and Uniqlo. Otherwise: a wasteland. And soon we will be dismantling all the big box stores.

So, this is a bail out. B & N needs big cash to compete against Kindle, because Amazon is underpricing the device to hold onto the market in the face of growing market penetration of iPad and iPhone as better mobile reading devices. Microsoft, who completely missed the ereader market and who is fighting Apple and Google in the smart device marketplace, hope that a strategic partnership with B & N around the Nook can help, but how?

Unmentioned is the idea that some soon-to-market version of the Nook will be a Windows 8 device, instead of running Nook’s proprietary OS. And a spin-out of the Nook division into a new company, called Nook, with even more cash from Microsoft. Otherwise the whole thing makes no sense.

Nokia Bonds Are Junk

Nokia’s declining fortunes lead to it’s bonds being rated as junk, after falling to No 2 mobile phone maker, behind Samsung:

S.&P. Downgrades Nokia’s Bonds to Junk - Brian X Chen via NYTimes.com

S.& P.’s announcement came as Samsung dethroned Nokia as the world’s No. 1 maker of mobile phones, which includes traditional cellphones and smartphones. Samsung sold 92 million phones over the last quarter, and Nokia sold 83 million, according to estimates by IHS iSuppli, the research firm. It is the first time since 1998 that Nokia is not the No. 1 phone maker in the world.

In the smartphone category, Nokia slips to third place behind Apple, the leader with 35 million phones shipped, and Samsung, with 32 million devices, according to iSuppli. In that category, Nokia is slipping faster than Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry. The smartphone segment is the only part of the handset market that is showing any growth.

Nokia’s long-term rating was dropped to a noninvestment rating, BB+, from the investment-grade rating BBB–, with a negative outlook, S.& P. said. Its short-term rating dropped to B from A-3, S.& P. said.

Nokia has been struggling to reverse its declining fortunes with its Lumia smartphones, which include Microsoft’s newer operating system, Windows Phone 7. In the United States, AT&T and Nokia have been aggressively promoting the Lumia 900, a $100 smartphone that has been a strong seller on Amazon.com.

Trying to be the world’s leading maker of Windows mobile phones is like being the world’s tallest midget.

Why haven’t Microsoft or Apple built Dropbox-style sharing into their OS’s? Austin Carr is dead-on: why haven’t Microsoft or Apple built Dropbox-style sharing into their OS’s? Austin Carr via Co.Design “If it takes really long [to explain], then there’s probably a problem with the product,” [Dropbox CEO Drew] Houston says with a laugh. It’s that stripped-down approach to product design that’s turned Dropbox into a cloud powerhouse. The service, which offers arguably the simplest solution to accessing your files across PCs, tablets, and smartphones, has rocketed to well beyond 50 million users, and was said to be on track to hit $240 million in revenue last year. Today, the startup introduces its most convenient tool yet: the ability to share any files, right from your desktop, in just two clicks. Apple should take $1B of their $110B hoard, and buy Dropbox.
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Why haven’t Microsoft or Apple built Dropbox-style sharing into their OS’s?

Austin Carr is dead-on: why haven’t Microsoft or Apple built Dropbox-style sharing into their OS’s?

Austin Carr via Co.Design

“If it takes really long [to explain], then there’s probably a problem with the product,” [Dropbox CEO Drew] Houston says with a laugh.

It’s that stripped-down approach to product design that’s turned Dropbox into a cloud powerhouse. The service, which offers arguably the simplest solution to accessing your files across PCs, tablets, and smartphones, has rocketed to well beyond 50 million users, and was said to be on track to hit $240 million in revenue last year. Today, the startup introduces its most convenient tool yet: the ability to share any files, right from your desktop, in just two clicks.

Apple should take $1B of their $110B hoard, and buy Dropbox.

Google and Facebook Grow Comfortable and Complacent - Nick Bilton via NYTimes.com

Nick Bilton thinks Facebook and Google are slow to get mobile — several meanings of ‘get’ intended — because the engineers and managers there are relatively sessile (go look it up):

Nick Bilton via NYTimes.com

I have a theory on why they both have been slow to capitalize on the shift to mobile.

It’s that working at these companies is like going to work on an all-inclusive cruise ship. The analogy is apt in terms of the luxury — and the isolation.

An employee’s day often begins with a comfy shuttle bus whisking him or her to work in Silicon Valley. The buses have Wi-Fi, so laptops are put to work before anyone arrives on the sprawling campuses.

