Open Intelligence / Web 3X (Social + Mobile)

"There is not a tremendous amount of value in having cool mobile apps that function well but are connected to a back end that predates the Internet. We are the only bank with a completely modernised core banking platform. We believe the notion of real time banking on mobile devices is going to be more important than ever."

Apple Stole Its Ideas In the First Place Perhaps. The problem with this line of attack against Apple is that it is irrelevant to the ongoing patent litigation. Whether or not Apple invented the graphical interface, touchscreen, mouse, or anything else has no bearing on the fact that Apple holds hundreds of patents in countries around the world for various technologies and concepts, and it is those patents which Android--or the device manufacturers who rely on Android--are accused of violating. If Xerox, Palm, or any other entity believes that Apple has infringed on its patents, it is incumbent on them to defend those patents and take that up with Apple.

Let me answer that for you: No one.

The downside of this is that because the premise of the web is about abstracting out hardware and OS specificity, browsers are prone to crashing, slowdowns and sub-optimal performance. Very little about the web screams out "great design" or "magical user experience."

The mainframe was dwarfed by the PC, which in turn has been subordinated by the web. But now, a new kind of device is taking over. It's mobile, lightweight, simple to use, connected, has a long battery life and is a digital machine for running native apps, web browsing, playing all kinds of media, enabling game playing, taking photos and communicating.

In the PC era, for example, the core problems were centered on creating homogeneity to get to scale and to give developers a singular platform to program around, something that the Wintel hardware-software duopoly addressed with bull's-eye accuracy. As a result, Microsoft and Intel captured the lion's share of the industry's profits.

Given its multiplicity of capabilities, it's not hard to imagine a future where post-PC devices dot every nook and cranny of the planet (an estimated 10 billion devices by 2020, according to Morgan Stanley).

Now, Apple is opening a second formal interface into iOS through Siri, a voice-based helper system that is enmeshed in the land of artificial intelligence and automated agents. This was noted by Daring Fireball's John Gruber in an excellent analysis of the iPhone 4S: ... Siri is indicative of an AI-focused ambition that Apple hasn't shown since before Steve Jobs returned to the company. Prior to Siri, iOS struck me being designed to make it easy for us to do things. Siri is designed to do things for us.

stock performance of Apple, Amazon and Google after each company's strategic foray into post-PC computing: namely, iPod, Kindle and Android, respectively.

This is one of those cases where the numbers may surprise, but they don't lie.

Once the customer has selected an account to both receive and make payments from, Commbank Kaching will enable them to pay anyone via MasterCard PayPass, an email address, phone number or Facebook friendship.

Commbank Kaching combines peer-to-peer payments via the phone's contacts and email addresses, and 'social payments' via a user's Facebook friends along with NFC contactless technology.

Users wishing to activate the NFC functionality will need to use an iCarte cover - billed as an interim technology by the bank - which is available for purchase during the app installation process.

"Mobile and online social payment is the next step in transaction technology," says Lindberg.

Now, for the first time, Australian consumers will no longer have to rely on cash or cards to make payments to family, friends or even businesses.

According to the same media outlet, Square is working with PayPal and providers of near field communication (NFC) for this mobile service.

For each transaction performed by this device, Square receives from merchants 2.75 percent of the amount paid.

It could just be a little booth in every department of a Wal-Mart that would be designed to handle payments for a couple of items.

One of the biggest benefits for Square could be to get Wal-Mart to leverage its existing Card Case program that allows for simple payments and transaction information between the customer, the retailer and the payments platform. The Square Card Case was unveiled in May and initially only rolled out to five cities and 50 retail partners.

Square posits the Card Case as an Amazon-style "one-click buying" method, except in the real-world as opposed to digital payments.

Users that download the app can set up a "card" from a retailer and see what is happening with the retailer, from new deals to changes in the menu. Wal-Mart could institute the Card Case in a variety of ways, from the national level for what is happening with all Wal-Mart retail stores, to dedicating local managers to updating the card case for each individual store.

In terms of that goal, the Wal-Mart adoption may have the affect of a giant marketing campaign. The greatest benefit to Square from Wal-Mart may not be actual transaction revenue, but helping to speed up the awareness and adoption of the platform.

There are several companies working on ways to write a couple of lines of code that makes it easy to plug in to a variety of cloud services. Kinvey, StackMob and Parse all do the same thing for native apps while Kinvey supports HTML5 development as well (it is likely that there are developers using StackMob for HTML5 development but the company has not published a SDK for it at this point, same with Parse).

I’m so convinced that the Siri of today is just touching the tip of the iceberg for such a future, that I expanded on this topic in detail this week in a lengthy GigaOM Pro report (subscription required). I’d say “read the report out loud” for you, but Siri isn’t quite that good. Yet.

"The research also shows that parents and children are increasingly aware of how to be safe when using the internet," said Ofcom's Richards. "But risks do remain. Better understanding – amongst parents as well as their children – is the key to helping people to manage content and communications, enabling them to enjoy the benefits of media use while protecting themselves from the potential risks."

