What Facebook's Mobile Strategy *Should* Look Like

I'm sure by now you have heard that Facebook's shares have been taking a dive since its initial IPO offering.  I am baffled as to why Facebook has been unable to tap into the mobile market, given the 900 million users it claims to have.  I am even more baffled at the current Facebook app that I have installed on my Android phone: it looks and functions just like the website, while completely ignoring the fact that it has access to my current location wherever I may be. For crying out loud it is 2012 and you are a huge company with billions of dollars and you can't figure out a way to make money while your app is installed on my phone and accompanies me nearly everywhere I go 24 hours a day?!

OK - I know how it is when someone is too close to a problem.  This happens to me all the time - I can't see the obvious solution.  So, if I owned Facebook (scary thought I know) I would be thinking about how I could implement the following:

I would want all of my users to start experiencing the web and their connections to others through the Facebook app.  Think of the Facebook app as a portal to the rest of the internet and their Facebook profile as a type of currency.  Every time someone is near a Starbucks, a notification could pop up inviting the user to get $0.50 off a latte if they buy it with their Facebook account.  Similarly, users could earn "points" for buying products and services through their Facebook accounts.  Facebook could partner with game companies and offer subscriptions at reduced rates.  Facebook would make a killing in referral charges for utilizing their network.  This is just the start - imagine being able to talk to someone for free through your Facebook account (voice or text) since everyone will be signed in all the time.  The opportunities to connect and create new experiences through the Facebook portal (app) would be right in your pocket, whenever you need it.  These are just a few ideas off the top of my head - can you come up with more?

Improving LinkedIn

Recently, a new app called Branchout was introduced on Facebook and it got me thinking about how stale LinkedIn has become lately.  However, I believe that LinkedIn could be improved if a few key features were added.

First, I would open up the content in the groups to all users of LinkedIn, but only allow group members to contribute to group discussions, polls, post, view and reply to jobs, etc.  This would keep the group membership exclusive, but would open up the information to everyone.  I predict this would make the quality of posts improve on average because the user's words would reach a larger audience and enable people to share information between different groups.  This could improve the chances of innovation and collaboration between individuals of different disciplines.  It would cut down on the information silo effect of LinkedIn and increase the quality of the information.  Done correctly, it would totally transform LinkedIn and make it more valuable and more visible to the public and indispensable to numerous professionals.

Second, I would add the ability to chat instantly with any user (like Facebook).  I can't fathom why LinkedIn doesn't allow this feature.  Imagine being able to talk to anyone in your extended network, as soon as you found that person's profile, if that user accepts the chat feature and the request to chat.  This would instantly encourage people to be logged into LinkedIn on a more regular basis while also increasing ad venue and user engagement.  This could be a huge win for LinkedIn.

Third, I would add the ability to create blog posts within LinkedIn.  This would enable potential employers to read what potential job candidates have written and what other experience they may have.  It would showcase writing skills and research interests.  This would be a great way for people to create a nice professional portfolio of themselves online.  LinkedIn feels so two-dimensional with jobs worked and skills acquired.  Anyone could post anything on their profile, but knowledge, skills and personality could also be demonstrated in blog posts.  This would benefit both users, prospective employers and LinkedIn by increasing site usage, user engagement and portraying a more accurate picture of what each LinkedIn professional really knows.  

Forth, I would add ratings to individual groups, users and posts.  This would use game theory principles to add incentives for posting quality content, becoming a member of a highly rated group and also encourage more users to join.  Users who post content others find helpful would naturally have higher ratings and be first in line for consideration of job opportunities and/or getting connected.

I believe that adding those few simple features and improving the information architecture and user experience of the site would solidify LinkedIn's presence on the web as *the* place professionals need to go to connect and collaborate because of the strength and legitimacy of its communities.