Once there, dozens of free breakfast options await. Free buffet lunches break the monotony of the day. There is free dinner, too. There are free snacks for those peckish between meals. (The stuff that’s bad for you is on the hard-to-reach lower shelves.)

All of this is wonderful for the employees — and of course well deserved — but these perks could be stultifying. At some of these Silicon Valley businesses, there is no reason to leave the office.

There are on-campus gyms. Day care. Massages. Dry cleaning. Car rentals. (At the Google offices, some of the toilets even have heated seats.)

Sadly, this isn’t how the rest of the world works.

Most people actually have to leave their offices to get coffee. While wandering out into the real world, we unfortunates tend to do a lot with our mobile phones.

We look for new restaurants, check in with location-based apps, share short pithy updates about things we’ve seen in this outside world, and take pictures of food and sunsets.

I’m betting that the Googlers and Facebookers don’t see as much outside, since all these perks are meant to keep people working as long as possible.

Perhaps there is something even more powerful at work, here: the self-centered, self-important mindset that is engendered in these world-beater companies tends to encourage a strong tie to the period of time when the companies became successful, which is three to five years ago. These companies — like Microsoft and Yahoo before them — became mired in the past, like mammoths and saber-tooth tigers sinking in the La Brea tar pits.

Apple, Twitter, And The Social OS

Mathew Ingram wonders — apparently based on some thoughts by Barry Ritholtz — whether Apple should spend $10B and buy Twitter:

Mathew Ingram, Should Apple buy Twitter?

Apple’s best effort by far at adding those kinds of social elements came when the company integrated Twitter at a deep — and for Apple, a fairly radical — level into the operating system on the iPhone and iPad (and even into its new desktop OS, OS-X Mountain Lion). Never before had Apple built support for a third-party service into its devices and software in such a fundamental way. This helped fuel rumors about an Apple acquisition, just as Ritholtz and others have used it to justify such a deal: if Apple wants to integrate Twitter so deeply, why not just acquire it so that it has full control?

The fact that Apple likes to control things from end-to-end is well known, which is just one of the reasons why the deep Twitter integration was a bit of a surprise. But does it really need to own Twitter in order to get the benefits of that integration? I don’t think so. It can get all the positive aspects of Twitter support without having to own the company — and it doesn’t have to worry about the hassle of maintaining a third-party service that is used for a wide variety of different purposes that Apple has no real interest in.

Not only that, but buying Twitter could actually harm Apple’s attempts to integrate more social aspects into its devices, because it would make it even less likely that the company would ever strike a similar deal with Facebook — something it has tried to do a number of times. It could be that Facebook has no intention of ever partnering with Apple, and the two may wind up becoming adversaries as their interests converge, but acquiring Twitter would likely remove any chance of the two ever working together in even a small way.

So, Mathew comes down pretty strongly on the negative side of a possible acquisition, but omits the long-range view: the next generation of operating systems will be social at the core.

Most of today’s operating systems are still based on 1990 thinking. They are based on WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer). They don’t know about the Web, so users have to move back and forth from their local store of docs and files to the cloud, a thousand times a day. And the biggest surprise of the Web has been the rise of social, which is supported on our computers through apps.

All of these limitations will be attacked in new operating systems, which will be web-aware, post-WIMP, and inherently social.

Apple is headed into a battle with Google, Facebook, and maybe Microsoft (Windows 8 looks pretty good), and one of the primary areas of contention will be building social primitives into the operating environment.

Google will build its social architecture in Android. Facebook will become more than just an app platform: it will become a mobile OS. Windows 9 or some future version will incorporate some approach to social. And iOS and Mac OS X have started to move this way by including Twitter in the mix, as a fundamental social protocol.

Apple should pay the $10B for Twitter, and make it into the social layer of its OSs, and as the social framework of its apps. For example, Ping in iTunes could be rewired to rely on Twitter, fixing its design as Barry Ritholz points out, and future social TV and second screen apps could be based on Twitter, as well, which makes sense because Twitter is the leading second screen app today. The coming battle for social TV will be hugely important, and Twitter really positions Apple in that space.

So, Mathew is being too conservative, because he thinks Apple may want to ‘work with’ Facebook in the future. But that can’t be where Apple is headed.