According to a definition in the Gamification Wiki,"Game Mechanics are constructs of rules and feedback loops intended to produce enjoyable gameplay."

Before you can add gamification to your community, you need to really understand your community.

Recency -- when was the last visit? Frequency -- how often does the member visit? Duration -- how long do members stay on the sight when they visit? Virality -- how often do members share content on the site?  and how much is their sharing amplified through their network? Ratings -- how often do members rate content on the site?

Community Goals

What goals are you trying to accomplish with the community?  Can you measure them?  Do you have any elements of gamification incorporated into your community today? Does your community platform support gamification elements?  Can you track your measures in your community system?

Measures of Engagement for a Community

Do you have an open or closed community?  Is your community a professional, social, support, informational, hybrid or something else community?  How do you want members to use the community?  How many members do you have and how many do you add in a typical week or month?  What is the typical member profile?  How engaged are your community members?  How do you measure engagement?  What motivates your members to join, participate and stay engaged in the community?  Do you have robust member profiles?  Are member profiles searchable?  Can members 'friend' or message other members?  Do you have a way for members to add their Twitter or Facebook accounts to their profiles?  How  easy is it for members to share content on other sites?

Suggestions for Community Gamification

Robust profile system [self-expression, status, achievement]-

I also want members to receive recognition for their achievements by earning badges that can be displayed on their profiles and announced via their social networks.  As a community manager, I want to be able to create different types of badges including limited edition or special occasion badges.

Point system [competition, achievement, reward, status] -

I definitely want to keep track of points, but I want to be able to customize the calculation of the points.  I don't know what the ideal point values would be, but I know that I would want to experiment with rewarding members for recent visits, the frequency and duration of their visits, their sharing of content on the site or in their social networks, creating content, participating in discussions or rating content.

Leaderboards [reward, status, achievement, recognition, competition] -

Customization is also important in the leaderboards.  I want to have multiple leaderboard; for example, I may want a weekly, monthly and all-time versions of the leaderboard that I will post in different parts of the community site to recognize leaders who are currently contributing the most to the community experience and to others who have been long time contributors.

Badges [status, achievement, reward, recognition, competition, self-expression]

First of all, the member profile system needs to be robust with the option to upload a picture and have free form bio descriptive fields.  Most importantly, I should be able to link my profile to my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and possibly use single-sign-on use those services.  The profiles should also keep a history of a user's activity, badges and points.  Another requirement for the profile system is that members should be able to create virtual friendships or groups within the community site.

Content ratings have been around for awhile, and they are an important part of increasing engagement.  I would push the envelop further by making it easier for users to share their content ratings and to search for content based on the rating.

Content rating [altruism, self-expression] -

Content sharing [altruism, self-expression] -

Members must be able to easily share content they like within their social networks, via bookmarking sites and by email.

Challenges [competition, reward, achievement]

As a phase 2 implementation, I would also want to add some custom challenges to my community to drive additional engagement.  I am not sure what form these would take, but I would start thinking about how to incorporate challenges while implementing the other elements noted above.

“The point system has dramatically improved engagement + contribution on Moz. We’ve grown community content 200%+ in the past 24 months.”

Step 1: You need points.

But points are meaningless without a leader board.

Step 2: You need a leaderboard to get people’s competitive spirit out and allow them to compare and be compared against others.

Salesforce does the same with Nitro by gamifying real life. Sales guys get stats to see what they’re doing well, awards them with points and badges but it also lets them compare to others.

We can also use game mechanics to help people learn how to use our products – Richard mentions Ribbon Hero 2 where clippy teaches you how to use Microsoft Office products. Rather than having him jump up when it thinks you need help (as was the case back in the day) you have challenges to help clippy fix his CV, etc. Your userbase is having fun and you’re helping them learn about your product.

Encourage users to hand over data - it makes us smarter marketers.

Who does this? LinkedIn with the goals and “profile completeness” – SEOmoz does the same thing.

Badges?

Rich doesn’t know that Foursquare should work but the beauty of it is that does. Rich thinks this has to do with velocity and the fact that it makes quite boring stuff exciting and PR worthy – not knowing when a reward is coming and the fact that they come almost at random is what Rich feels makes this work.

Virtual Currency/Goods

If you have a crappy product it really doesn’t matter.

What could we do/take away from this?

Gamification for Good – IMOK, a checkin platform for kids. Connected just from one phone to the other and checking in lets the parent know they’re ok.

Reward with Status- top contributors in Webmaster forums will get flown out to Google and learn all sorts of things.

Create signups/sales with loss aversion

Help people drive their business

Generate Reviews- badge and point system for heavy users?

Increase signups

Reward for Gifting

Reward for Uplaoding Content

Generate links

Increase social shares

Motivate internally to do the same - get your inhouse team to answer FAQ type questions and reward them for their interaction and points.