By James Wanless
President & COO of Talkster
There is a paradigm shift happening in communications. The silos of old are crumbling and the way we communicate is forever going to be changed. The changes in communication that are coming is nothing short of revolutionary.
It was roughly a decade ago that people started using email, but now email has become ubiquitous and, for a great many, the primary form of communication. But since mass adoption of email began in the 1990s, a large number of new and different communications technology and habits has emerged. Today we email, text message, Facebook, tweet and still make phone calls but increasingly on VoIP phones running over Wi-Fi networks.
The evolution in communications is clear, but where is this revolution you may ask? Adding more and more little bits of communication on top of old methods is hardly revolutionary.
The revolution I speak of was incited by social networking. When I say social networking, you probably think MySpace and Facebook. These sites with their huge member lists are just the beginning. While social networking habits are engrained in teenagers using MySpace, the lure of social networking is attracting members far younger. Children as young as three are connecting with friends they know and are meeting new friends on social network sites made just for them. Sites like Club Penguin, ToonTown, Webkinz and My Scene are experiencing explosive popularity. Children I know will rush home from school to invite their classmates into their Club Penguin igloo instead of playing with these same friends on the playground. Too young for email, text messages and even phones, social networking is becoming part of their everyday communications, a habit they will carry with them as they go through school and into the workplace.
Today, the majority of us over 30 have two primary contact points. Our email address and our (mobile) phone number. I am not talking about the tech savvy early adopters, who are constantly IM’ing, twittering or “pinging,” but rather the masses. If someone absolutely has to communicate with us, these are the two places that they will try first.
Increasingly thirty-somethings are becoming less and less reliant on email as a standalone silo of communication and more and more, they are choosing to center their primary communications on their Facebook account and their mobile phone. When they are at their PC, Facebook messaging is the way they exchange messages. It used to be IM. Remember that ever present MSN sound you would hear each time a new message arrived? I would go crazy as my kids would have 20 simultaneous conversations and I would hear that sound every five seconds for hours at a time each evening. That sound is fading into memory. Hotmail and Gmail open on the desktop? No. More than likely it’s the Facebook home page.
With the major social networking players, including not only Facebook and MySpace, but also LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse, Ning and others, each counting their members in the tens of millions, it’s surprising they haven’t caught on to their role as the central hub for all communications. The capabilities of the social network communications infrastructure remain rudimentary. There are many pieces of the puzzle that are still missing.
Realizing that instant access to information about one’s social network comes with desire for real time communication with the people in that network, some of these social networks are starting to roll out instant messaging. Some are doing a better job than others. Those I’ve seen follow a pattern of enabling communications as an application layered on top of the social network platform. I don’t think a standalone IM client like the MySpace/Skype messenger is the answer. Something that integrates with the core communications experience is.
This need is even more apparent when you extend social network communications to mobile devices. Until our university students and teenagers become the next league of desk jockeys, they still spend the majority of their time away from a PC. But they are never without their mobile phones. Despite the fact that more people are electing to use their mobile phone as their only phone service, the mobile landscape hasn’t changed that much. While some phones have the ability to surf the Net, IM and record video, the mobile phone experience is still centered on SMS and phone calls.
Most of these kids can’t afford to spend a lot, so they are economical with their mobile usage. Ad supported communications will change this reality as the mobile experience is subsidized with interactive advertising. This shift is the blue ocean for social networks and will be the focus of attention so that the core communications experience follows the user wherever they are. Social network-based communication needs to be usable wherever these kids are; getting an alert about a new communication and then having a limited ability to engage in the conversation is frustrating.
When you look at Facebook and the number of users with the mobile application installed (the application that allows Facebook users access via a browser page on their mobile devices) compared to the overall user base, mobile social networking is still in its infancy: only three million installs of the mobile application versus 70+ million users of Facebook overall (this number does not include BlackBerry users who had the application pushed out to their device automatically). There are no stats on how much either is actually used on a regular basis, but it is surely pretty small given the limited usability of these applications and, most importantly, the real time interaction that is missing. Real time is where it’s at.
Let’s take a leaf out of the RIM book of wisdom. Look at how addictive the real time push of email has become for business users. That instantaneous “call to action” that makes the BlackBerry addictive is the same as SMS. Facebook SMS alerts are simple and immediate. Instant messaging is similar but mobile IM, while popular, is still far away from the usage we see with SMS.
Once social networks can realize the value to their users of building consolidated, real time communications into their core platform, we will notice a sea change in communications on par with the invention of the telephone. Does that sound like hyperbole? Think about it for a moment. The phone was the first mass real time communications tool and its adoption was fast and widespread. Integrating real time text, voice and even video communications into a core social network platform will tear down the silos that are keeping each communications service separate and distinct. Once consolidated, the social network becomes the key to all our interpersonal communications, and we can access it as fully on the PC as we can on the mobile, making communications possible from any device we own.
Because communications are both multi-faceted and siloed, we are forced to maintain numerous accounts: email, phone, instant messaging, twitter, etc. Why should I have to maintain contacts in Outlook, my online email account and my mobile device? Why do my voicemails end up in three different places, my home, my office and my mobile phone? It’s all about the multiple contact points and not knowing how to consolidate these.
To be clear, I am not talking about “unified messaging” which is a top down approach (think of the bushy end of the tree). I am thinking about a single point of entry where everyone gets to reach me wherever I decide that they should reach me. I have friends and a whole lot of information about them. I don’t need a separate contact list also, or many separate contact lists. I have categories for my friends. Some of them are acquaintances on a “limited profile.” I want to use these same techniques to determine who reaches me where and when. When I want to call someone, let me click their picture and based on their preferences and our relationship, point me to the right place to reach them whether it be by voice or text (or even video).
Let’s not forget one other very important piece. With communications centralized through a social network, the social network can derive revenue streams from something as commonplace as a phone call. In fact, given the types of usage these networks see every day, the social networks are forsaking $millions in lost revenue every day because they haven’t integrating communications into their core platform and are not taking advantage of the revolution they themselves started!
It’s time to make change happen. The social networks are battling not just for market leadership, but to become the centre of our personal universes. It’s not a guarantee that the most popular networks today will be the winners of tomorrow. What could be more compelling than offering people a central hub through which all communications takes place? I predict that the first company that embeds the type of communication platform I’ve described above into their core offering will be a clear market winner.