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.

digithoughts: MWC 2012: Microsoft and Nokia et al. need to step up The MWC in Barcelona 2012 is almost over. Phone vendors are pushing Android devices everywhere. Low-end, high-end, mid-end and experimental phones are all running Android. Except for the Symbian based Nokia 808 with its 41 MP camera sensor. The biggest Windows Phone 7 introductions at the MWC were two budget oriented devices, the Nokia Lumia 610 and the ZTE Orbit.  There is nothing wrong in going after a wider audience by covering more price points; it’s just that there are no high-end WP7 devices to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, the Nokia Lumia 800 is a nice phone. But so is the even better spec’d iPhone 4 from 2010. Windows Phone 7 devices are lagging behind with relatively low spec’d screens, processing power and lack of front facing cameras (on most phones). High-end WP7 phones barely match mid-end Android or iOS devices.  In order to succeed, computing platforms need momentum and network effect. Users/buyers attract more developers to push out great apps which attract more buyers which attract more developers etc etc. How do you get that momentum going? Well it’s hard, but the first thing you need is hit products. Hit products such as the iPhone 3G, the HTC Hero (in Europe), the original Motorola Droid (in the US) and the Samsung Galaxy S. Devices that eat their way into the consumer mindshare. It is great to have lower-end devices available as well. As a complement. But it’s the hit products that get the ball rolling. Windows Phone 7 had a late start in the race of modern mobile operating systems and Microsoft and device vendors need to push even harder than the competition in order to catch up. In my mind, the system is almost there; just give a device geek like me a reason to buy into it.  Graph: Asymco Windows 8 needs a hit phone, or it’s dead.
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digithoughts:

MWC 2012: Microsoft and Nokia et al. need to step up

The MWC in Barcelona 2012 is almost over. Phone vendors are pushing Android devices everywhere. Low-end, high-end, mid-end and experimental phones are all running Android. Except for the Symbian based Nokia 808 with its 41 MP camera sensor. The biggest Windows Phone 7 introductions at the MWC were two budget oriented devices, the Nokia Lumia 610 and the ZTE Orbit. 

There is nothing wrong in going after a wider audience by covering more price points; it’s just that there are no high-end WP7 devices to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, the Nokia Lumia 800 is a nice phone. But so is the even better spec’d iPhone 4 from 2010. Windows Phone 7 devices are lagging behind with relatively low spec’d screens, processing power and lack of front facing cameras (on most phones). High-end WP7 phones barely match mid-end Android or iOS devices. 

In order to succeed, computing platforms need momentum and network effect. Users/buyers attract more developers to push out great apps which attract more buyers which attract more developers etc etc. How do you get that momentum going? Well it’s hard, but the first thing you need is hit products. Hit products such as the iPhone 3G, the HTC Hero (in Europe), the original Motorola Droid (in the US) and the Samsung Galaxy S. Devices that eat their way into the consumer mindshare. It is great to have lower-end devices available as well. As a complement. But it’s the hit products that get the ball rolling. Windows Phone 7 had a late start in the race of modern mobile operating systems and Microsoft and device vendors need to push even harder than the competition in order to catch up. In my mind, the system is almost there; just give a device geek like me a reason to buy into it. 

Graph: Asymco

Windows 8 needs a hit phone, or it’s dead.

Hopscotching between new Metro programs and old Desktop ones–which is what most Windows 8 users will do at first–is going to be an inherently disjointed, unsatisfying stopgap. Windows 8 will only be a landmark operating system if consumers embrace Metro. And they’ll only do that if developers write outstanding Metro programs, and if PC manufacturers create machines that are truly designed with Metro in mind.

That’s a lot of ifs. Most of them will be tackled by other hardware and software makers, not Microsoft. And even once Windows 8 has been released, it will take years, not months, before it’s clear how well they’ve addressed them.

Which is okay. Microsoft is intent on getting this operating system out the door in time for this year’s holiday PCs, but Windows 8 isn’t primarily about moving boxes in 2012. What it’s trying to build is a foundation for a Windows that stands a chance of being relevant a decade or two from now.

- Harry McCracken, Windows 8 Consumer Preview: One Step Closer to the PC’s Future via TIME.com

Microsoft’s huge gamble. If they lose with Windows 8, they will be just another enterprise software company, with a number of shrinking divisions that should/could be sold off or spun out.

Finnish mobile giant Nokia today released its fourth quarter financial results, posting a €1.07 billion ($1.4 billion) loss as sales declined by 21% year on year with smartphone sales and mobile sales down 31% and 1% respectively. Whilst it shows Nokia still has a lot of work to do, it sold 19.6 million smartphones and 93.9 million mobile devices, meaning that over the quarter, sales were up 17% and 5% respectively on the last quarter.

Matt Brian, Microsoft Paid Nokia $250m for Windows Phone Use via TNW