The Largest Benefit of Collaboration in the Workplace

I believe that the biggest benefit to collaboration in the workplace in today’s market has to be the potential for innovation. In one of my class textbooks Enterprise 2.0 Implementation, it states on page 72: ”In today’s economic arena wherein competition is global and products and services are cheap due to the increasing commercial potentcy of emerging markets, price is no longer an area in which organizations can hope to differentiate themselves. Instead, innovation is the principle means through which organizations can remain competitive.”

I agree with the author here, but I would take it even further and argue that in order to even enter certain markets, companies must have an innovative product or service. In many industries/markets, the barriers to market entry to be the cost leader are very high. I doubt anyone will be able to compete with Walmart as a cost leader, for example, any time soon.  However, one only needs to look at Apple for a good case study on innovation and becoming a market leader in the high-end niche electronics market.  Apple decided to change the focus of its company and drive focus away from just PCs and also into the mobile computing market.  Soon after coming out with the iPhone and iPad Touch, it was able to post its best non-holiday quarter earnings of 1.2 billion in profilts (Q1 FY 2009). In addition, Facebook is another good example.  Facebook started out as just one of many social networking sites. Initially, it was an invitation-only website where members had to be a student at a University in order to access and participate in the site. However, soon after adding a way to “tag” photos of friends and by concentrating on the user experience instead of sponsors Facebook took off, while its competitors, like MySpace, faded in popularity.  That innovative focus boosted the popularity of the website and has driven its succcess even to today (source).  Finally, Spigit is taking advantage of this trend by providing tools for companies to harness "crowdsourcing" in their client's organizations in order to boost opportunities for innovative solutions to problems.  "Spigit’s customers include 26% of the Fortune 100 and 16% of the Fortune 500".

So how does a company foster innovation through collaboration you ask?  Many have argued that innovation occurs in complex environments through social learning networks because the knowledge needed to solve the problem in that domain often spans multiple disciplines or specialties. For example, a paper entitled Interorganizational Collaboration: and the Locus of Innovation: Networks of Learning in BioTechnology states “We argue in this paper that when the knowledgebase of an industry is both complex and expanding and the sources of expertise are widely dispersed, the locus of innovation will be found in networks of learning, rather than in individual firms.”  Also, a white paper by IBM, entitled The new Collaboration: Enabling Innovation, Changing the Workplace, makes a similar point:  ”A company is a group of individuals. No one knows what everyone else knows… The new collaboration can provide a platform for helping the many operate as one because each person can be only a step away from the knowledge that other people have.”

It seems the need for collaboration is here to stay and will only grow increasingly more important in order to gain market leverage in our fast-pasted, highly competitive global economy.  Therefore, the salient question becomes: are you doing enough to foster meaningful collaboration that leads to business value among your employees in your organization?

Personal Attitudes Toward Solving IT Problems

Building Trust with the Client or Why Soft Skills are so Important

I used to think the most important goal of developing software was to do everything the client says to do, verbatim, without argument or regard for the consequences. However, in my experience, this has often led to project failure. Projects succeeded when my point of contact for the client was a subject knowledge expert on the technologies being used and really understood and valued user experience design principles.

The *best* way to build trust with the client (or anyone else for that matter) is to convey your ernest desire to do whatever is in the best interest of the client for the entire duration of your relationship with the client - in a word: altruism. Use your active listening skills to understand what your client really needs.

Once trust has been established, your recommendations are more likely to be considered and implemented. Sometimes this may mean offering a cheaper solution or a solution that the customer can maintain themselves without needing custom development or maintenance every year. Your clients will remember that you acted selflessly and will be more likely to work with you again in the future on another project, or recommend and introduce you to other clients.

Could this be a Systemic Problem?

Systems Thinking has always fascinated me. And I only got more interested after reading Peter Senge's book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of Learning Organizations. Systems Thinking is one of the 5 disciplines he believes an organization must possess in order to maximize its business potential, among other things. It's a good book and I highly recommend it. I have a favorite bookmark that I go to, as a cheatsheet of sorts, when I am faced with a particularly challenging work flow or business process problem that I need to solve: Places to Intervene in a System.

Debugging is Underrated!

I feel strongly that this is the *first* lesson any programmer should be taught: how to debug computer systems. I would have to say that the most useful skill I possess as a programmer is the ability to debug anything. I *have* to know why it's not working - it will keep me up all night... And here's the thing - it's completely underrated! Sure, you can find millions of webpages dedicated to tips and tricks and code samples, but very few sites on good debugging techniques. I'll be sharing some of my favorite resources in a future post. I just wanted to shine the spotlight on debugging.

Continuous Improvement

Confession - I have a tendency to over-think really simple things. I'm not alone - most IT folks I know seem to have the same affliction. For example, when I was a kid, I often pondered about the most efficient way to tie my shoes (go ahead, laugh). I've literally spent days thinking about this from every perspective I could imagine - from redesigning the laces and shoes to some sort of self-tying mechanism.

So, when I approach an IT problem, I often check in with myself to determine if I'm over-thinking the solution:

• Have I properly identified, defined and understood the problem? 
• Have I verified that all my assumptions are true? 
• If I were the user, ideally, how would I want the overall system to function? 
• Can any of the processes/components be simplified/improved? 

A Rant on the Usability of Mobile Touchscreen Websites

This is a desperate plea to all web developers out there.  Please detect that I am on a mobile device and change all of your links to buttons.  Yes, even if the button will take up the entire width of my screen - that is OK!  What is *not* OK is having to zoom (which, sometimes I can't) and try for a very long time to touch a link and navigate to the page that contains the information that I want.  Stop using links.  Use buttons.  That is all.  Thanks for your consideration!

Signed,
Every Mobile User.

Laziness is Simply a Lack of Motivation

Programmers are often accused of being lazy.  However, I would argue that being lazy can be a good thing - especially when laziness comes from not wanting to waste mental energy coding a file upload routine, coding a basic form or hand coding routines that could easily be auto-generated.  

What excites and motivates me is the process of innovation, or more specifically, getting to a place where I can experiment or research in order to determine the best way to accomplish a task or even, occasionally, break new ground.  But, I'll also settle for solving a problem after careful consideration and planning.  Sure - there are those die hard optimizers out there who want to create the most efficient file saving routine.  I say more power to you - and while you are busy with that, I'm going to figure out how to get more done in less time with fewer lines of code, while giving the user the best possible experience without cutting corners.  

Users have grown more sophisticated and simply won't search through a terrible information architecture to find hidden or poorly presented information.  Nor do they want to watch your lengthy marketing videos.  I have observed (through academic research that I will be sharing soon) that the average internet user now appears to exhibit symptoms of a mild form of ADHD and/or information overload.  They simply do not have any more room in their heads for more stuff and instead seek to be entertained or informed quickly, efficiently and accurately.  Yes, they are growing more skeptical by the second and are catching on to your shoddy journalism or your pseudoscience interpretation of good research.  And since there are so many places on the interwebs to get something similar, they're just as happy to go elsewhere.

I like to imagine that my users are too smart and too busy and I have too many competitors to make excuses about the poor user experience of  my website/web application.  This always motivates me to produce the best results.  

Microsoft Office Web Apps and SharePoint 2010: Error Time-Suck

In one of my SharePoint 2010 sites, I was getting this nasty error that was preventing me from opening a Microsoft Word file and editing it within the browser:

"Word Web App cannot open this document for viewing because of an unexpected error."  Also, when I tried to open an Excel document, I got a "Cannot open the workbook" error.  Perplexed, I scoured the web and phoned a friend or two.  In the end, these 2 things got my issue resolved:

1. Give the SharePoint Service account user dbcreator privileges in the SQL Server Security for your installation.
2. Execute the following PowerShell commands (if you didn't when you set up OWA in the first place):
   
   $webApp = Get-SPWebApplication http://sharepointsite/url/tosite
   
   $webApp.GrantAccessToProcessIdentity("domain\user_owa_runs_under")

I hope this saves someone some trouble because this cost me about 3 hours of frustration.

Now on to the fun stuff!